Be careful of what you wish for, Part. 94

Picture: Twitter/@TTuchelofficial

A day and a half has passed since Frank Lampard was fired as Chelsea head coach, providing a brief window of time in which to consider his downfall, and give thought to his successor. Frankly, Lampard’s departure still stings, though I suppose that sensation, as with all managerial firings - at Chelsea or anywhere else - will recede. Reading some of the coverage, including The Athletic’s forensic examination of what was going on behind the scenes at the club, probably means there should be no room for naïveté or sentiment. The bare facts are that Chelsea were in a slump, Lampard’s results weren’t showing any sign of improving, and the club hierarchy either couldn’t see the path out of that, or were prepared to give it time. That’s football, but also, more specifically, Chelsea.

I won’t pretend that the nature of Lampard’s departure has left a bitter taste in the mouth. True, his win average was only 52%, but then Manchester United’s Ole Gunnar Solksjaer currently stands at 47%; true, Chelsea were sitting ninth in the Premier League this morning, whereas at the beginning of December they were first; and, yes, the performances in the last few weeks were, at times, lifeless and prominently lethargic. But then what club doesn’t go through such schisms? More time was needed to get the best out of all the players under Lampard’s charge, even the under-performing Werner and Havertz, though the contentious Kepa (allegedly one of the sources of internal rupture between the manager and de facto club chief executive Marina Granovskaia) is probably beyond redemption.

I’m not going to present myself as Captain Hindsight (© B. Johnson) here, and say “I told you so”, but I can’t be the only Chelsea fan who was nervous when the club’s all-time record goalscorer was appointed in 2019, with only a season of club management under his belt. My nerves, though, weren't so much about Lampard's inexperience, as the surefire prospect that he would, inevitably and eventually, get sacked and how, then, would we deal with that. Experience of the club’s appointments of Ruud Gullit and Gianluca Vialli, promoted from the playing staff under a previous regime, should have taught us that such fan-friendly romantic measures can end in tears. Lampard’s appointment was, I suppose, no different, and would have been much the same if the club had appointed John Terry or, even, former youth coach Brendan Rodgers. 

The media narrative was always that Frank’s personal connection to the club bought him more time than most under Roman Abramovich, but the bottom line is that no one gets time under the oligarch, “favourite son” or not. Personally, I’m of the slightly cynical belief that Lampard was a PR appointment at the time: with the club dealing with the loss of Eden Hazard and facing a UEFA transfer ban, replacing Maurizio Sarri with another continental technocrat of any standing was going to be unlikely to pull off. Installing Lampard to put a smile back on fans’ faces after the moribund Sarri tenure, connecting with the terraces, so to speak, at a time when there was no other option but to play Chelsea’s much-vaunted youth product, made a lot of sense. This quickly became a “project”, a neat way of positioning an experiment, but it served all purposes. But, as Pep Guardiola pointed out yesterday in his press conference: “People talk about projects and ideas. They don't exist. You have to win or you will be replaced.” And as two-times Chelsea manager José Mourinho added, with only tacit sympathy for his former protégé: “It is the brutality of football, especially modern football. When you become a manager you know that sooner or later it is going to happen to you.”

I don't think Lampard was ever going to get a long run at the job, regardless of his personal history with Chelsea. The club has made clear, with the lengthening roll-call of managers, that it is not interested in legacies, and if it has any interest in heritage, it is only fleeting. The managerial turnover is not a reflection of an impatient proprietor as much as one who just wants relentless success. If anything, it’s extreme fan behaviour. More reasonable fans, however, and especially those who’ve supported the club through good times and bad, and could therefore claim a more emotional bond, will disagree. Chelsea is not some faceless corporation whose financial results are a functional measure of success. Football is more than that, which means that attachments to managers and players go deep. We can be indifferent to some personnel comings and goings, especially with the commoditisation of journeymen figures. But some, who wear the badge with pride, and who have a genuine connection with the fanbase, mean something. They’re also becoming few and far between.

The argument, here, is that we have to move on, just simply because the club has. The manner with which Lampard was fired yesterday - called back into West London while he was driving out into Surrey and the club’s training base in Cobham - says it all. We don’t know the precise detail of the conversation he would have had with chairman Bruce Buck and Granovskaia (whose relationship with the manager had deteriorated in recent months, even before the slump in form), but reports say it was brief and terse. Lampard was even denied the opportunity to say goodbye to the players, who’d ominously been told to report to Cobham later than planned. Having experienced being both firee and firer, I can attest that these meetings are always - always - cold and businesslike. I can’t imagine it would have been any different for Lampard. As it will be, inevitably, for his successor. And his successor’s successor. And the one after that.

So what, then, of the next one? Thomas Tuchel arrives at Stamford Bridge with a reputation for technical excellence and the in-vogue managerial nationality of being German. Having been through their fair share of Italians, a couple of Portuguese, a Spaniard, a Brazilian, a Dutchman and an Israeli, plus that rare Englishman, Tuchel brings the Teutonic approach to Chelsea, an apparently admired football culture that has been led by Jürgen Klopp along with Leipzig’s Julian Nagelsmann and his assistant Ralf Rangnick, both of whom were in Chelsea’s sights but didn’t want to move mid-season. Tuchel is thought of as being an intellectual manager (predictably nicknamed 'The Professor'), someone whose early retirement through injury as a player, at just 25, led him to sink into deep philosophical study about football. He replaced Klopp at the bizarrely-named 1. FSV Mainz 05, where he lasted five years and was considered to be an out-of-the-box thinker, continuously tinkering with formations. 

It clearly impressed Borussia Dortmund, who brought him in, once again as a replacement for Klopp. However, things there eventually became strained, with chief executive Hans-Joachim Watzke saying the club had become “worn out" dealing with Tuchel’s reported control freakery. When he went to Paris Saint-Germain in the spring of 2018, Tuchel issued explicit instructions to the team’s chefs on menus and diet plans for his players, and even monitored their sleep patterns. His departure from PSG, last month, came after further ructions with the club’s hierarchy - notably sporting director Leonardo - over transfer policy and his use of star players, Kylian Mbappé and Neymar. PSG, arguably the only superstar team in France’s Ligue 1, were left in third place at Tuchel’s departure, a position that has caused much head scratching over his appeal to Chelsea. If you can’t be the league leader in, effectively, a one-team league, what chances does he have of meeting Roman Abramovich’s exacting expectations, expectations that couldn’t even retain someone of Frank Lampard’s club history?

Time will tell. The suspicion, however, is that Tuchel - like Lampard - will only be a short-term solution. Given his reputation for trouble, no one sees him as going the distance on a three-year contract (he has signed an 18-month deal with the option of an extension). That may just be Chelsea’s way. The combined £116 million spent on Timo Werner and Kai Havertz will make getting them playing to standards Tuchel’s immediate objective. Getting Chelsea back up the Premier League table will be the other one. There is some hope, however, of what Tuchel is not going to do, as so many of Chelsea’s shotgun managerial appointments do, and that is immediately start playing out-of-favour members of the squad. What’s not known is his philosophy on youth, for which Lampard was admired for bringing on Tammy Abraham, Mason Mount, Callum Hudson-Odoi, Reece James and Billy Gilmour. Lampard was largely forced into playing this Academy product due to the transfer ban, but Tuchel’s perspective will be framed by the £200 million-plus Chelsea spent in the summer. One spot of interest in the summer signings is Thiago Silva, the 36-year-old centre half that arrived for free from PSG. His role is seen as pivotal to shoring up the defence, so it would be reasonable to expect that a reunion with Tuchel could be of benefit. How the German does it, will be the subject of scrutiny. Whether he clashes heads with a notoriously intolerant leadership at Chelsea will be the constant subject of rumour. It’s hard to get excited about the new man coming in, partly because the pain of Lampard’s departure is still raw. But, also, because you know he won’t be around for long. 

Time for a Monday Moan? Not just yet

Picture: BBC Sport

Long-standing readers of this blog might recall a tradition that set in during José Mourinho's brief final season as Chelsea manager. After signing a new contract on August 7th, 2015 (which, incidentally, would have expired only last year), Mourinho oversaw a run of games that saw Chelsea pick up just 11 points from their first 12 Premier League fixtures, and exit the League Cup to Stoke by October. By December 17th, when Mourinho left Stamford Bridge for a second time ("by mutual consent"), the club had lost nine of its 16 league matches. Chelsea were in something of a death spiral and, at the moment of the Portuguese's departure, were one place above the relegation zone.

Along the way, my posts became exponentially more exasperated, to the extent that, like my very first missive in the blogosphere (a rant about England's exit from the 2010 World Cup, written the morning after), I established a history of letting rip on the first working day of the week. During Mourinho's progressive denouement at Chelsea, my Facebook updates to promote such posts became known as The Monday Moan.

That I mention this today, the Monday after Chelsea lost yesterday - and didn’t lose well - is something of a coincidence: it is too soon, two games into the new season, to get into a cycle of misery, especially as they won their first, last Monday, against Brighton, and they were, yesterday, playing the newly-crowned English league champions. But this is what football is about. A bad result at the weekend - even one as gloriously sunny and summery as this one was - is all it takes to start the week in a fug. But (and here’s where a football fan’s acute sense of denial instantly kicks in) there is need for some - some - perspective.

To summarise, Chelsea, with their expensively assembled, £230 million of summer acquisitions, were facing Liverpool at the Bridge in only their second competitive game of the season. In some respects, a tough break to meet last season’s champions so soon, but then to think that way is to already take on a defeatist view. Chelsea, after all, did finish fourth - an unlikely outcome, given the challenges of a transfer ban and relying heavily on youth last season. But that shouldn't necessarily mean that meeting Liverpool is anything less than a peer encounter. Chelsea-Liverpool has always been one of the fixtures I’ve attended religiously, dating back to the late 1970s, when the Merseysiders were imperious and the Londoners were in the mire of financial crises. That, to the 11-year-old me, was less apparent. What drew me in was that these two teams represented the classic football confrontation: the blues and the reds. Human Subbuteo. And thus it has continued for 40-plus years, all through the storied (and well-documented - see my post from June, Red Rain) history of encounters between the teams. 

So, then, yesterday. A cagey start by both sides saw Liverpool increase their presence, pressing Chelsea high and clearly setting out to test a largely unchanged defence, their Achilles heel all last season. That approach won out on the stroke of half time when Andreas Christensen lost his head and rugby-tackled Sadio Mané to the ground as he charged through on goal, to be rightfully dismissed after a VAR review of the initial yellow card. No one, least of all Christensen, should have had any complaints. After the break, Liverpool came out to face ten-man Chelsea with renewed, ominous purpose, Mané proving the tormentor twice, scoring within five minutes of the interval, and again, four minutes later. Perhaps Chelsea could be credited with keeping the scoreline at 0-2 for the remaining 35 minutes of play, but it was the nature of those two conceded goals that require the attention.

That £230 million has mostly been spent on attacking players, and given Timo Werner’s exciting pace (and a couple of decent chances yesterday he’ll regret), and the gradual introduction of the £71 million Kai Havertz, Chelsea could have one of the most fearsome attacking line-ups in the Premier League, given all the other options in Frank Lampard’s toolbox. But, as has been recanted verbatim over recent months, it’s at the back that changes are needed, and needed fast. Ben Chilwell, the left-back Chelsea coveted for some time, is yet to make his debut due to injury, meaning the defensively weak wingback Marcos Alonso continues to have put his lack of defensive pace and positioning on display. So it proved with Mané’s first goal, the result of Liverpool sending the Senegalese winger, plus Keïta, Alexander-Arnold, Salah and Firmino into the final third, baffling Chelsea’s defenders (now with Tomori replacing Christensen). Firmino beat Alonso to cut the ball across for Mané to head into the goal. For once, Chelsea’s Kepa Arrizabalaga couldn’t be blamed, directly. For what happened next, he could.

They say that if you’re already in a hole it’s a good idea to stop digging, but Arrizabalaga has clearly not heard this adage. As if he needed to add to the growing list of calamities, what seemed like a bread-and-butter clearance out to Jorginho was intercepted too easily by Mané, who simply poked it into the net with the casual ease of someone sweeping a tin can out of the way.

Almost to a newspaper, every back page today has said the exact same thing: Édouard Mendy cannot arrive from Rennes soon enough. We’re told that the goalkeeper's £20 million signing is imminent, but on this display from Chelsea's current stopper, Frank Lampard’s first duty this morning was probably to bang on Marina Granovskaia’s office door with a demand to know where she currently is with the Mendy deal, and to even offer a few quid of his own money to tip the balance of any last-minute wrangling.

Taking a step back, Chelsea weren’t helped yesterday by reticence. It was almost as if they were intimidated from the outset by Jurgen Klopp’s champions. They certainly allowed Liverpool’s high press to get the better of them, meaning that the Londoners’ defence was, once again, thin ice waiting to crack. The suggestion, here is one of a gulf in class, but when you look at where Chelsea have spent their money this summer, I genuinely think that they’ve got what it takes to compete within the top four. But it will take time. The veteran Thiago Silva, signed from PSG, has yet to make his debut, like Chilwell, meaning that the obvious weaknesses in defence have yet to be strengthened. Havertz is only two games in, and while Werner is looking sharp, he’s still, understandably, getting his timing right. With the other newbie, Hakim Ziyech, injured along with Christian Pulisic, arguably, the natural heir to Eden Hazard, Chelsea’s expensive new line-up is yet to take shape. Lampard, though, for all his exalted status amongst the club’s fans, also needs to learn better of what to do with these assets. One criticism of last season was that he wasn’t able to settle on an optimum defensive line-up, and that appears to have continued into this season. None of his central defenders appear rooted in the role (with Antonio Rudiger not even in yesterday’s squad), so with a risky goalkeeper and a never-the-same line-up in front of him, the inconsistencies have been laid bare.

Ever the diplomat, Lampard tried to put a supportive arm around his first-choice keeper. Accepting the Spaniard’s “clear mistake” for Liverpool’s second goal, he said after the match that: “We have to keep working, Kepa has to keep working.” Though acknowledging that it had been two games out of two that Kepa had dropped a clanger (conceding Leandro Trossard's goal last Monday against Brighton), he said: “Players need support, particularly from myself. I give that to all the players. Kepa has to keep working, nobody tries to make mistakes in football, it is the nature of the game. You have to be strong, you keep going and that is where he is at." Quite what Lampard’s mood is like privately is up for debate.

What he does know, or at least should know, as he opened up training this morning at Cobham, is that all the spending on top European attacking talent will amount to nothing if his defence continues to leak goals like they did last season. And, at risk of sounding ungrateful, the addition of just two new defenders (well, I say ‘new’, but Silva is now 35), means that more, much more, needs to be done with what Lampard already has in the department. In Reece James and Fikayo Tomori, for example, two youngsters of genuine promise, but still with much to learn. Stability - rooted in a goalkeeper who knows what he’s doing and can command those in front of him - is essential. That won’t come quickly, or easily.

But, to step back a bit further, there's a reason why I'm not yet ready to reinstate the Monday Moan. Yesterday's game was a tough schooling for Lampard, and from the one club Chelsea fans would have preferred not to have received it from (well, maybe the other club, if you include Tottenham). Two games in, it's too soon to press the panic button. For context, go back to 2016 and Antonio Conte's first season in charge. By September 11th, Chelsea's early season wins had been arrested by a 2-2 draw with Swansea. Then came back-to-back defeats - to Liverpool and Arsenal, the latter a humiliating 3-0 reverse. Conte had seen enough and switched to the 3-4-3 wingback system that would propel the team to Premier League champions eight months later, and with a 13-point margin over runners-up Spurs. The point here is that it really is too soon to moan, even if, this morning, it's fully justified.

Red Rain

Picture: Getty Images

This is going to sound bitter and twisted, but saturated media coverage this morning of Liverpool's first league title in 30 years - and their first of the Premier League era - comes across as a birthright fulfilled. There's no doubt that Liverpool have deserved this season's title: the 23-point margin (currently) between them and chasers Manchester City, with seven games still to go, is testament to the clever football Jürgen Klopp has been applying at the Merseyside club. But, much like England addressing its own 54 years of hurt (and counting), no one is entitled. Blanket press today of Liverpool being crowned champions without, last night, kicking a ball feels a little overblown, especially when you read The Times' chief football writer Henry Winter's report on Chelsea's win over City last night, which handed Liverpool the title. It took Winter at least the first quarter of his piece before it even mentioned Chelsea, let alone that they'd won what was an entertaining and, unlike many in this restarted season, engaging game.

We Chelsea fans will be accused of pettiness when it comes to any suggestion of dismissiveness. In the 1970s and 80s, when Chelsea were, frankly, nobodies, Liverpool's hegemonic presence in domestic and European football gave them a regal air. Even in my native pocket of south-west London - surely prime Chelsea country - there were Liverpool fans aplenty (along with Ipswich fans at my junior school due to that club's brief period of supremacy). When the 90s arrived, along with Sky's first mega deal with the-then new Premier League (in which I played a teeny-tiny part, working on the presentation to the BSkyB board that secured agreement to propose a £304 million, five-year contract), the balance of power shifted. Football was in a fragile state, especially post-Heysel and post-Hillsborough, the double stadium tragedies that Liverpool and its fans had been sadly caught up in. With the Premier League and football's new money, Manchester United became the new power with Surrey its minted, middle class fanbase, as had been the case during Liverpool's previous years of authority. With this historical context, there is still no real reason why Chelsea fans should bear any animosity towards Liverpool, any more than any other team you could mention. There is certainly no geographic proximity, unlike Tottenham or Arsenal. But there is, though, form. Lots of form. 

Let's start with a certain Jesper Grønkjær, the Danish winger who, on 11 May 2003, changed the lives of Chelsea fans forever with the "billion pound goal" - cutting in from the right and beating at least three defenders to blast past Liverpool keeper Jerzy Dudek. It was a goal that rather stunned us in the Stamford Bridge East Stand. It would be a while before its impact sunk in. Grønkjær's goal secured a 2-1 win and a fourth-place finish for Chelsea, at Liverpool's expense. Chelsea qualified for Europe. Legend has it that this convinced Roman Abramovich to buy the club, and not Liverpool, prompting a period of unprecedented success, not to mention unprecedented resources, a core element of the story. Liverpool, the working class representatives of English football tradition, Chelsea, the now arriviste club from a part of London associated with poshness.

We move on, then, to the era of greatest niggle, with José Mourinho - and his particular brand of toxicity - in the blue corner, and Rafa Benitez in the red corner. To some, it became a tiresome clash of egos, to others, pure box office. Chelsea, under Mourinho, were mounting a blitzkrieg-speed assault on English football, in a way never managed in their golden phases of the mid-'50s and late-'60s. In the Portuguese coach, we had a Special One who could never be accused of lacking confidence. His capricious rival, Benitez, like predecessor Gérard Houllier, couldn't help feeling he was battling ghosts from the club's past. First blood was drawn in February 2005 when Chelsea beat Liverpool 2-3 in the League Cup Final at Cardiff's Millennium Stadium. To say it was tempestuous is understatement: Riise put Liverpool ahead after a minute, but it wouldn't be until the 78th minute that the advantage would be reduced by a Steven Gerard own goal. Tee, and indeed, hee. Three goals followed in extra time: Didier Drogba and Mateja Kežman putting Chelsea in the lead, Antonio Núñez giving Liverpool faint hope by a goal in the 113th.

Battle lines were crossed next later that season in the Champions League semi-final. By then, Chelsea had won the Premier League by a record-breaking 95 points, and all in Mourinho's first season in English football. It was also Chelsea's first league title in 50 years. Before drawing Liverpool, Mourinho had also dispatched Barcelona and Bayern Munich. The semi-final was, thus, deliciously set up, though this wasn't matched by the first leg, at Stamford Bridge, which ended 0-0. The second leg at Anfield, however, was a different affair. Mourinho stoked things before kickoff by saying that the pressure was on Liverpool ("We’ll go back to London as heroes, independent of the result"). Febrile from the start, within four minutes Petr Čech brought down Milan Baroš only for referee Lubos Michael to wave play-on. Luis Garcia caught on to the loose ball and scored...or so it appeared. In a time before goal-line technology, William Gallas looked to have cleared the ball, but Michael awarded the goal regardless, perhaps convinced by the emphatic celebrations of the Liverpool players. Even to this day, it's not clear that it was a goal. Mourinho still goes on about it. Garcia has since trolled Chelsea by dressing as a ghost for fancy dress parties. Liverpool went on to a final with Milan in Istanbul, arguably producing the greatest comeback in European football history. Liverpool and Chelsea went on to develop an even greater rivalry, meeting a further 20 times in domestic and European competitions within the next four years. In fact, at one point, the number of times the two clubs met in both league and cup competitions became yawningly tiresome for both sets of fans.

Another fissure became Mourinho's relationship with Liverpool's Steven Gerrard. As Scouse as chip butties and Brookside, the midfielder handed in a transfer request in the summer of 2005, barely weeks after that night in Istanbul. Chelsea tried to sign him (Mourinho would attempt again at Inter Milan and Real Madrid) after the Reds' skipper had decided to "roll a hand grenade into the Liverpool boardroom" when contract talks broke down. Gerrard was eventually won round by Liverpool, but the episode made its mark on Mourinho, who would later describe the midfielder as "one of my favourite enemies". The Mourinho-Gerrard axis remained part of the clubs' rivalry: on Mourinho's return to Chelsea in 2013, the away fixture at Anfield led to Manchester City winning the league title (an ironic twist on last night's fixture). In a Mourinho tactical masterclass, Chelsea monstered Liverpool, despite them being on an imperious, 16-game unbeaten run. Title denied. The cherry on the cake - celebrated seven years hence - happened on the stroke of half-time: Gerrard mistimed a routine pass which fell for Chelsea's Demba Ba. To make matters worse, the midfielder fell over while trying to recover the ball, freeing Ba to score. Blues supporters have never let Gerrard forget the slip. "I’m not going to get drawn into wishing the Chelsea fans well," he would later say, adding "it was nice of them to turn up, for once today". Ouch. 

"I’ll be honest. I couldn’t stand you as a club," another dyed-in-the-wool Liverpool figure, Jamie Carragher, would tell Frank Lampard, now the Chelsea manager, and ever-present in this enduring period. "It surpassed Everton and Manchester United as our rivalry for a period." With Chelsea and Liverpool being drawn, yet again, in the 2008 Champions League semi-final, the Londoners ended up winning 4-3 on aggregate, with Lampard scoring the conclusive goal with a penalty in extra time. His mother, Pat, had died of pneumonia just six days before, leading to an emotionally charged goal celebration. The clubs would meet again in the following season's Champions League, this time in the quarter-final, and again with Chelsea winning the tie, 7-5 on aggregate. No one could say these encounters were anything less than value-for-money.

Another twist of the knife came in 2011 when Fernando Torres joined Chelsea from Liverpool in an end-of-window January transfer. The conventional wisdom is that any major name switching clubs in January will not, usually, be all that much (if you're of value you'd surely stay for the duration of the season). And thus it proved. Some revisionists have claimed that the Spaniard's time at Chelsea wasn't that bad - he did, at least, play a role in the 2012 Champions League title, after all - but for the most part, Torres was torrid. In that initial half-season he scored once in 18 outings, hardly a return for a striker of his repute. Despite twice being Anfield's record highest scorer, the magic never moved with him to Chelsea - 45 goals in 172 appearances, as opposed to 81 goals in 142 appearances for Liverpool. Some might say, cheekily, that offloading Torres was Liverpool's ultimate revenge. Some might counter that by saying that, by joining Chelsea, he achieved his ambition to win titles, something he'd felt had eluded him in the north-west. Champions League, Europa League and FA Cup winners medals gives some credence to that theory.

There is far more richness to the Liverpool-Chelsea story than one blog post can convey, even one as lengthy as this. Chelsea's role in Liverpool's first league title since 1990 is, really, one of happenstance. "I don't think this game decided the title," Lampard said after last night's win over Manchester City. "That was decided a long time ago by Liverpool's consistency and wins. We need to congratulate Liverpool. Fair play to them, give them full credit. They deserve to win it." A moment of understated diplomacy in the history of Chelsea and Liverpool, a rivalry I've always equated with Subbuteo - the quintessential reds-versus-blues match-up. 

For a while to come, there will be Chelsea fans begrudging Liverpool's victory, challenging the cult of Klopp and the belief of many on Merseyside that a title was overdue. I won't deny my own "meh" response this morning as breakfast TV seemed to cover nothing else. But having queued along the King's Road in 2005, 2006, 2010, 2015 and 2017, to watch an open-topped bus bearing a victorious squad, it is a delicious feeling to be champions, and I can understand fully the desire for it to be restored. I didn't expect it in 2005, and the novelty hadn't worn off in 2017, either. Liverpool may have only just added a 19th league title, worthily, even in this strange season, and it would be utterly churlish to claim Chelsea's help, but as smouldering red flares are still being doused in the streets around Anfield, it should be reminded that the hard work is still to come. The title defence next season will come against determined opposition. One particular rival amongst them.

Be careful what you wish for

Picture: Tottenham Hotspur FC

What a time to be alive. Senior members of the royal family trying to grease their way out of guilt-by-association, doing it badly and keeping the news cycle going for almost a week; the leaders of our two biggest political parties showing themselves to be about as trustworthy as a balsa wood ladder in heavy weather; and then Mauricio Pochettino being sacked as Tottenham manager on the Tuesday night, only to be instantly replaced next morning by the high-maintenance, highly expensive and highly self-opinionated José Mourinho.

As a Chelsea fan I am supposed to be shocked, appalled, even, by this news. After all, Mourinho is the man who said, in 2015, he couldn’t manage Tottenham because his emotional attachment to Chelsea was so strong (though to be clear, after Roman Abramovich sacked him for a second time, he was legally prevented from managing another English club for two years. Ironically, that sacking came after an abysmal away game at Tottenham, at the end of which Diego Costa petulantly threw his training bib at the Portuguese manager, and Chelsea hovered over the relegation trap door). The truth is that I’m not shocked at all. Frankly, I don’t think that Pochettino had been doing anything particularly badly, but 14th place in the Premier League is clearly not where Spurs would want to be, given the talent at their disposal. But something clearly wasn’t right, and despite Tottenham’s persistent excellence, nothing ever came of it in terms of trophies. Oddly, there were parallels in Tottenham’s fortunes to Chelsea’s profile under Mourinho in his last spell there - overseeing a decline that took them from Premier League champions in May 2015 to 17th place by the beginning of December. Being a serial runners-up just doesn’t cut it in modern football.

Spurs’ decline isn’t anything near as bad as Mourinho's final denouement at Chelsea, but you’d have thought that going from a Champions League final in June to midway of the bottom half of the Premier League in November is hardly conducive to support from Daniel Levy, the Tottenham chairman. Rumours have swirled in recent weeks of Pochettino becoming progressively detached from his squad. It’s hard to judge whether this was simply the Argentinian running out of enthusiasm for a “project”, to use modern managerial parlance, that had, over five and a half years, seen him preside over Harry Kane’s progress as one of England’s best-ever strikers, the development of Dele Alli - as objectionable an individual as he might be - to be a forward of some lethality, along with the evolution of Dier, Eriksen, Walker and Son as players of great potency. It’s just there hasn’t been any product from it. Too many Spurs players have gone missing at vital moments. Too often the team has gone Spursy.

So, when considering the lack of any silverware to line the trophy room at Tottenham’s lavish new stadium in N17, it makes obvious sense to look at Mourinho, even more so than apparent left-field candidates like Eddie Howe, the star-on-the-rise Brendan Rodgers, or the experienced Carlo Ancelotti, who’d apparently hinted at throwing his hat in, should the Spurs job come available. It is, perhaps, too easy to point directly at an empty trophy cabinet and blame that for Pochettino’s frustration and subsequent departure. But there’s no doubting where Levy was coming from when he declared that: "In José we have one of the most successful managers in football" - 25 trophies spanning seven clubs is not a stat to be ignored. How he acquired those trophies is another matter.

When he was appointed as Chelsea head coach for the first time, Mourinho had just won the Champions League with Porto in 2004. In between his first and second spells at Stamford Bridge, he won a league/cup/Champions League treble with Inter in 2010 and led Real Madrid to the La Liga title in 2012. Back at Chelsea, he won the Premier League, again. None of these achievements have been without their strife, and when Mourinho took over what had been pitched as his ‘dream job’, Manchester United, the dystopian spiral only continued.

Picture: Tottenham Hotspur

Which makes his appointment to Tottenham, while undoubted box office news, questionable. Yes, by reputation, he may bring Spurs closer to silverware than at any time since their last trophy, the League Cup in 2008. But this is assuming that Levy is prepared to bankroll the programme. Mourinho is already rumoured to be earning double Pochettino’s weekly salary, which means someone - presumably José’s agent - has managed to prise open Levy’s wallet wider than it had been previously known to hinge. And, as previous proprietors have found, Mourinho will want money to buy in Europe’s most expensive talents, a move likely to make Spurs’ accountants as nervous as the youngsters Pochettino blooded through, even if not to ultimate success. For his part, Pochettino was already harrumphing back in the summer about his lack of influence over club decisions in areas like player acquisition (the club failed to buy anyone new for two successive windows). Compare this with the £89 million Mourinho persuaded Ed Woodward to pay for Paul Pogba, or the £75 million for Lukaku. And look where that got him. It may be wise to stock up on popcorn before the January window opens.

Whatever happens, things around Tottenham Hotspur are unlikely to be dull for the next three seasons (the typical length of a Mourinho managerial cycle). One of football’s more enigmatic managers is now in charge of one of football’s more enigmatic clubs. Where this prospect might fall down is, crucially, on the field of play. Will Tottenham’s young stars, who have at least been afforded the freedom to be creative under Pochettino, adapt to Mourinho’s notorious brand of pragmatic football? We Chelsea fans put up with five-and-a-half seasons of jeers and jibes about parked buses, criticism that never abated as the silverware rolled in. In fact, it only increased, and it’s only now under Frank Lampard’s stewardship of youth that neutrals and the occasional rival are beginning to say nice things about the club. Not wishing to curse the coming months at, arguably, our bitterest London rival, I do wonder just what the José Effect will be. And just how much Arsenal fans might be breathing easier right now.

Sweet bird of youth

Picture: Richard Pelham, The Sun

I'm still staring at the calendar in disbelief. It's Monday, 12 August. My shoulders continue to peel from the blast of Florida sun I've just returned from. My work inbox is groaning under the weight of e-mail traffic seemingly indifferent to the fact I've been on holiday, each missive tugging at my coat screaming "read me first!". Of course, the myriad reply-alls which simply say "Thanks." are straight in the bin, as should be the individuals who inconsiderately sent them (word to the wise - I really don't care that you're thankful. I do care that you're bunging up my inbox with a message for someone else).

Such holiday harrumphing aside, I'm staring at the date because it means that first blood has already been drawn in the 2019-2020 football season. Around the country in recent days there have been qualifiers for the FA and League cups, the Football League began the previous weekend, and we've just witnessed the opening salvos in the Premier League. It's the same every summer, I suppose: games watched partially in holiday resort bars, out of desperation for some sight of football in most cases, and escape from the family in many others. These first weekends for the respective leagues are the beginning of an arcing season that will clamber through the temperature changes of summer, autumn, winter, spring and summer again, with the prospect of breaking out the mid-season parka and gloves now still a long way away, but in reality, only a matter of weeks. As the TV commentators have been predictably stating, there's a long, long way to go.

Which is why yesterday's events at Old Trafford should be meaningless. Because, we are told, the first game of the season is. And the second. And probably the third. These are, however, the views of those with false hope. An opening day tonking, such as Chelsea suffered yesterday, can always be rationalised, justified, even. The optimist will look back on it and make hopeless excuses: "They were still at the beach"; "The pre-season friendlies don't mean a thing - it's always different when they get down to the real work"; "We've still got players coming back from injury/the summer tournament/settling in to the new side"; and yada, yada, yada.

Chelsea have turned over so many managers over my lifetime (and not just in the Abramovich era, either), that the arrival of each new one is always a test of faith, belief and expectation. Frank Lampard's status as a club legend makes no difference than that which accompanied the appointments of Ruud Gulitt, Gianluca Vialli, Roberto Di Matteo or even dear old Geoff Hurst, many moons ago. All equally expendable, none particularly qualified. Like his predecessors, Lampard fits a narrative, only this time it's a little more spun out: the two-window transfer ban imposed on the club, coupled with the acute need for the club to reconnect with a fanbase alienated by Maurizio Sarri's stubbornness and Antonio Conte's slide into uppity petulance. Hence a focus on youth, a commodity the Stamford Bridge faithful have desired more than anything else, given the plethora of young talents that have been husbanded out on loan deals. With Eden Hazard gone, and the FIFA ban preventing external reinforcements, Chelsea are being forced, very publicly, to rely on a combination of inexperience (manager and players) and relatively unproven potential (youngsters Mason Mount, Tammy Abraham, Reece James, 20-year-old American wunderkind Christian Pulisic, Fikayo Tomori, plus Callum Hudson-Odoi and Ruben Loftus-Cheek, who started to get opportunities last season, before being cut short by injuries).

Lampard has already played the 'I've got to work with what I've got' card to rationalise his Premier League managerial debut. I don't blame him. But from the perspective of some fans' point of view, be careful of what you wish for. We've looked on, frustratingly in recent seasons, as Chelsea's acclaimed academy has produced trophies at a better rate than the first team, without seeing many - or even any - of that youth progressing to the senior squad. Now Chelsea have been forced into drawing on the kids, with Lampard placing it as a pillar - if not the pillar - of his maiden season as a Premier League manager. With his tight little crew around him of Jody Morris, Eddie Newton, Chris Jones, Joe Edwards and Henrique Hilário, Lampard is clearly a risky bet, given that he only has the one season as a coach under his belt, and a Championship coach at that. So here's a perfect storm: two or three major factors conspiring to install a young, unproven coach in charge of a squad containing young, unproven players at this level. Chelsea have virtually signalled that it will be alright if things go pear-shaped this season, though any study of the Abramovich form will show that no one, no matter how much of a much-loved club son, will be immune if things go too pear-shaped. Just ask José Mourinho.

Ah, yes, Mourinho. Always the scene stealer, as he managed to do yesterday as Sky Sports' star summer signing, being allowed to upstage his fellow pundits (including resident alpha male, Graeme Souness) as they presided over proceedings at Old Trafford between the Portu-geezer's two former teams. And, as Brucie would say (and I don't mean Steve), "Didn't he do well?!". Despite José's less than subtle "come and get me" plea to clubs, we actually got to savour the footballing intelligence that turned a very minor player into one of the most successful coaches of all time, to date with 25 major honours to his name.

"Chelsea were too soft, not compact defensively, not aggressive enough, there was too much space between the lines. They did not press in blocks," Mourinho told Sky Sports viewers after the match, in what had been an assured punditry debut for the channel. "A little bit of experience would fit well with the team. You look to the performance of Mason Mount, Tammy Abraham and for matches of this dimension you need a little bit more," questioning why N'Golo Kante - only recently returned to the squad from injury - was left on the bench by Lampard at the start. "If Kante can play 30-35 minutes he can start the game. And then if he lasts only one hour then he lasts one hour. But maybe Frank listens to us and says Kante is impossible to play. My feeling is that they had a possibility to play with more know-how," adding that the experience of Marcos Alonso and Olivier Giroud were also sitting on the bench. "To come to Old Trafford, even if this is not the huge Manchester United that used to scare people, it's Manchester United."

Don't get me wrong, I want Lampard to succeed. Ever since talk began of the club's record-scorer returning as manager, I've warmed to the idea. Not piping hot, I'll readily concede, but given the circumstances, if the club is prepared to have a fallow year while it bloods in the youth while unable to buy new players, then so be it, and we should be able to enjoy the love-in with our much-loved former No.8. And yes, too, this was just the first game of the season. But Mourinho is right: it was still Manchester United - even 'this' United, with its own young manager and a dysfunctional misfit like Paul Pogba - at Old Trafford on the opening weekend. However, to blame Lampard's selection of youngsters like Mount and Abraham, would be wrong. There was a broader naiveté to Chelsea's structure yesterday. As Lampard himself conceded, four mistakes, four goals conceded. Blame for at least two of them can be laid at the feet of club captain César Azpilicueta, who seemed to pick up where he left off in his last, indifferent season, and Kurt Zouma, still only 24 but whose signing for Chelsea at the age of 19, then loans and injuries, gives him an air of club experience and history. Whatever that experience is deserted him yesterday. One might concede that not even David Luiz - now departed for Arsenal - would have conceded such errors. Much expectation weighs now on the return of Antonio Rüdiger to the Chelsea defence. But with Luiz gone, it's surely fair to say that Chelsea's options at the back aren't huge, even with the talented youngsters Tomori and James available in the full back positions.

That Chelsea dominated for large parts of the first half yesterday should not be forgotten. But there are - and should be - very real concerns about how Manchester United were able to suck the Londoners in and then hit them, hard, on the break. Even with the likes of Loftus-Cheek, Hudson-Odoi and Willian still to return from injury, their talents are not defensive. Nor, too, was the now much-missed Hazard, to be fair, but Lampard has to ensure that his expressive attackers can be as steely in the defensive phase as they are in the offensive. In this, he has to take on board Mourinho's valid criticisms, even if he has a point that injuries limited his options. Unfortunately that excuse only goes so far.

"I don't have to be too concerned about what anyone else says, the pundits," said Lampard, responding to his former boss. "But what is clear is the squad is the squad we've got and I believe in it. I can't drag people out of the medical room, whether they're experienced or not. The players we played today, and on the bench, are the players we have. We were missing internationals and big players, but I don't want that to be an excuse. We were competing for long periods. We made four mistakes and they put them away. It is a reality check for us all. It wasn't a 4-0 game for long periods, but we need to accept it."

Lampard is, and always has been one of the more likeable figures in the game. Articulate and intelligent, as well as gifted on the pitch, he has been long destined for management, perhaps even more so than his former oppo John Terry. But brains and eleven expensively-acquired GCSEs (including an A* in Latin) mean little when a) you're working for Roman Abramovich and b) competing in the Premier League. One could easily interpret Mourinho's "a little bit of experience" comment about Lampard's team selection as a jibe about Lampard himself. Mourinho has rarely pulled his verbal punches, and you wouldn't expect him to do so even when commenting on a former player whom he might still regard as one of his football 'sons'. Even José is capable of being cruel to be kind.

I'm no Statto, so my memory may not be 100 per cent here, but the last time I saw Manchester United beat Chelsea 4-0 was at the old Wembley in 1994 in that year's FA Cup Final. It was a miserable afternoon, made worse by having to trudge back to Fulham to start a 12-hour night shift at Teletext, relieving the day duty editor who happened to be a massive United fan, and who took great pleasure in taunting me from his lofty seat on the mezzanine floor as I came through the front door. I was too jet lagged yesterday afternoon to be that bothered by this latest 4-0 drubbing. Lampard's comments, post match, were the right ones, but they somewhat passed me by. "As a manager I feel things are slightly magnified," he said. "You take wins and losses more and this hurts," conceding the mistakes that lead to the goals, but defensively pointing out that "anyone with football experience will tell you that it wasn't a 4-0." Unfortunately, Frank, it was. How you and your team responds now will be the mark of you as a manager.

Like two bald men fighting over a comb: Man United versus Chelsea

The jokes have started early. Rumours coming out of the US that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is making or has made a bid to buy Manchester United have been met with gags such as “Amazon buys Man U, and immediately delivers the title to their neighbours”. What a sad state of affairs, then, that arguably the biggest football club in the world, with a history as storied as any footballing royalty in Europe, like Juventus, Real Madrid or Barcelona, should be such a source of ridicule. But, then, Chelsea - their opponents today at Old Trafford - aren’t exactly all that far away, themselves, either. Not that I’m suggesting for one minute that The Blues should be considered in the same company, history-wise, as their Mancunian rivals, but it is curious, going into today’s encounter, just how many parallels exist between the two clubs, and not just the shared experience of José Mourinho as manager.

Watching the Manchester derby the other night, I genuinely felt sorry for Ole Gunnar Solskjær - super-sub in his playing days at United and effectively brought in off the managerial bench in December to become, first, caretaker manager at Old Trafford and, since the end of March, permanent head coach. For a rival fan, Solskjær in his day could infuriate with his ability to be brought on by Sir Alex Ferguson late in a game and score the kind of vital goal that secured United’s imperious reputation in the 1990s and 2000s. But since Ferguson retired, that reputation has proven unmaintainable. On Wednesday night, however, the genuinely likeable, articulate and intelligent Solskjær looked crestfallen as Manchester City first broke the deadlock with Bernardo Silva’s 54th-minute strike, and then sub Leroy Sane’s low shot a few minutes later to humiliate David De Gea. It was a game that bluntly symbolised the power shift in Manchester: United, still retaining an army of vastly expensive players (Luke Shaw earning five times more in a week than a teacher of ten years' standing earns in a year...), some of whom there only by entitlement, up against a similarly enriched City line-up coached by Pep Guardiola, justifiably the most admired manager of his generation. City may have bought their way to the summit with Sheikh Mansour’s Emirati riches, but that’s the way it goes. You can no longer stand on ceremony in modern football, as United are finding to their cost.

Compare them, then, with Chelsea. Until Roman Abramovich came along in June 2003, buying Chelsea on the back of their final game of the 2002-2003 season, in which Jesper Grønkjær dramatically volleyed in to beat Liverpool 2-1, thus securing Champions League football for the following term, the club’s legacy was, to be fair, patchy. A single league title, in 1955, a couple of FA Cups and the European Cup Winners Cup twice since 1970 was all they had to offer, with a veneer of glamour generated by a celebrity following in the late 1960s and early 1970s. When away fans sing “where we you when you were shit”, I know exactly where at Stamford Bridge I was standing. Without, though, trawling over the Abramovich era in depth, Chelsea in 2019 are in a weird place: an owner rendered indifferent due to his visa problems (and contemplating offers for the club); a stadium overhaul on permanent hold; a string of successful (and some less so) but short-lived managers since 2005, with the jury out on the current one; the prospect of a UEFA-enacted transfer ban and a squad in desperate need of overhauling, including some highly-paid European stars approaching the point when the club’s policy on over-30s means that they will be frustrated in being offered a contract of longer than 12 months. Throw in the inevitable loss of a star player (Eden Hazard), and the chance that the currently injured starlet Callum Hudson-Odoi might also leave in the direction from where his head has been turned by German club interest, and you see a club that could fall apart in football terms…as well as corporate terms. The turbulence building up around Chelsea is not all that far removed from the mood in camp at Old Trafford.

So, with the fight between Tottenham, Chelsea, Arsenal and Manchester United for third and fourth spot increasingly looking like two bald men fighting over a comb, with all four dropping points as easily as they win them, with just three more fixtures left in the season, the encounter today between The Reds and The Blues, is a real head-scratcher. Chelsea, of course, have been a nightmare this season with their visits to North-West England, their fixtures with Everton and Liverpool highlighting a mental inability to play the second half with anything like the intensity of the first. But, then, you have a Manchester United that has struggled to convince ever since Solskjær was announced with crowd-pleasing intent as the club’s full-time manager at the end of March. And that includes last Sunday’s abject, 4-0 capitulation to Everton at Goodison Park.

Today’s game may just prove to be a damp squib: two beleaguered (relatively speaking) teams, drained mentally and spiritually, trying to summon the energy to win a hotly-contested Champions League spot at the arse end of a season where two other teams are outperforming everyone in just about every dimension. By contrast, go back 11 years and United and Chelsea were meeting at the Luzhniki Stadium in the 2008 Champions League final. Two English teams at the very summit of European football. One, a team with a sainted reputation in world football, the other, an arriviste outfit managed by an unlikely champion-in-contention, Avram Grant. While it may have been decided by John Terry’s unfortunate slip on the penalty spot, these teams were a credit card’s width apart in terms of talent. Today, they might have the talent, but that talent is doing little to justify such a tag.

Both teams today are managed by individuals yet to prove their case, though in fairness, the likeable Norwegian in the red corner has only had a month or so. Both, though, are painfully and obviously lacking the leadership figures that made them each a different proposition in Moscow in 2008. Then, United had Rio Ferdinand, Paul Scholes, Cristiano Ronaldo, Wayne Rooney, Edwin van der Sar and Nemanja Vidic, while Chelsea had Terry, Frank Lampard, Didier Drogba and Michael Ballack. And today? As much as I like César Azpilicueta as a right back, he has been made Chelsea’s skipper by default. He’s not a leader on the pitch, being somewhat anonymous at a time when Chelsea’s players need a kick up the backside. For Azpiliqueta, read Ashley Young in the exact same situation at United. These are, of course, isolated, individual problems out of the many more that exist for United and Chelsea. When you add them up, the great portent of today’s fixture starts to diminish. Quite a bit. Yes, it will be an encounter between a couple of prize fighters, albeit prize fighters who’ve lost their punch and with it, their fear factor. And that’s why it could be a downright let down.

In fact, whether United or Chelsea succeed in reaching that coveted fourth spot (and it’s still numerically possible for third to be reached, too), both sets of fans should be prepared for disappointment. Because whenever they play their European football next season - on a Tuesday or Wednesday, or the less illustrious Thursday night - who owns these clubs, who plays for these clubs, who runs these clubs and even who manages these clubs are all, right now big, open questions. To have one of those questions looming might be troubling, but to have all four? That’s an awful lot to have at stake at once.

Sarri seems to be the hardest word - part 3

Time's up?

Let me get this out there from the start: there is no shame losing to this particular Manchester City team. I might even claim it’s a badge of honour. But going into yesterday’s game at the Etihad, I wasn’t expecting much, as a Chelsea fan. Not that I don’t have any faith in Chelsea, even given their recent run of away results, but Pep Guardiola is currently custodian of a team that will punish anyone with elan. That doesn’t make them infallible, as they found at home to Crystal Palace before Christmas, but their results against opposition, big and small, have shown a propensity for telephone number scorelines. Which should have put Chelsea on their guard before the abject capitulation at the Etihad.

Before 4 o'clock yesterday I wasn’t even that concerned that I’d be spending the first half listening to radio commentary of City-Chelsea while driving home on the M25. I just didn’t expect to be 4-0 down by the 24th minute. At that point I came close to petulantly switching the radio off, but even then Dion Dublin, BBC 5 Live’s co-commentator with John Murray, was still of the opinion that Chelsea might be able to dam the flow of City goals and restore some pride. I was less positive: scorelines like that rarely get turned around, if ever, and if they do, you wouldn’t get this Manchester City team folding up and switching off. As they showed against Burton Albion, they are decidedly ruthless when on a killing spree. And thus they proved. 6-0.

So, hats off City, I knew you’d beat us. I just didn’t know how painfully you’d do it. Which brings me to Chelsea and Maurizio Sarri’s future. There’s an interesting comparison to make here between the two managers on the touchline yesterday at the Etihad: Guardiola has been given the time, space and resources to create this squad. Chelsea won the Premier League title in Pep’s first season at City, implausibly accelerating away from the chasing pack by Antonio Conte’s tactical switch to a wingback system that caught everyone off their guard. Meanwhile, Guardiola was rebuilding. Down the M64 at Liverpool, Jurgen Klopp was in the midst of doing much the same. Between them, they’ve had two and four years, respectively, to get their teams to where they are now. Will Sarri be afforded the same latitude?

It’s unlikely. Chelsea’s philosophy in the Abramovich era has been consistently short-termist, even if it looked like a slight change of strategy had been adopted with Sarri. If Chelsea would only come out and say that’s how they do it, we’d all accept it. Only the most naive manager would join the club in the expectation of seeing out their career there which, I suppose, is fine. The chances of another Alex Ferguson or Arsene Wenger putting in double-digit tenures at a Premier League club (or, indeed, anywhere else) are now unlikely, anyway. Again, fine, but in the case of Chelsea, there has been a distinct lag between head coach turnover and squad evolution. The elephant still in the room after yesterday’s horror show in Manchester is that the squad Sarri is playing with, or at least trying to convert to his philosophy, is still rooted in the Mourinho Mark II and Conte group of players. Change seems to be a problem for them. So yesterday’s game, plus the recent pounding from Bournemouth, should be attributed to a combination of Sarri’s unbending view that his possession-based system is the one and only, and that the players can switch off just when they need to dig in and fight. Much is said about Sarri’s lack of a Plan B, and when, yet again, you see like-for-like substitutions being made (though at least Kovačić on for Berkeley came in the 54th minute, rather than the usual 72nd…), and nothing changing in the fundamentals, you wonder if the Italian’s rigid adherence to Plan A will ever shift. Some might even admire his obstinacy, but he’s now starting to look like King Canute.

Sarri’s appointment last July was always going to be a gift to headline writers, which is why this is the third time I've blogged about Chelsea and used the generous pun you see at the top of this page (and thanks, too, to Elton John). Yep, I know it’s lazy, but the Italian is a gift that keeps on giving. His protracted appointment - delayed by Napoli, somewhat childishly, stalling his release while they onboarded former Chelsea boss Carlo Ancelotti as his replacement - was made just three weeks before the Blues’ first competitive game of the season, the Community Shield, which they lost 2-0 to Manchester City. At the time (and since) Sarri was cut some slack, the line being that it takes time to build a team, to get them to adopt a philosophy. Sarri was appointed largely because of the attractive football he’d instilled in Napoli, which enabled them to keep pace with runaway Serie A leaders Juventus. Six months on, it’s patently clear that what worked at Napoli is not working at Chelsea, what may have fitted the pace of Serie A is not fitting the Premier League.

What is most troubling is that Sarri is starting to exhibit the same truculence that Conte adopted, and that didn’t fair well for the previous Italian in charge at Chelsea. Though not as obvious as Conte became, Sarri’s current demeanour is not the kind that Mr. Abramovich and his acolytes appreciate. But before the inevitable P45 is dispatched Sarri’s way, I seriously hope that Abramovich, his de facto chief executive, Marina Granovskaia, chairman Bruce Buck and the other members of the club’s football board, David Barnard, Guy Laurence and Eugene Tenenbaum, take a good long look at the state of the team. Until yesterday, Chelsea had maintained a top four position in the league, which is probably all that could be expected at this stage of a new head coach's tune with this particular squad. And even when the wheels first fell off, against Spurs in November, they were lashed back on to record wins, including a 2-0 defeat of Manchester City at Stamford Bridge However, the bolts securing those wheels keep shearing. Yes, Chelsea remain in four competitions, but the topography of results that got them to this point is decidedly uneven, perilous even.

Next up will be Malm ö away in the Europa League on Thursday night, then a resurgent Manchester United next Monday in the FA Cup 5th Round, followed by Malmö at home in a second leg, with the run of immediate challenges ending with Manchester City, no less, in the League Cup final at Wembley. Big decisions, then, for the football board at Stamford Bridge. Fire Sarri now (and I wouldn’t expect club legend Gianfranco Zola to remain on the management team, either) and the club enters dangerously familiar territory: the final third of a season with honours on offer, but a caretaker in charge. Yes, that worked a couple of times with Guus Hiddink, Robbie Di Matteo even won the Champions League, and the toxic appointment of Rafa Benitez still netted Chelsea the Europa League trophy. But there’s only so many times Hiddink can be parachuted in, and you don’t see Zidane donning a hazmat suit to join Chelsea for the remaining four months of the season, unless there’s a desire by both him and the club to make it permanent. Plus, it’s just not going to happen, anyway.

However, all this is grist to the mill. Something has to change fundamentally at Chelsea. First up, is the relationship between head coach and the club’s football board. After technical director Michael Emenalo left for Monaco in November 2017, the link between the board and the club’s playing elements disappeared. Marina Granovskaia assumed all control over player acquisitions and divestments. The coach appears to become nothing more than a consultant in the recruitment process (although Sarri managed to persuade the club to bring in his trusted lieutenant Jorginho from Napoli, as well as - finally - Gonzalo Higuain on loan, another player with positive Sarri experience). But that has been all. Questions must also be asked about the state of a squad with access to so much academy talent, and yet no intention of using it. I’ll come back to Callum Hudson-Odoi in a moment.

The lack of true leadership on the pitch is the other major area of concern. Yesterday’s match in Manchester highlighted the absence of blood-and-guts at Chelsea. That was never the case when it had, at its core, leaders like John Terry, Frank Lampard, Didier Drogba and Petr Čech, a spine that would take the game by the scruff of its neck when it was needed. As much as I like César Azpilicueta, he’s no Terry, and having been one of Chelsea’s best performers over the last couple of seasons, has not looked as effective this term. That may be down to his captaincy (favoured over the unfavoured Gary Cahill), something that has a habit of diluting ability (once dubbed 'The Botham Effect" after the mullet-haired cricketer's powers wained after he was made England captain in the disastrous 1980 test series with the West Indies).

However, when there are players who need no motivation at all, Sarri doesn't use them. Principally I'm talking about Hudson-Odoi: the precocious 18-year-old may well still need to know his place, but his pace and strength are the very attributes Chelsea have lacked in recent performances. Sarri clearly isn’t sure about the teenager, and with Chelsea managing to ward off Bayern Munich in the transfer window, the club needs to reach agreement on what they do with him. It was almost painful to see the teenager yesterday, not even on the bench but in the seats behind the dugout reserved for squad members who travel but are not on the team sheet. Sarri’s treatment of Hudson-Odoi has been nothing short of scandalous. A player who wants to play, who can play, who can give the fans something to cheer about. And what did Sarri do, once Bayern Munich’s overtures had been conclusively (for now) rebuffed in January? Drop the player for the Bournemouth match on the grounds that he’d only played three days previously. Hudson-Odoi might as well start learning German now, because he’ll be out the transfer window as soon as it opens in the summer.

José Mourinho spent the last four months of his time at Chelsea playing Russian Roulette, almost literally. Then, he was sacked when Chelsea had plummeted from previous season’s league champions to 17th, just above the relegation zone. He was sacked in mid-December when it was still possible he could have turned things around. The Chelsea board didn’t see that as possible, and fielded then-technical director Michael Emenalo to tell the press about the “palpable discord” between manager and players. Today, Chelsea are only in sixth, on points. At any other club, that - and the fact they’re still battling on four fronts - would not set off any alarm bells. Chelsea, however, are not any other club. Sarri, or anyone else, should not think for one minute that Abramovich’s visa or business issues should be a distraction. The next few days - or even the next few hours - could prove to be another disrupting chapter in the recent history of Chelsea Football Club. Sarri would be the expected casualty, but if he does go, serious questions need to be asked about how Chelsea’s boom-and-bust cycle needs to come to an end.

Leave it mate, it ain't worth it

Despite José Mourinho being released from his employment as head coach at my football club almost three years ago, you could be forgiven for thinking that I have, in the Portuguese's own words, become a "voyeur", based on the number of times I've blogged about him since. This, you may recall, is a reference to one of his verbal spats with rival Arsène Wenger: "There are some guys who, when they are at home, have a big telescope to see what happens in other families. Wenger must be one of them – it is a sickness. He speaks, speaks, speaks about Chelsea."

Mourinho's regular mangling of the English language while projecting his reputation as football's great pantomime villain was tiresome then, and his antics continue to be tiresome now. If, then, for example, he is to be ired by Chelsea fans goading him on Saturday afternoon at the end of the entertainingly brusque 2-2 draw with Manchester United, then after more than a decade and a half in the English game he is clearly naive about the nature of football fans in this country (Rafa Benitez is still branded a "fat Spanish waiter" at Stamford Bridge, despite landing Chelsea a Europa League title...). Contrast, then, the standing ovation afforded United midfielder Juan Mata as he was substituted on Saturday. If you want respect, José, just look at that, even considering that the diminutive Spaniard had almost beheaded compatriot César Azpilicueta with a wayward tackle earlier in the game.

There's little shying away from the fact that Mourinho had a right to be a little peeved following Ross Barkley's injury time equaliser, when over-exuberant Chelsea technical coach Marco Ianni leapt from the dugout to celebrate, fist-pumping past the United coach once, then twice. Mourinho's reaction was, actually, quite funny: his eyes lighting up at the sight of Ianni coming back for a second bite of goading reminded me of Animal from the Muppets.

Mourinho's evacuation of his seat was equally impressive - he's four years older than me, and yet he was up and out of his chair and after Ianni like a coiled spring. It takes me a full five minutes just to get off the sofa. Ianni's behaviour was, though, out of order: you just can't do that sort of thing. He can expect sanction from both the FA and his club. Punishing Mourinho's reaction would be harsh. If any member of the Manchester United party should get a slap on the wrist for their involvement in the melee it's the combustible Ashley Young who sprinted a full 30 yards to get stuck into something that was none of his business. But, then, that's Young for you - he'd been spoiling for a fight of some kind all afternoon.

Like most outbreaks of handbags at a football match, it was all over as fast as it had begun. Someone had clearly said, probably in Portuguese, "leave it bruv, it ain't worth it", and Mourinho returned to his luxurious perch on the United bench. And that was then the mood turned really sour. "Fuck off Mourinho", sang the Matthew Harding Stand (two days before the 22nd anniversary of the Chelsea benefactor's untimely death in a helicopter crash), which inevitably goaded Mourinho further. At the final whistle, he strode purposely towards the United fans in the south-east corner of Stamford Bridge, stopping while still well in front of the East Stand, where he pranced back towards the tunnel waving three fingers in the air, occasionally stopping to point at the ground. Yes, José, we got the message, and we still don't care.

You don't 'command' respect from your former faithful. No one at Stamford Bridge needs a three-fingered reminder of the league titles Mourinho won for Chelsea, including the club's first in 50 years. Respect is something earned, not demanded. We loved Mourinho when he was at the club, and even forgave most of the eccentricities that wound up rival fans and governing bodies alike. Perhaps, though, our patience was tested too far by that 18-week period in 2015 when Chelsea went from reigning champions on the opening day of the season to one place above the relegation zone in mid-December. It was all rather baffling, how the champions could have found themselves in free-fall in the immediate next season. But, then, as we've seen, there's a Mourinho pattern. And given the theory that he'd always wanted to be the Manchester United manager - even when there wasn't a vacancy - there's still the lingering suspicion that in those final four months of 2015 it was Mourinho's plan to get himself fired, a challenge which seems more attainable at Chelsea than most others. Oddly, even in the aftermath of that period, Chelsea fans were reluctant to blame Mourinho. We were just baffled. So we cut him some slack and moved on. Mourinho, it would appear, hasn't. Even if the Harding end's chanting on Saturday was provocation on top of provocation, Mourinho's three fingers were just a demonstration of the thin skin that clads his body, and the petulance which makes him hard to like as a human being, let alone as the divisive manager of a football club.

The Monday Moan is back, back, BACK!

Well, I say "the Monday Moan" and "is back", but to clarify, this Monday morning, all is well at Chelsea Football Club. The time when my Monday Moans were a weekly occurrence date back to that painful period between 8 August and 17 December in 2015 when my previous blog involuntarily recorded Chelsea's actual, physical, literal, visible decline, from defending league champions to one place above relegation. And, you guessed it, you know why the Moan has been resurrected now.

Manchester United are not, as yet, in danger of relegation and I very much doubt they ever will be. But the toxicity José Mourinho is currently creating around the club is absurdly identical to that he generated in his final months at Chelsea, which even kamikaze pilots would have regarded as a reckless trajectory. But it wasn’t just at Chelsea: look at how things fell apart at Real Madrid, when the club’s galacticos rejected Mourinho’s defensive tactics. When he left, and Zinedine Zidane took over, Madrid went on to win three Champions League titles. Funny that. Oh, and who is now being rumoured to be of interest in Manchester?

Literally everyone (OK, an exaggeration, but almost) said it would happen like this: pundits and saloon bar sages alike predicted that José would repeat the three-year cycle he's rolled through seemingly everywhere else - arrive, rebuild, win something, implode - after he'd spent most of his time immediately post-Chelsea positioning himself to be United’s next manager (a job, at the time, already filled by the hapless Louis van Gaal). But once he’d installed himself and his usual entourage of assistants at Old Trafford, hardly anyone expected things to go any differently to that which played out so vividly at Chelsea.

Seeing Mourinho go to Manchester United was like watching some celebrity car crash of a marriage - a tabloid bad boy and a TOWIE bimbo getting jiggy with it on Big Brother, followed by some lovey-dovey appearances together on The Graham Norton Show before it all goes badly wrong with a drunken shouting match outside China Whites. That’s where things stand now between Mourinho and - not just Paul Pogba, but mainly - several players he’s publicly vilified.

Clearly, though, the focus is on the battle of wills between Mourinho and the £89 million Pogba, a player the manager had been reluctant to take on in the first place, and is now making that abundantly clear. Pogba, for his part, hasn’t helped with his own attitude: getting caught larking about on Instagram while your side is going out of the League Cup to lower league opposition is not conducive, especially with a manager as capricious as Mourinho. Pogba’s public criticisms of United performances, such as the 1-1 draw with Wolves, have been either naive or unnecessarily (and riskily) antagonistic. No wonder Mourinho took the captaincy off him. However, left back Luke Shaw’s own seething assessment of United’s performance the other day against West Ham is another sign of the growing dissent within the Manchester United camp that is tearing the club apart. Shaw, himself, has been criticised by Mourinho, so for him to have a pop back appears to be particularly open war-like. Add to the list Anthony Martial, of whom Mourinho criticised for being “not very, very focused on his defensive duties”, and Alexis Sánchez, who was given a dressing down in front of the entire United Squad. In the same team meeting Mourinho laid into the saintly Juan Mata, the player he’d shipped off to United when Chelsea manager (much to the fans’ displeasure), whose future looked bleek when Mourinho followed him there, but whose worth to the Portuguese has, though, been one of the soothing ointments to his time as United boss. Not surprisingly, the smart, intelligent Mata has - along with fellow Chelsea emigré Nemanja Matic - been running diplomacy in the fractured dressing room, trying to sew unity for the sake of the team’s future, though not necessarily for the manager’s future.

Manchester United maintains that Mourinho’s job is not in danger, and on paper it would be absurd for any club to sack a manager after just seven league games, let alone Manchester United (not a sacking club) getting rid of a manager as big as Mourinho. But is Mourinho that big? The Special One clearly has had it - and loves reminding everyone of what ‘it’ is - but the build-win-implode cycle surely now has been found out. What club would, now, be mad enough to bet on the certainty of Mourinho repeating the pattern again if they took him on? And given United’s normal reluctance to make any changes until the end of a season, how bad do things need to get before they are forced into the decision Chelsea had to make on 17 December 2015, having lost nine of 16 Premier League matches, and generating “palpable discord” with his players.

One big difference between then and now was that there weren’t any Chelsea players speaking so brazenly in public. Diego Costa’s flounce with a warm-up bib against Spurs at the end of the November that year was the first real sign of the discord Michael Emenalo would speak of three weeks later. Now, the concerns - mostly private but some less so - of United’s players are becoming known. Mourinho and his assistant managers have a Herculean task ahead of them to bring harmony to this group. If they don’t, it will only get worse, as will the results. And then, Manchester United may just be forced into making an unprecedented decision, one we Chelsea fans have grown used to, but to the Old Trafford faithful, only now getting used to life without Alex Ferguson, such a rupture mid-season would be unthinkable (“nonsense” according to the club). For now, it is, but let’s see what happens come the end of this week.

Do you know the way to sack José?

I'm not even considering the fact that Tottenham beat Manchester United 3-0 at Old Trafford last night, nor even how they did it. Sorry, Spuds fans, this one's not about you. José Mourinho made sure of that. It wasn’t necessarily about how Manchester United lost at home, either. It is - because it always is - all about José.

Turning up half an hour early for his press conference the other day only to stick around long enough to deliver a handful of surly answers; then last night, almost theatrically applauding the home fans after the match was over, lapping up their adulation as if what had happened in the previous 90 minutes or so hadn’t mattered one bit; and then another post-match presser in which The Sulky One asked of the assembled [on time] journalists: "What was the score?" before angrily holding up three fingers and asking "What is this also? Three Premierships I have won, more Premierships than the other 19 managers put together. Me three, them two," followed by "Respect, respect, respect", repeated as he made his exit.

The fact is, if José wants respect, he’s got to show some himself. On Sunday Genovese fans maintained silence for the first 43 minutes of Genoa's home fixture to Empoli, one minute for every victim of the Morandi bridge collapse. Now that is respect. Respect is earned or deserved, not petulantly demanded from journalists asking legitimate questions about how Manchester United managed to lose at their supposed home fortress to one of the Top 6 by a three-goal margin. Yes, it's only three games into the season, and a season's results can never be gauged over just 270 minutes of football at the sunburned end of the term, but it's worth pointing out that in Mourinho’s first season at Chelsea the team conceded just 15 league goals all season. Whether by parking the bus or not, Chelsea were ultra-disciplined at the back, and ultra-watertight. Manchester United are already halfway towards that goal record, and we're not yet out of August.

Whatever it is causing Manchester United to be so poor, the root lies with Mourinho. Once again, he has adopted the truculent manner that led to "palpable discord" between him and his Chelsea players in that disastrous, four-month nosedive in defence of the 2014-15 Premier League title. It left Chelsea in 17th place at the point of Mourinho's departure...ironically, following another defeat to Tottenham. That was when Third Season Syndrome became a thing: it was the realisation that in Season 1 he builds, Season 2 he achieves and in Season 3 it all falls apart. Well, this is a blockbuster Netflix would probably pass over. Because Season 2’s pattern was ignored, mainly by the supposedly classless Manchester City.

Mourinho’s demeanour last night as he boorishly lectured journalists was nothing new. This wasn’t a sudden, Keeganesque implosion, one where sympathy might be afforded Mourinho’s mental state. No, because this is José. When he first appeared on these shores in 2004 to declare himself a "special one", the press went giddy. Sports desks ordered extra notepads from stationery departments at the lip-smacking prospect of a new and highly quotable Clough, funded by Roman Abramovich’s largesse, and with success with Porto behind him to underwrite the hype. And so he delivered Chelsea’s first league title in 50 years, and then another. Buying the league? Nah. We loved him, and sang ebulliently from the Stamford Bridge stands, “José Mourinho! José Mourinho!”. And then, within a few weeks of The Third Season starting, he was gone. One indifferent performance in the Champions League, and mutterings of discontent over Avram Grant’s role as Director of Football, and club and manager parted company.

The cycle was in full effect, and thus it would repeat itself at Internazionale and Real Madrid, coming back to Chelsea in what might seem now like an ill-fated marriage of convenience in 2013. But this was no Burton and Taylor giving it yet another go: the suspicion was always that José coveted the-then unavailable Manchester United job. So Chelsea just had to do. And so he dutifully added another Premier League title before it all went horribly wrong on the opening day of the 2015-16 season, and José jumped up and down like a enraged, tanned Basil Fawlty as Dr. Eva Carneiro and her assistant ran onto the pitch to attend the felled Eden Hazard. This was just 8 August. And it set the tone for the next four months, with Mourinho publically demoting Carneiro, and team morale disappearing before our very eyes. Week after week, the Mourinho mood worsened, some genuinely fearing for his mental state as press conferences and post-match interviews became increasingly monosyllabic. All leading up to the inevitable parting of the ways and Michael Emenalo's extraordinary admission of discord between manager and players. On that occasion there was suspicion that Mourinho had engineered the whole thing to get himself out of his Chelsea contract and onto the radar of Manchester United's HR department (despite there being no vacancy to fit his experience and talents).    The idea of Mourinho attempting 'suicide by cop' by appearing to invite Roman Abrmovich to fire him might seem extreme, but if there's one thing we know about José, there are no rules for him to follow. There are times when everything about him seems staged and contrived; even his march last night to the Stretford End looked rehearsed, at least in his mind, to calculate maximum effect when he faced the press afterwards.

There was a time when we believed that all of this egomaniacal behaviour was a distraction, that by pulling the supertrooper onto him, Mourinho would deflect attention away from his players. But if there's one thing we took out of that dismal four months in 2015, his actions did everything but. He was, by all accounts, a miserable sod to be around, and that appears to have replicated itself over the summer at United. Even if he managed, miraculously, to get Paul Pogba onside, that scowl and the apparently demeaning comments about some of his players will have been felt throughout the squad.

So, three games in to this season and we have already reached the level of petulance that provided the weekly narrative of those final few months of Mourinho’s time at Chelsea. Chelsea’s PR people must have needed counselling during that period and I can see United’s media team going in the same direction. Surely Manchester United must be alerted to the warning signs? Could he be sacked sooner than later? Logic says he won't go just yet: even in this insane world of football, three games - one of which won - does not lead to dismissal. But the look on executive vice chairman Ed Woodward's face at the final whistle yesterday was not one of stoic reflection. Even if, as the Daily Mail has revealed today, he and Mourinho had a "positive" conversation, drawing on United's first-half performance, rather than its second-half collapse, there surely must be those in the Old Trafford board room wondering whether history is repeating itself before their very eyes, and not necessarily in the best way, either...