You can't win anything with kids

It is, of course, too soon to make even an educated guess as to how the 2019-2020 football season will ultimately pan out for anyone, let alone Chelsea, whose competitive record since the season began currently stands at Played 6, Won 2, Drawn 3, Lost 1 with not a clean sheet between them. But at risk of putting an over-positive spin on things, such a capricious start to Frank Lampard's tenure as the club's head coach belies what will no doubt become the core narrative of the Blues' season to come: kids.

Now, the likes of Tammy Abraham, Mason Mount, Fikayo Tomori and Christian Pulisic, plus Reece James, Callum Hudson-Odoi and Ruben Loftus-Cheek, when they are released from injury, are hardly children, at ages ranging from 18 to 23. But in the recent history of Chelsea Football Club, that Abraham is currently the Premier League's top scorer, that Mason Mount has just made his senior England debut, and on Saturday Tomori scored an early contender for goal of the season, is testament to the undoubted sprinkling of youthful stardust that has transformed the mood around the club like stormy weather and overcast skies being replaced by bright sunshine and a cloud-free vista. The football is still capricious: Saturday's 5-2 win over Wolves is not without the recognition that Chelsea still couldn't keep a clean sheet, despite Abraham breaking Eden Hazard's record for becoming the youngest Chelsea player to score a league hat-trick as well as becoming the first English player to score three for Chelsea since Lampard himself eight years ago.

There are more milestones to come, more records to be broken. The 11 league goals scored so far between Abraham, Mount and Tomori, five games in, have already beaten the previous best record of academy graduates (six scored by just Loftus-Cheek in the entire 2018-19 season), marking a first since Roman Abramovich bought the club in 2003. That, alone, is a telling set of stats, even if they are a reflection of the situation the club finds itself in, unable to do the thing they've done most seasons under the Russian oligarch's ownership, and simply gone out and bought players. Thanks to the two-window FIFA transfer ban, the youngsters are getting match time that would have never been possible under any of Lampard's predecessors, a frustration that first found oxygen under José Mourinho, but manifested itself more prevalently under the progressively petulant reign of Antonio Conte, and more dangerously, under the stubborn Maurizio Sarri, whose eventual inclusion of Hudson-Odoi and Loftus-Cheek came across as something he was coerced into.

We have been there before, of course. The promise of youngsters like Jon Harley, Ryan Bertrand, Josh McEachran and Nathan Aké, joining Chelsea Academy alumni like Venables, Greaves, Bonetti, Osgood, Harris and, latterly, Terry, in breaking through into the senior squad and on to greatness is a well-wrought saga. To date, only John Terry in the club's modern era has gone on to see out his career at the club he joined as a schoolboy. That, though, is the romantic view of youth. Football is a serious business, not a careers advisory service, so the expectation of Academy products breaking into the senior team has been somewhat naive in the era of mega-money transfers for players from the European and South American elites. Even when the Chelsea youth squads train in a separate part of the club's Cobham training ground as the senior team, it has often sounded like they could be in a separate part of the country, for all the good it's offered (some weeks back the Daily Telegraph reported that Sarri didn't watch a single youth training session or attend any under-23 games during his year in charge, and once remained in his Cobham office while a critical youth championship game was going on barely 50 yards away).

Lampard's appointment as head coach in July may have appeared like a compromise, in the absence/reluctance of more experienced candidates for the job, but his open embrace of youth, which has already seen Academy players taking part in senior squad training sessions, is bringing a degree of feelgood back to the club. Even if defence continues to be a major worry, the goals-per-game from Abraham in particular is a genuine cause for celebration, even if the reality is that Chelsea this season are not expected to end it that high up the Premier League table, or progress in the Champions League, a campaign which commences tomorrow night against Valencia. But there is an acceptance - for now - that this will be a fallow year that, unless things go dramatically badly, will have us see homegrown talent putting smiles on faces at Stamford Bridge, something that was absent for much of last season and patches of the previous one.

Even more pleasing is that in these first few weeks youngsters have been going some way to entertainingly disprove Alan Hansen's infamous remark on Match Of The Day that "you can't win anything with kids" after Sir Alex Ferguson's then-young Manchester United side lost 3-1 to Aston Villa on the opening day of the 1995-96 season. United later went on to do the League and Cup double with that very same team, one whose average age was 26 years and 137 days. Curiously, only Chelsea has since won the league title with a younger squad - a side in 2005 featuring Lampard himself, Terry and Joe Cole with an average age of 25 years and 312 days. Perhaps you can win things with kids. Time, this season at Chelsea, will only tell.

Frankie's back in town...

Picture: Chelsea FC

Finally. Frank Lampard is back. Chelsea Football Club’s all-time record goal scorer and now its 12th manager in 16 years. "One of the greatest players in our history during his long and illustrious career returns to Stamford Bridge having signed a three-year contract," trilled the club website. Whether he sees out those three years remains to be seen. But certainly at the signing of the managerial nuptials, ex-player and club renewed their vows: "Frank possesses fantastic knowledge and understanding of the club and last season, he demonstrated he is one of the most talented young coaches in the game," gushed Chelsea director Marina Granovskaia in a statement. "After 13 years with us as a player, where he became a club legend and our record goalscorer, we believe this is the perfect time for him to return and are delighted he has done so. We will do everything we can to ensure he has all the support required to be a huge success." No pressure, then.

Never has Chelsea appointed a manager (sorry, "head coach") with so much expectation on his shoulders. Or as much doubt. Twitter, that great touchstone of our time, was predictably binary on the news this morning. Comments from both Chelsea fans and the indifferent were split between the "It's too soon, I hope it doesn't end in tears" view and the "Welcome back Frank - you’re going to be a blinder" (though this being Twitter "your" was often the frequent spelling). Lampard is, at the end of the day, a big boy, and an intelligent one at that. Having seen ten managers come and go during his playing career at Chelsea, he will have seen for himself just how fast the revolving door ejects the dismissed and the failed. He will know what managing Roman Abramovich’s football team is all about, risks and all. But don’t forget, though, it’s a huge gamble for both parties.

Lampard’s appointment, delayed by yesterday's Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp outages (oh, how modern) comes after a month of speculation, rumour and conjecture. Will he? Would he? Would they? Why would they? The former midfielder is stepping into a lion's den only the bravest would enter, taking on only his second job in club management in only his second season in management itself. That first season, at Derby County, left the neutral (or, perhaps, the unromantic) unsure of whether Lampard has the chops...yet. But did Ruud Gullit and Gianluca Vialli have the chops when cuddly Ken Bates promoted them from the playing staff to become managers, winning the FA and League cups respectively? Now, granted, they didn’t last long, either, but longevity in post hasn’t  been a tradition at Chelsea for generations. In fact, in the Abramovich era, longevity probably hasn’t even entered the lexicon, just as long as the manager of the moment delivers Champions League football and maintains a strong challenge on the Premier League title. Even then, that’s not necessarily a guarantee of survival. Just ask Carlo Ancellotti, hired as the model of European managerial excellence, who won the league and cup double in his first season at Chelsea, but only achieved a second place domestically in his second and was fired in a corridor at Goodison Park after the final game of the season.

It is believed that Lampard has received assurances from Abramovich that he will be given time. That might sound empty, but with the club having to accept the two-window FIFA transfer ban, as well as the inevitable loss of Eden Hazard, such assurance represents tacit acceptance that it's time to live within means and make do. Not that with a squad largely unchanged from that which won the Premier League title under Antonio Conte just two seasons ago, plus the wealth of youth talent at its disposal, 'making do' will be a particular hardship. But it won't be plain sailing, either. For a start, Lampard will need to win over the core of the senior players. Coming in as a club legend might help, but Chelsea does have some dead wood in its midst. And the ban means that players like David Luiz and Willian, who'd otherwise offered a choice between a one-year contract (being over 30) and the door, need to be harnessed for what they can still bring. If they can.

Clearly, though, the big opportunity for Lampard is to score a few PR points with the home fans by playing Chelsea's youth prospects. Few, beyond Ruben Loftus-Cheek and Callum Hudson-Odoi, before they were injured towards the end of last season, have had a chance at the club. Chelsea's loan system has looked more like an exercise in husbandry, as the likes of Mason Mount, Fikayo Tomori and Tammy Abraham have been farmed out. Clearly, though, in the case of Mount and Tomori, their time under Lampard at Derby will serve them well. As will the arrival of Jody Morris, Lampard's assistant at Derby, who was drawn from the Chelsea academy with an impressive record. That record, by the way, should also be shared by Joe Edwards,  the 32-year-old youth coach at Chelsea who has played an unsung role in the incredible haul of trophies the club's academy teams have netted in recent years. Lampard's apparent appointment of Edwards to his coaching team is the clearest indication yet that the youth will get their turn. We shouldn't forget, either, that Lampard will also have at his disposal Christian Pulisic, the 20-year-old American "soccer sensation" bought from Borussia Dortmund in January for £58 million, who might well go some way to plug the considerable gap vacated by Hazard.

In his first comments as the new Chelsea manager, Lampard has at least given his younger charges the hope that, finally, they will get their chance at the club. "The path from the academy to the first team is important," the Evening Standard reports him as saying. "I will always have an eye on the academy. I was that young player a very long time ago and the one thing you want is the feeling that the road which divides the academy to the main building is a road you can cross. It has to be there for you. And I think that does come from the top. If young players are performing and they deserve it on merit, then they will be coming to train with us." Here is an oblique reference to rumours that Lampard is planning to integrate the first team with the club's Under-23 set-up, or at least remove some of the clear barriers that separated them (Maurizio Sarri is alleged to have not seen a single youth match during his sole season as club head coach).

"There is a lot of hard work for [the youth players] to do," Lampard added. "I don’t want it to look like an easy road. It is very tough, but I want to try and help them. I'm excited because playing here for so many years, seeing the work put into the academy and on all fronts, from the top, the investment into it and the desire to see it succeed, on the ground, the coaching staff, the people working in the academy trying to bring players through to the first team.

Speaking about Mount and Tomori in particular, Lampard cites their attitude. "You could see they had come through the academy here in how they held themselves, how they trained, their manners off the pitch. That’s what I want to see. I want to dangle the carrot. Can you work hard? Can you compete? Can you get in the team?".

There was a time, several years ago, when a young Frank Lampard had doubts cast over his prospects as a player. Famously, his father, Frank Sr., would drill him at West Ham's training ground, keeping him out after everyone else had gone back to the changing rooms. As a player, he had to put up with a lot, including the ludicrous "Fat Frank" jibes from opposition fans. One thing, though that made him stand out as a player and contributed to his record 221 goals for the club, was his attitude. Lampard has always come across as being somewhat driven, and it's what made him become such an integral part of that title-winning spine of players - along with Petr Čech (also now back at the club), John Terry and Didier Drogba - that made Chelsea an exciting delight to watch. That excitement disappeared in the denouements of Mourinho and Conte's tenures, and failed to even register under Sarri, even if the Italian managed to win both the Europa League and third place in the Premier League.

I know plenty of rival fans still regard Chelsea as arriviste. That's their prerogative. The unwritten rule is that you cheer on your side and boo everyone else. I'm always amused by the "where were you when you were shit?" taunts that come from the away end at most games at Stamford Bridge. Because I always reply, "right here!" (though technically I was right where they are, given that I stood in the Shed End when I first started going to games at the Bridge). Chelsea has come a long way since then, but Lampard today is benefitting from a revolution that began when Glenn Hoddle was poached from the newly promoted Swindon Town. In turn, he attracted bigger international names like Gullit, who in turn attracted Vialli (fresh from lifting the European Cup as Juventus skipper) and Gianfranco Zola. Admittedly, these players were reaching the end of their playing careers, but fans glossed over their ages and bought into the new glamour, finally abandoning the era of Mickey Droy and Ron Harris, and a perpetual lurching between divisions in front of pitiful crowds at home.

While the peak of Hoddle's achievement may have been a Cup Winner's Cup run in 1995 (earned on the back of that 4-0 tonking by Manchester United in the '94 FA Cup Final...), Gullit, his successor, took Chelsea back to Wembley in 1997 and the club's first major honours since a single league title in 1951. 22 years on, and with the not insignificant acquisition of the club by Abramovich, Chelsea can claim one Champions League, two Europa League, five Premier League, seven FA Cup and four League Cup titles in the modern era. Given that haul, Chelsea could, in a way, afford a fallow season or two if it gives a young, inexperienced but locally adored manager like Lampard the space to build a squad based on youthful talent. Yes, we crave success, and even under Mourinho were prepared to sacrifice style for moribund substance, but we also want entertainment. It’s what, ultimately, gets us out in all weathers on a Saturday afternoon rather than traipsing around shopping centres.

Both Gullit and Roberto Di Matteo - scorer of that 47th-second goal at Wembley in '97 - both believe that Lampard can thrive as Chelsea manager, with the Dutchman saying that his lack of experience should not be the disadvantage it might at first appear: "Look, he has done nothing yet as a coach," Gullit told Sky Sports. "[But] they gave me this opportunity as well and we won, so that [inexperience] has nothing to do with it." Di Matteo, Lampard's manager at Chelsea when they won the Champions League and FA Cup in 2012, says no one can predict outright whether the new head coach will succeed, but he'll never know unless he tries. "It's a great fit, but whether it's right now or not, only time can tell," the Italian told Sky. "You can't say it's too early, you have to give people a chance. He's got all the tools and it will make a lot of people happy if he is the next manager." And there's the key: "It will make a lot of people happy". Modern football, and certainly Chelsea, doesn’t do a great deal in this department. Chelsea has elicited plenty of WTF moments in recent years, with ill-advised appointments such as André Villas-Boas, Luis Filipe Scolari and Rafa Benitez (even if he landed the Europa League, his stock at Stamford Bridge was ocean-deep to begin with).

Not every ex-Chelsea name, however, is comfortable with Lampard becoming the boss so soon in his career. Former captain Dennis Wise told Sky Sports that the risks are significant: "From a playing point of view, from a personal point of view, everyone loves [Frank] at Chelsea. But he hasn’t been long in coaching and neither has Jody [Morris] so it slightly worries me a little bit, but if they get it I wish them all the luck, both of them. It’s going to be tough for him but fingers crossed they do the right thing for Chelsea and do well." This from Wise might be the glowing endorsement it looks. But he has a point: "At the end of the day, Chelsea are a Champions League team, they want to finish in the top four," he told Sky. "I think as Chelsea fans you want to be competing at the highest level and winning trophies."

Time will, of course, tell. Lampard certainly has his work cut out, whether it is repositioning N'Golo Kanté back into the seat of midfield, where he should have been last season, getting the best out of the ageing likes of Giroud, Pedro and Willian, integrating Pusilic and the academy stars while, hopefully, aiding the recoveries of Hudson-Odoi and Loftus-Cheek, while at the same time addressing the deficiencies that gave Sarri so much doubt about their viability. Taking the helicopter view, and with a pinch of optimism, these are, actually, quite exciting times at Chelsea. A little different, I grant you, but exciting none the less.

Glad it's all over?

Picture: Twitter/Chelsea FC

So that's it. Barring the Women's World Cup and the UEFA Nations League (no, me neither...), the European Under-21 Championship and the Africa Cup Of Nations, that's football over for another season. Two months off, for those of us who worship at the altar of The Beautiful Game™. For the players not involved in such meagre summer nibbles, it's a few weeks on the beach before pre-season and the whole circus gets going again.

However, before Season 2018-19 turns to dust, some reflection. The general assessment of the Premier League is that the right team - Manchester City - won it. Wherever you stand on clubs funded by bottomless riches, Pep Guardiola's side presented a brand of football that came as close to perfection as you could hope to see. I take some pride in that Chelsea were one of the few teams to beat City in the league (2-0 at Stamford Bridge in December), and that they took the Mancunians to a penalty shootout in the League Cup final. We'll gloss over the 6-0 spanking City gave us in February at the Etihad.

City's awesomeness notwithstanding, this has not been a vintage domestic season. Liverpool, bless them, did a decent job keeping up with their north-western rivals, but the chasing pack - in final order,  Chelsea, Tottenham, Arsenal and Manchester United - appeared at times to be competing with all the dedication of two bald men fighting over a comb. Just imagine if all six teams had really made a go of it? Perhaps there was mitigation: Spurs yet to establish a winning rhythm with their impressive new stadium (or, alternatively, it all went Spursy again); Arsenal still adjusting to life after Arsène Wenger; Manchester United readjusting to life after their frustrating flirtation with José Mourinho, and then finding that turning to a favoured son may not be the answer, either.

Which brings me to Chelsea. Towards the end of the previous season, as it was clear things were turning sour between the club and Antonio Conte, and that yet another managerial departure was inevitable, few knew what lay in store with Napoli's Maurizio Sarri touted as the next Italian in the hotseat at the Bridge. Those plugged into the Italian football jungle drums were hearing exciting things about the unprepossessing Neopolitan, who'd gone from commercial banker to football manager in the lower leagues of Tuscan football, to all of a sudden bringing a brand of football to Napoli that, while not successfully tipping Juventus off the top of Serie A, ran the Turinese giants close. So, building on a tradition of managerial gambles (Villas-Boas, Scolari and even the premature appointments of Vialli and di Matteo come to mind) Chelsea, with their owner somewhat preoccupied with visa wrangles in the UK, punted for the 60-year-old Sarri. If I skip forward a year, on paper you can't argue with third place behind City and Liverpool in the league, a Wembley final and, now, winners of the Europa League. By any token of success, Chelsea have done well this season. It's just that there's not a lot of celebration going on.

Something about Sarri just hasn't connected with the fanbase. Even Conte, when he was starting to sulk, was still routinely serenaded by the faithful singing "Antonio! Antonio! Antonio!". Notably, no such thing with "Maurizio!", a name with an identical syllabic scan. I've never been a fan of fan power: just because we have an elevated view from our seat doesn't give us any authority over a coach who works with his players every single day. What arrogance do we have to suggest that a professional manager knows less than us? On Callum Hudson-Odoi, Sarri was, in principle, quite correct in his assessment that, pre-injury, the teenager had a lot to learn about his game, especially in the defensive phase. Similarly, Ruben Loftus-Cheek, whose muscularly elegant attacking play is the kind that every football fan wants to see, especially from homegrown player, but whose physical rigour over the course of 90 minutes has been guilty of fading too soon. Surely, though, these are things you work on? Surely, there is more upside than down that these players can offer you? By the time they did start to play regularly, it was clear that Sarri was playing them reluctantly and in response to fan power. Sadly, their seasons ended too soon to injury. I hope Sarri didn't feel vindicated.

And then there were the infuriating, zero-sum substitutions: Berkley on for Kovaacic, Kovacic on for Berkley; Jorginho played regardless, the world's best holding midfielder, N'Golo Kante, pushed out to the right of the diamond; Gonzalo Higuain played up front on a Sunday in spite of Olivier Giroud's Thursday night prowess; worse, still, Eden Hazard pushed into the False 9 position in spite of both Higuain and Giroud being available recognised centre forwards. Again, Sarri knew best, or at least professed to knowing best. At risk of sounding a tad mercenary, however, that's not what we fork out hundreds of pounds a season to watch. We want to see the best being the best at what they do. Perhaps if we'd seen fewer of the results like the 6-0 defeat by City or 4-0 away drubbing by Bournemouth, not to mention the niggly two-goal defeats at Liverpool and Everton respectively, attitudes may have been better. Actually, when you look at Chelsea's Premier League performance in totality this season, the results aren't all that bad: Won 21, Drawn 9, Lost 8, Goals for 63, Goals against 39, and 72 points in total. But then compare that with the gulf between Chelsea and Liverpool and City above them - goal differences of +67 for Liverpool and a final points total of 97, and +78 and 98 points for City.

All of which means next season is going to be a tough fight for Chelsea to get back on level terms with their more successful rivals this term. Which begs two questions: how will they fare without Sarri, to be confirmed any day now as the new boss at Juventus (following an "amicable" agreement with the Chelsea hierarchy to move on)? And how will they fare without Eden Hazard, surely to finally get his move to Real Madrid this month, one that most Chelsea fans, I would contest, are respectfully at peace with after seven seasons at the club.

To the first question, I'm sure Chelsea will do fine after Sarri, just as they've been fine following each of the last fifteen managers who've gone after relatively short tenures during the Roman Abramovich era. Of course, there is the almost certain likelihood that whomever takes over will have to contend with the FIFA transfer ban, but then if that means that the club relies on its own resources for a bit, and bloods in some of the myriad youth players scattered throughout the lands as loanees, then maybe the club will get to see what fan loyalty really is about. Sometimes crowd pleasing starts at home. The big question, however, is who gets to manage them, and here's where stomachs begin to cramp up. The appointment of Frank Lampard to run a squad containing homegrown youth would be very attractive to the romantic at heart. But just as no Chelsea fan - and I mean, no Chelsea fan - would ever want to see Gianfranco Zola take the top job, in case he screws up and sullies his legend status at the club, there's a similar squeamishness about Lamps taking on a historically risky job just a single season into his managerial career. No one will deny that Frank is one of the brightest players ever to have graced the game, and will have been applying himself as Derby County manager with customary maturity, but do we want to see one of the greatest players in the blue shirt chewed up and spat out by Chelsea so soon in his managerial career?

Picture: Twitter/Chelsea FC

And, then, Hazard. Resistance to hype might prevent the diminutive Belgian from being favourably compared to Lionel Messi and that ageing showboater Cristiano Ronaldo, but Hazard sometimes does defy the eyes. Sure, there have been plenty of games when he has been demonstrably below par, as if he gets to pick and choose when he turns it up to 11 and when he just ticks over, but just as it has been a privilege to have seen the aforementioned Zola play football, the same applies to Hazard. If he does move on - and who would begrudge him if he did at the age of 28 - we will have seen the sort of mercurial talent that, normally, only gets to play for European club royalty. So the next Chelsea manager will have the inconsiderable challenge of filling an unfillable void. 20-year-old American, Christian Pulisic, might well be that stopgap, though little, really, is known of him, apart from what can be gleaned from his unveiling at Chelsea, in which few believed that he was, actually, 20. Remarkable maturity off the pitch, so let's see what he offers on it.

Every new season brings hope, adventure and expectation, and even with Chelsea's challenges due to the two-window transfer ban (which, despite ongoing appeals, seems unlikely to be revoked) and yet another change of manager, the prospect of young players coming into the squad, and a few dead weeds disappearing, means that when that first August weekend of the new season comes around, there will be a wholesale sense of change at Stamford Bridge that hasn't been there for many an opening weekend. The coming days will, I suspect, be key to that. But perhaps, though, a little holiday from football might do us all some good.

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.

Maurizio Sarri: who's fooling who?

And so a new month rolls around and with it, April Fool's Day. I trust everyone has been having fun enjoying all the pranks. And no, that front page headline you read about Theresa May's government about to collapse wasn't another one.

Neil Warnock, the beleaguered Cardiff City manager, might, on the other hand, argue that April Fools Day arrived a few hours early, as his relegation-threatened side - one which has been fighting against the odds following the morale-sapping Emiliano Sala tragedy - lost to Chelsea yesterday, after the visitors came from behind with a clearly offside César Azpilicueta equaliser, then a Ruben Loftus-Cheek header that followed an incident in which Antonio Rüdiger should have seen red for bringing down striker Kenneth Zohore when through on goal.

As a whole, Chelsea's winning performance stank. I know that's supposed to be the mark of champions, winning despite the odds, but when you get to half time and wished it was the 90-minute mark, having seen nothing to feel in any way accomplished (and paying Sky £8.99 for the pay-per-view privilege), you know you're watching a dreadful game. Cardiff, to be fair, offered little, and sympathy towards Warnock's complaints about yesterday's officials notwithstanding, their looming relegation is sadly inevitable. That doesn't, though, excuse the awful errors of referee Craig Pawson and his assistants. Azpiliqueta and Rüdiger's good fortune masked Chelsea's poor display yesterday, one for which head coach Maurizio Sarri needs to share the blame.

When you win and your supporters still boo you, something must be up. Chants of "We want Sarri out" and "You don't know what you're doing" might be largely reactive, but even the most fickle football fan doesn't call for the manager's head without good reason. Even when Antonio Conte was looking like he was attempting 'death by cop' last season, destroying any value in Diego Costa by sacking him by text and becoming increasingly sulky as the season wore down, the fans were still, largely, behind him. Perhaps winning a league title at the first time of asking helped.

Sarri is still, mostly, unproven. The praise heaped upon him from every grandee in the game for the way he had Napoli playing has largely evaporated, as whatever worked in Serie A isn't in the Premier League. True, Chelsea are still sixth and just a point behind the increasingly Spursy Tottenham; and, yes, that numerically puts Chelsea in with a chance of Champions League qualification. But does Sarri really know what he's doing? Is he really prepared to gamble with the Chelsea future of Callum Hudson-Odoi by publicly admitting that he only watched 20 minutes of his full England debut? To me, that's not a coach trying to apply tough love on a precocious teenage starlet, that's just vindictive grouching. And thus, things continue that way.

Watching Hudson-Odoi's face yesterday, as Eden Hazard, Ruben Loftus-Cheek and then Olivier Giroud went on, spoke volumes. If - and it's probably, now, a case of when - he moves to Bayern Munich, and Chelsea and, indeed, the Premier League, are shorn of a prodigious young talent, we will look back at Maurizio Sarri's obstinacy. Yes, we get it - the lad needs to improve his game. Show me an 18-year-old in any profession who's the finished article? But Sarri is in danger of doing to Hudson-Odoi what Conte did to Costa - diminishing his future value to Chelsea Football Club.

Let's face it, the teenager, along with Hazard, will be off this summer. I can't see the Chelsea board having it any other way, knowing that both players have only a season to run on their contracts. Which makes for an interesting summer ahead. Chelsea will no doubt lose their two prized assets, along with others, and I'm pretty confident that Sarri himself will be on a plane to the Stadio Olimpico, where a certain Associazione Sportiva Roma appear to be coveting the tobacco-loving 60-year-old. And, no, that's not an April Fool joke, either.

Too much, too young?

Facebook/Chelsea FC

The sight, on Sunday afternoon, of Theo Walcott coming on for Everton as a substitute against Chelsea provided a curious premonition of the news yesterday that the 18-year-old Callum Hudson-Odoi had been called up by Gareth Southgate to England’s senior squad. Because it seems like only yesterday there was all that brouhaha over Walcott, at a slightly younger age, being included in Sven-Göran Eriksson’s England squad to play in the 2006 World Cup. Even now there is the oft-repeated refrain that Eriksson ruined Walcott by including him and that he was never the same again, which is nonsense as, at 17, he was not the finished article to begin with.

That has been much the same sentiment conveyed on Hudson-Odoi by Maurizio Sarri, his head coach at Chelsea, who has so far refrained from including the exciting winger in a Premier League starting line-up this season, preferring to give him the relative nursery slopes of the cup competitions. Sarri has maintained that Hudson-Odoi still has a lot of development to achieve, that it would be "dangerous" to put too much pressure on him, and that the teenager could only become "top" player a few years from now. This has been a recurring managerial philosophy at Chelsea, a club blessed with an insanely successful academy set up, but one with a ceiling made of inch-thick plate glass.

At Stamford Bridge and at away grounds, there only has to be mention of Hudson-Odoi's name over the tannoy, or a glimpse of him warming up for the Chelsea support to break into "Oh, Hudson-Odoi!", sung to the tune of Seven Nation Army. Like his elder teammate and fellow Chelsea Academy product, Ruben Loftus-Cheek, there is genuine excitement for the youngster. Of course, Sarri is right in that he has a lot of improvement ahead of him, but his pace and confidence is something that clearly Southgate wants to tap into. The prevailing Sarri mood, however, is still 'wait and see'. "He will be ready to be at the top at 22 or 23 years," the Chelsea head coach told the media after Chelsea's Europa League first leg tie with Dynamo Kiev, in which Hudson-Odoi came off the bench to score. "We need [him] to improve without the media, of the pressure of the media, fans, the club," conceding that "His training is really very good." But..."When you have pressure when you are 18 it is dangerous, you can lose the target. The target is to improve. So it is dangerous. This is why I don't like to speak about him."

And so Chelsea are left with a conundrum: develop an undoubted talent by giving him more game time (and higher wages), or let him go to Bayern Munich, as he has indicated he'd like to, to guarantee that game time. "Too much, too young", as The Specials sang, is a valid point, and I do have some sympathy for Sarri's view. But only some. As keeps coming up, in radio phone-ins and newspaper comment boxes, that old adage "if you're good enough, you're old enough" does count. Gareth Southgate might be even making a point to Chelsea's head coach that there is no time like the present. I certainly don't disagree.