Just when you think you've figured football out...

“Football,” Danny Baker first observed back in the 1990s, “is chaos”. It's a theme he regularly returns to in his frequent rants on Twitter, usually of an evening while a so-called ‘elite’ fixture is taking place on television. The thinking is that the vast array of punditry deployed by the media suggests that there is something ‘scientific’ about the beautiful game, other worldly and therefore self-considered to be beyond the comprehension of mere mortals. This, Baker contests, is bogus.

I raise this largely as a result of the chaos at Chelsea this season. Graham Potter, who replaced the fired Thomas Tuchel, who replaced the fired Frank Lampard, has just been replaced on an interim basis by...Frank Lampard. “It is totally in keeping with the current chaos [that word again] at Chelsea under co-controlling owners Todd Boehly and Behdad Eghbali and the Clearlake group,” the BBC’s chief football writer Phil McNulty wrote on the corporation’s website, highlighting how, since the takeover last summer, the new owners had pumped in £600 million to buy new players, sacked Tuchel and then Potter after just 31 games in charge. “But the return of Lampard might just be the most eyebrow-raising development of the lot,” he added.

We like to think there’s logic going on at our football clubs. We expect it to be an exact science because coaching and training is governed by xG statistics and computer modelling. Clubs employ technical directors and sporting directors (I still don’t quite know the difference) on top of ‘head coaches’ (never, these days, simply “manager”) amongst the phalanx of specialists keeping the complex Formula 1 car that is a top football team on the track. Everything is therefore planned, programmed and finely tuned to the nth degree. It’s not. Because then you send your team out, and Kai Havertz is selected to lead the line.

On Tuesday night, Chelsea’s first interim coach of the week, Bruno Saltor (who’d never before picked a team at this level) put out more or less the same side that had lost so egregiously to Aston Villa three evenings previously, leading to Potter’s dismissal. Against Liverpool, it was largely painting by numbers to the untrained eye, and probably to more informed observers, too. It was also an abject reminder of just how both Chelsea and their opponents on the night have fallen this season. “Mid-table mediocrity,” one match report concluded. “Two bald men fighting over a comb,” was my erudite contribution.

Unbeknownst to most of us at Stamford Bridge until newspapers ran the picture you see at the top of this post, Lampard was observing from an executive box, the guest of Laurence Stewart and Paul Winstanley, Chelsea’s two sporting directors. This quickly turned into the suggestion that the 44-year-old could be on his way back, though in what capacity wasn’t known. At the same time, the former Spain coach Luis Enrique was said to have flown in to London for talks with the club about the vacant manager’s position, while the newly available former Bayern Munich boss Julian Nagelsmann was also under consideration, along with a fairly predictable list of runners and riders drawn from the European leagues.

At some point on Wednesday it emerged that Lampard was being considered as an interim solution, a stopgap to the end of the season, enabling the club to take until then to consider candidates for the full-time job with, perhaps, more care than that they applied after Tuchel’s abrupt exit. With a two-leg Champions League quarter-final against Real Madrid (under Lampard’s old boss Carlo Ancelotti) to play, starting next week, and some pride to be restored in the Premier League, putting Chelsea’s record goalscorer back in charge would at least be good PR. By Wednesday evening, the Lampard banner, unfurled in the Matthew Harding Lower section before kickoffs during his previous spell, was being retrieved from the back of whichever cupboard it had been stashed away in when its subject was fired - apparently with deep regret - by Roman Abramovich in January 2021.

“It’s a pretty easy decision for me,” said Lampard 26 months later, at a press conference yesterday. “This is my club. I have a lot of emotions and feelings. I’ve come with a belief I can come and help the cause until the end of the season. I’ll give my utmost to give the fans what they want until the end of the season. There’s a lot of talent in the squad. I’m excited to work with that talent and to help them.”

We shall see. The unavoidable elephant in the room here is that Lampard was sacked by Ambramovich on the back of Chelsea taking a southerly trajectory in the Premier League, followed by his dismissal two years later from Everton, with the Merseysiders in even greater peril, recording nine defeats in 12 league games to leave them in relegation territory. In both situations, there were mitigations. But even for this lifelong Chelsea fan, all romanticism aside, you hope this latest temporary arrangement doesn’t end in tears, for a second time.

Appointing club legends as managers is fraught with peril. It’s why I hope that Gianfranco Zola never comes back to Chelsea as head coach. He is rightly held in such high regard, you’d hate that to be jeopardised. Lampard’s first spell in charge carried the same risk, which eventually came to fruition. You can only hope that, in this limited new arrangement, he knows what he’s taking on.

“Of course, it was a surprise in terms of you never know a decision the club will make,” he said yesterday when asked about coming back. “There’s been lots of change in the Premier League this year. I’ve been particularly enjoying my period at home - it’s one of those where you can really throw yourself into your family, your wife and children, things you tend to put to one side when you’re working.” He stressed that Winstanley and Stewart put forward a specific proposition: “It wasn’t simple, because you have to take a lot into account in your heart and your heart,” Lampard explained, adding, knowingly, ”but this is Chelsea”.

So what is the task at hand? After taking Chelsea to Molineux on Saturday for a Premier League fixture with Wolves, they fly to the Spanish capital for that first leg with Real Madrid, a team which ruthlessly buried Barcelona 4-1 in their Copa del Rey ‘El Clásico’ on Wednesday evening. In any other season, an encounter with Madrid would be what the modern era Chelsea does well. But in this season, Lampard’s task - getting a bloated, lop-sided squad of over-priced players to gel in a way they haven’t hitherto - seems impossible.

There is, though, some precedent. In March 2012 Roberto Di Matteo replaced the failed experiment that was André Villas-Boas, immediately improving form to deliver credible wins in the Premier League and, more significantly, progress in the Champions League, beating Barcelona in a semi-final to take on - and beat - Bayern Munich in the final. “Roberto did an incredible job to stay on,” Lampard ruminated yesterday, but in typically diffident footballer style, measured that by adding “but that’s a different time in the club’s history. What is important to me is to park it to one side and get on the job.”

Lampard has always stood out as an intelligent, personable bloke. As a player, he was always regarded as a studious one, not least because his West Ham coach father Frank Sr drilled footballing discipline into him with hothousing vigour. The same concerns Chelsea fans had when he was originally appointed as manager of the club he spent 13 years at as a player will creep back this time, but if nothing else, this unexpected coda to his two-and-a-half-spell as head coach is a masterstroke of fanbase appeasement.

Picture: Chelsea FC

“We are delighted to welcome Frank back to Stamford Bridge,” said co-controlling owners Todd Boehly and Behdad Eghbali in a statement. “Frank is a Premier League Hall of Famer and a legend at this club,” it continued by way of explaining the thinking behind the appointment. “As we continue our thorough and exhaustive process for a permanent head coach, we want to provide the club and our fans with a clear and stable plan for the remainder of the season. We want to give ourselves every chance of success and Frank has all of the characteristics and qualities we need to drive us to the finish line.”

Perhaps, then, it is another experiment. Lampard won’t necessarily provide continuity, but may at least ease the sulphurous atmosphere that engulfed Stamford Bridge as Graham Potter’s hapless reign faltered ever further. In his press conference he made clear his deep and undeniable knowledge of the club, the staff at the Cobham training ground and, most importantly, many of the current players. For those acquired since his departure, they will be fully aware of Lampard’s high esteem at the club they’ve joined as well as his standing within the game at large. That alone might pay dividends, given that Chelsea’s expensively assembled squad has at times recently looked like a group of talented individuals without any semblance of unity.

Stamford Bridge, specifically, has long been trolled by visiting fans for a perceived lack of energy amongst the support. “Is this a library?” they bate us with. That has certainly been the case of late. On social media alone, Lampard’s return has certainly put smiles back on faces but if he doesn’t get a grip on team cohesion and confidence, and instil tactical thinking that seemed to desert him at Everton, those smiles might soon disappear. Chelsea’s season has already been written off, barring unlikely progression in the Champions League, but as the latest of Chelsea’s many interim managers - Di Matteo, Hiddink, Benitez et al - Lampard has history to live up to. No pressure, then.

A gentleman to the end

I can’t remember the exact date, but it was in the early summer of 1996 that I was passing through the 8th floor of the Philips offices in Croydon when I heard, from within a desk cubicle, “Fuck me! They’ve signed Vialli!”. A marketing manager and fellow Chelsea fan had just received a text message telling him that Gianluca Vialli - who had, just days before, been the Champions League-winning captain of Juventus - had signed for Chelsea on a free transfer. 

It’s hard to describe, even now, how Earth shattering this news was. Even in 1996, with Manchester United in the middle of their imperious domination of English football, it was unusual for a proper European superstar to join a Premier League club, let alone a player who had just won the European Cup as captain of ‘The Old Lady’ of Turin. And now he was joining an apparently underwhelming club that hadn’t won a major trophy in 26 years. 

Vialli’s arrival at Chelsea can be seen as significant in the transformation of English football. It is inseparable from the rise of the Premier League as the world’s most lucrative football competition, attracting stellar talent and broadcasters willing to pay top dollar to watch them. A month or so before Vialli joined the club it had appointed Ruud Gullit as, initially, player-manager. The Dutchman was, himself, a glamorous, ‘sexy’ European idol whose own move to Chelsea - even long after his playing usefulness had evaporated - brought stardust to West London.

Vialli was Gullit’s first, and unlikely, signing. But even with the striker being presented to the press holding a Chelsea shirt, it was hard at first for fans to grasp the concept of such a European football giant in their midst. Gullit, who’d won three Serie A titles and two European Cups with AC Milan, had been brought to Chelsea by Glenn Hoddle the year before, at the start of the club’s change in fortunes. It still took some getting used to the idea of a Ballon d’Or and a two-time World Soccer Player Of The Year winner on the club’s books. The acquisition of ‘name’ players like Mark Hughes suggested that Chelsea were emerging from near calamitous times in the late 1970s and early 1980s when the club yo-yo’d between the old First and Second Divisions, and even flirted with financial collapse. Its relative resurgence was being part-propelled by millionaire Matthew Harding who became a director in 1993. With Gullit replacing Hoddle, his Filofax of international connections soon brought in Vialli, followed by fellow Italians Gianfranco Zola and Roberto Di Matteo. Suddenly, Chelsea Football Club looked glamorous again, even if they hadn’t actually won anything.

Italian football was very much in vogue in 1996. Italia 90 had made us all fall in love with the country and its footballing culture, aided also by Channel 4’s Football Italia in 1992, presented by James Richardson. By 1996, those who knew their football, knew Gianluca Vialli. Those who knew their Serie A, knew what Vialli’s arrival at Chelsea meant. My Philips colleague’s expletive exclamation was entirely justified. This was on a par with, say George Clooney joining the cast of EastEnders.

Having just turned 32 when he signed for Chelsea, there were the inevitable sniffy comments from rival supporters that the apparently nouveau riche Chelsea had acquired Vialli on a free because he’d exceeded his usefulness in Italy. Not so. In his time as a player at the club, he went on to score 40 goals in 88 appearances. Two of those goals came in his first season: in January 1997 Chelsea faced Liverpool at home in the FA Cup fourth round. 2-0 down at half time, Hughes and Zola clawed back a goal each early in the second half, even with Chelsea having lost defender Scott Minto to a red card. Chelsea’s comeback was completed by goals from Vialli in the 63rd and 76th minutes. His legendary status at the club was secured within his first few months as a player. Chelsea would go on to win the FA Cup that season, with Di Matteo scoring his famous goal against Middleborough after just 42 seconds of play at Wembley. I was there, and just as Vialli’s arrival had been somewhat other-worldly, to see the club I’d supported since childhood winning one of the greatest trophies in sport, for the only time in my conscious lifetime, was another moment to bewilder. 

When Gullit was sacked in February 1998, Vialli followed the Dutchman’s earlier transition from player to player-manager and took over. His first game in charge was a League Cup semi-final against Arsenal, before which he gave each of his players a glass of champagne in the changing room. Chelsea went on to win 3-1, reversing Arsenal’s lead from the first leg. It’s a small piece of the Vialli legend, but a compelling snapshot of just why his death, announced yesterday, has brought a palpable pall over football, and the Chelsea community.

People talk lovingly about footballing greats when they die, but I’ve never heard of a player as loved or as revered as Vialli. I once let him pass me on the stairs leading down from the East Stand commentary box at Stamford Bridge and felt a genuine presence, even if he was wrapped up in an ostentatiously Italian scarf, coat and hat combination. I’m not easily starstruck (I’ve met plenty of musicians and actors in my career), but to even stand in the same space as Vialli was a ‘moment’, simply because of what he represented in his relatively brief time at Chelsea. 

While the sort of success that came in the Abramovich era was still somewhat beyond the club’s reach when Vialli was in charge, he still took them to the quarter-finals of their first ever Champions League run (which included a 3-1 victory over Barcelona) and another FA Cup trophy in 2000, beating Aston Villa. In total, he won five trophies with the club in less than three years, including the European Cup Winners’ Cup, making Vialli - at 33 - the youngest manager to win a major European trophy. The silverware alone, in my mind, qualifies  him still as one of the greatest figures to have ever played or worked for Chelsea.

In its obituary the club itself wrote: “As soon as he walked through the door at Stamford Bridge, when already a global football star, Luca declared his wish to become a Chelsea legend. It is a target he undoubtedly reached, revered for his work on the pitch and in the dugout during some of the most successful years in our history. Loved by fans, players and staff at Stamford Bridge, Luca will be sorely missed not just by the Chelsea community, but the entire footballing world, including in his native Italy, where he was such an iconic figure.”

These are the words you invariably read when a much loved figure in football passes on. But for me, at least, laden with poignancy. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine someone in the game to endear himself so profoundly to fans and those he worked with. Everyone seems to note how charming he was, funny and, despite his prodigious achievements in the game, even long before he came to SW6, lacking the rampaging ego so many big names in the sport seem to possess today. His likeability, amongst the Chelsea fanbase, was enhanced by his wholesale embrace of London and the sense of Italian style he brought to it. For years I’ve worn black V-neck sweaters purely because Vialli did.

Nothing at Chelsea lasts forever, and after indifferent performances early in the 2000-2001 season, leading to a strained relationship between Vialli and his players, the club sacked him. The consensus was that Chelsea had, with Gullit and then Vialli, tried and failed with two legends of the game as young player-managers. That said, the approach had still managed to net silverware that had proven elusive since the 1970s. Perhaps, too, in appointing Claudio Ranieri, the club had learned that a foreign perspective and a little Italian charm went a long way.

News that Vialli had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer first emerged in November 2018, but after 18 months of chemotherapy - and out of the spotlight - he was given the all-clear. Still, though, the Italian remained typically modest, telling a TV interviewer in his home country, with remarkable honesty: “I cannot fight with cancer because I would not be able to win this battle, it is a much stronger opponent than me. Cancer is an unwanted travel companion, but I can't help it.” Defiantly, though, he kept going. “I have to go ahead and travel with my head down, never giving up, hoping that one day this unwanted guest will get tired and leave peacefully for many years because there are still so many things I want to do in this life.” 

In 2019 Vialli joined his former Sampdoria strike partner Roberto Mancini in the Italian national set up. But at the end of last year the cancer returned, and he stepped down from his role with the Azzurri. Presciently, in March last year, he’d told a Netflix documentary: “I know that I probably will not die of old age, I hope to live as long as possible, but I feel much more fragile than before.”

Picture: Getty Images

Vialli handled his cancer journey with humility, even devoting a book to it - Goals: Inspirational Stories To Help Tackle Life’s Challenges, a compendium of stories examining the human spirit. Reading it again now, it reflects both his courage and his sense of humour. “Illness can teach a lot about who you are, and can push you to go beyond the superficial way in which we live,” he said at one point.

“I can‘t tell you how good a guy he was,” a visibly moved Graeme Souness told Sky Sports yesterday morning, minutes after the news of Vialli’s death had been announced. Like Mancini, the Scot had played with Vialli at Sampdoria. “Forget football for a minute, he was just a gorgeous soul. He was a truly nice human being,” Souness added. “I went to Italy when I was 31-years-old. He was 20 and he was just fabulous to be around. Such a fun loving guy, he was full of mischief. He was such a warm individual and a fabulous player.“

“I think it’s so typical of him that he kept [his cancer] very private, very personal and he took it on as I’d expect him to take it on,” Souness said. “It was his fight, wanted to deal with it himself, didn't want to burden other people with it.”

Like so many successful sportsmen and women, Luca Vialli was a serial winner. The sight of him celebrating Italy’s success over England in the Euro 2020 final at Wembley brought no pleasure to me as an English supporter, but still brought a smile to my face - a footballing hero revelling in victory. Of course, it’s a sight you see with any sporting endeavour reaching a conclusive outcome, but somehow, the fact that it was Vialli made it more enjoyable. Satisfying, even.

Apart from that fleeting encounter on the staircase at Stamford Bridge, I never met Gianluca Vialli. Why would I have done? When he came to Chelsea he was a near-mythical football God. In real terms he may not have spent all that long at the club, but his death has affected me more than I expected. He didn’t know me, and I didn’t know him, but I feel compelled to make the same statement as did Carlo Ancelotti, Vialli’s former Sampdoria teammate and another effortlessly cool Italian who held the title ‘Chelsea manager’: “Ciao amico mio”.

Gianluca Vialli - 1964-2023

So, I was saying...

Picture: Chelsea FC

I wasn’t intending to blog again about Chelsea for a while, but this morning’s shock announcement that the club had “parted company” with Thomas Tuchel took almost everyone by surprise. 

Even with this club’s history, especially in the Abramovich era, of capricious managerial sackings (such as Carlo Ancelotti - arguably one of the greatest club coaches of the modern era - for simply leading Chelsea to second place in the Premier League at the end of his sophomore season, having done the league and cup double in his first...), the abrupt way with which the Todd Boehly-led regime dispensed with Tuchel was utterly shocking.

Viewed through a narrow prism, it might have been coming - at some point in the near future. Even if the new Premier League season record looks patchy - three wins, two defeats and a draw - it was last night’s defeat away to Dynamo Zagreb that brought the curtain down on the German’s 20-month tenure. The 1-0 loss might have been accommodated, but not the way Chelsea lost, with Boehly and his co-owner Behdad Eghbali looking on, and immediately determining that they’d seen enough.

Reports have since emerged that all had not been well in the Chelsea camp for some time. No surprise given the sometimes toothless performances of late, but most had faith in Tuchel to turn things around, especially after he’d picked up a browbeaten team from Frank Lampard in January 2021 and promptly went on to win the Champions League, the European Super Cup and the Club World Cup in the space of a few months. When Russia invaded Ukraine, and Roman Abramovich became sanctioned, putting the club itself at existential risk, Tuchel became Chelsea’s public face. This at the same time as he was going through a divorce. As spring gave way to summer, and the club’s ownership was eventually resolved at the 11th hour, Boehly took a hands-on role in rebuilding, eventually spending £273 million on acquiring Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Raheem Stirling, Kalidou Koulibaly, Wes Fofana, Marc Cucurella and others to plug gaps. 

Even the most ambitious proprietor would understand that, following a shorter pre-season and only a few games of the new season itself, it would take time for the new players to bed in and the squad to gel. Perhaps, though, that’s an overly generous assessment. In my last post on Chelsea I quoted Tuchel’s rantings about the team lacking the right mentality: “It’s a lack of hunger, intensity, a lack of determination to win duels, to actually do things on the highest level.” Goals were too easily shipped in moments of lax concentration, while at the other end, attacks looked positively anaemic. There are, too, reports of Tuchel’s relationship with the squad taking an unexpected turn for the worse. From, clearly, being a good man manager - you don’t achieve what he did on his arrival if you’re not - to seeing even Mason Mount off the pace makes you question how the hitherto underlying spirit dropped off. Hakim Zyech has looked as disinterested as a lethargic teenager visiting an elderly relative, while Christian Pulisic - who has never fully lived up to expectations - has stumbled about with nothing to show for it. And, yet, Tuchel continued to play them.

Conor Gallagher, who Crystal Palace were desperate to keep after his aclaimed loan period, was bawled out by Tuchel at every opportunity during his debut home start at the Bridge; Billy Gilmour, another youth prospect and serial loanee, was eventually sold to Brighton for a cut-price £9 million. That was, obviously, a club decision, but Tuchel was more involved in this summer’s business than any Chelsea manager for the previous 18 seasons. There are suggestions, too, that Tuchel simply hadn’t yet developed the same working relationship with the new owners that he’d enjoyed with Marina Granovskaia and Petr Čech, previously Abramovich’s representatives on Earth. I don’t know about that, but for a manager to be terminated so quickly suggests a ruthlessness that no one was expecting from Boehly, an owner who has been more visible in three months than Abramovich was in 18 years.

There was, though, something pleasantly round about Tuchel’s sacking, after his 100th game in charge. Yesterday marked 100 days since the new owners took over. The word is, however, that the Zagreb result wouldn’t have made any difference, and change was already in the offing. Perhaps Tuchel was indeed the architect of his own downfall. Communication with his squad had become minimal (as had his confidence in their abilities), and he had reportedly become less engaging with the club hierarchy, too. Tuchel was also racking up the bookings for his touchline behaviour, including that infamous red card and hefty fine following the stormy Tottenham encounter at Stamford Bridge. It was starting to become obvious that his public demeanour wasn’t quite right. Even his normally frenzied windmilling from the touchline, like a tracksuited Basil Fawlty, had given away a greater restlessness than his normal frenetic appearance. It’s entirely reasonable to suggest that this was only a window on what he was like behind the closed gates of Cobham. With a win ratio of 44%, and Chelsea heading towards mid-table of the Premier League - even only after six games and 10 points out of a maximum 18 - something wasn’t right.

“The new owners believe it is the right time to make this transition,” the club said in a statement, conflating the 100 days of Boehly/Clearlake ownership with Tuchel’s final match in charge. To this they aded the customary platitude of “placing on record” the club’s “gratitude” to Tuchel and his staff. The bottom line is, however, that regardless of who is in charge, Chelsea are manageress yet again. 

The end of the Abramovich era was meant to herald a period of stability, of allowing the manager to build in much the same way as Jurgen Klopp had been allowed to at Liverpool, not to be felled by a knee-jerk reaction at the first sign of failure. But, as we are constantly reminded, this is a results business, and the results simply haven’t been good enough. And even though players should always bear the burden of poor performances, the coach is paid to motivate them. Tuchel probably knew that had been missing after the Zagreb game when he declared himself to be “angry at myself and the team”, adding that “everything was missing”. Sadly, his job was to ensure that it wasn’t.

So what happens now? With Brighton’s Graham Potter hotly tipped to succeed Tuchel - in what would be a major gamble on someone unused to managing a collection of high-octane egos competing in Europe - the Chelsea roundabout spins again. The new owners have made their point in shedding Tuchel so soon in their reign, but at the same time, they’ve set themselves up for failure in the future, if the managerial door revolves every time results take a dive. From a fan’s point of view, we only want the club to succeed, and if that means drastic action, then so be it. Just as long as it doesn’t mean that Rafa Benitez gets another shot, we’ll support the shirt, come what may.

Expectation management: the Subbuteo Final awaits

Subbuteo.com

The last time I blogged about Chelsea it was in the immediate aftermath of sanctions being imposed on Roman Abramovich following Russia’s abhorrent invasion of Ukraine, and the existential threat the UK government’s action posed to the club. Now that a consortium led by LA Dodgers owner Todd Boehly has agreed to takeover the club - still subject to government approval - scrutiny will turn to what happens next in terms of Chelsea’s evolution.

It is believed that the Boehly takeover will pay £2.5 billion for the actual club, with a further £1.75 billion committed to the club’s development, with that investment going on [hopefully] the rebuild of Stamford Bridge, as well as support for the much-vaunted Academy, and to the EWL champions Women’s team and their Kingsmeadow stadium, a mile or so up the road from where I live. What’s not clear, however, is what will be spent on new players for the men’s first team, the side going into the 150th FA Cup Final today for their only chance of silverware this season. That, in itself, is quite a statement for a club that has won five Premier League titles, the Champions League twice, five FA Cups and three League Cups, two Community Shields, the Europa League twice and the Super Cup once, and most recently the FIFA Club World Cup - all in the Abramovich era. Compare that with what came before: until the FA Cup win over Middlesbrough in 1997 there hadn’t been anything for over 25 years.

The conventional wisdom (i.e. what pub experts and the back pages perpetuate), then, is that Abramovich started the arms race that football's elite has either actively joined or aspires to. Thus, since the sanctions were imposed on the Russian, and tightly restricted the club’s expenditure to clear the path for a takeover by someone without ties to the Kremlin, visiting fans to Stamford Bridge have sung themselves giddy with choruses of “Where’s your money gone?” and “Just like the old days - there's nobody here”. This has been a gleeful baiting of the West London club‘s supporters with all the compassion you’d expect from football’s arch tribalism. Don’t worry, we reason with ourselves in the home stands, we’d be doing exactly the same if it was the other club under sanction. Harsh, but those are the rules of the football jungle.

For the last 19 years the pervading narrative is that Abramovich’s largesse has funded a conveyor belt of silverware, sanctioning the purchase of marquee signings to win them and charging successive managers with making those players work. Which hasn’t always gone to plan: Fernando Torres, Andriy Shevchenko, Adrian Mutu, Alexei Smertin, Juan Sebastián Verón, Mateja Kežman, Tiemoue Bakayoko, Danny Drinkwater, Ross Barkley are just some of the names on the list of expensive flops, which could easily populate a complete XI plus a subs’ bench. The jury is still out, too, on the £97.5 million spent last summer on Romelu Lukaku. And, of course, for each of these disappointments there has been a head coach fired for not getting the best out of them. Even club legend Frank Lampard, who ended up swimming against the tide amid rumoured player agitation behind his back. Another is Carlo Ancelotti, arguably one of the greatest club managers in the history of the sport, who was the model Abramovich coveted for the club he’d just acquired in 2003, but ended up firing for the crime of only achieving runners-up place in the Premier League in his second season, having won it in his first (along with the FA Cup).

Picture: Facebook/Chelsea FC

Thomas Tuchel is, therefore, likely to be the first Chelsea manager to outlast Abramovich. It’s too soon, of course, to say whether he’ll stay at the club after the Boehly takeover completes - it’s possible that he might want a change, likewise, the new owners might want someone new. But it would be fair to say that things are likely to be a lot different in the new era. Last Saturday, at his first home game, Boehly would have seen the best and the worst of his new purchase. Lukaku somewhat justified his price tag with a goal from open play and a decisive penalty in the space of three minutes, demonstrating the muscular heft it was hoped the Belgian would bring to the conventional centre forward’s position. But then, in the final fifteen minutes, Boehly would have also seen a ridiculous collapse as Wolves cheaply clawed two back, the latter of which in the 97th minute. Although some normality would have been restored a few days later with a 3-0 away win at Leeds, you could have benevolently given Boehly some right to express buyer’s remorse at Stamford Bridge last Saturday. 

The truth is that Chelsea had, in preceding games, been slipping back into the sort of defensive indifference that had done for Lampard. Stupid, lazy, careless mistakes that allowed less-fancied teams to sneak through. Tuchel’s first task, in January last year, was to rebuild Chelsea from the back, damming the leaks and instilling resilience. By last May, they’d become European champions. Those same mistakes have been largely at fault for their form since April, which has at times been explained as a combination of tiredness and the uncertainty surrounding the club. Those, I’m afraid are just excuses. Defeat away to Everton, a draw at Old Trafford, home losses to Arsenal and Brentford - all with discernible basic defensive errors.

Here, then, is the first challenge for Boehly. Antonio Rüdiger has already confirmed that he’ll be off, having called a halt on contract renewal talks, apparently because a wage of £230,000 a week wasn’t enough. This week it was revealed that he’ll play for Real Madrid for a rumoured £400,000. Next out the door will be Andreas Christensen, who is believed to have signed a pre-contractual agreement with Barcelona. Even captain César Azpiliqueta - a couple of months shy of his tenth anniversary at the club - has appeared to be stalling on a contract extension, with the Catalonians also looking to take him on, too. While Christensen and, increasingly, Azpiliqueta, have become somewhat expendable (they’ve hardly been Chelsea's most effective central defenders) Rüdiger will be emphatically irreplaceable. The loss of three central defenders, too, will only expose the scant options that remain, which include the not-yet mature Trevoh Chalobah, the largely unfit-for-purpose at this level Malang Sarr, and Thiago Silva, who turns 38 next season, and despite still being one of the most viable centre-halves in football, surely can't go on at this level forever, and certainly can’t be expected to play week-in, week-out. 

While there are reserve options - Emerson Palmieri was sent out on loan again, along with homegrown prospects Ethan Ampadu and Jake Clarke-Salter - Chelsea’s productive Academy might also have other gems to follow in the footsteps of Reece James. Inevitably the club is said to be looking outside for fresh talent, with Sevilla’s Jules Kounde a target. But while the core defenders are a cause for concern, there are doubts elsewhere. Marcos Alonso has only been getting games due to Ben Chillwell’s long-term absence, but surely the Englishman, when fit, will see the somewhat inflexible Spaniard (who is hopeless as a defending wing-back) move on? Alonso is also one of a number of players with the end of their contracts in sight, meaning that de facto chief executive Marina Granovskaia - the highly regarded Abramovich acolyte who has pulled off some impressive player sales as well as acquisitions - will need to step up deal-making.

At the beginning of the season Chelsea were tipped as one of the sides to contend for the Premier League title, but as Manchester City and Liverpool have accelerated away from Tuchel’s side, its deficiencies - and not just the defence - have been laid bare. Chelsea have become too predictable: moves begun by wingbacks have laboured in the final third, pitching crosses from the corners that have rarely found anything like a target. Lukaku will no doubt be the lightning rod for that criticism - and he hasn’t always helped his case - but there’s been too much lack of inventiveness at times across the entire attack. Timo Werner and Kai Havertz - bought at a combined cost of £115 million - haven’t produced the goods, despite a recent resurgence. Then there’s the American national captain, Christian Pulisic, who clearly has abilities but only seems to produce them on occasion. Mason Mount has probably been the most effective attacking player (and is currently tipped to be the next captain if Azpiliqueta moves on), but has too often lacked the supply from central midfield, as Jorginho, N’Golo Kanté and Mateo Kovačić have toiled in the engine room. Oh, for the addition of Mount’s bestie Declan Rice!

All of which brings me to today’s little shindig at Wembley. When I was growing up, Chelsea-v-Liverpool was more a romantic proposition than it was sport. It was the classic Subbuteo combination - the blues against the reds, but in the 1970s and 1980s, Liverpool were pre-eminent in domestic and European football. Chelsea, on the other hand, were the faded glamour boys of West London, having gone from star-studded fanbase in the Swinging Sixties to Second Division strugglers on the verge of financial collapse (when away fans sing “Where where you when you were shit?!”, I know exactly where in Stamford Bridge I was…). Times have changed. Chelsea’s record over the last two decades has been eminently better than Liverpool’s, a source of partisan pride amongst the Bridge faithful, but where these two teams are, now, at the end of this season, with Liverpool fighting for not one but four trophies, and Chelsea apparently flying on fumes, makes for a stressful afternoon today at Wembley.

You could say that Chelsea have, in the Abramovich era, rather become the darlings of the FA Cup, having appeared in eight finals since 2003, winning it five times. Four of those eight appearances have been in the last five finals, which have only produced the one win, against Manchester United in 2017 in a somewhat underwhelming game. Still, though, in attempting to break their frustrating recent record, it should still be acknowledged that reaching the final of arguably the world’s most prestigious club competition is something to be celebrated. It is, to some extent, the outcome of the win-at-all-costs culture Abramovich instilled at the club, where even the cream of European managerial talent was considered expendable in the face of expectation.

So what does that mean for today? There’s no denying that Liverpool, competing for a quadruple, are facing a febrile Chelsea. Of course, that requires the cliche about the underdog being under less pressure, but for Thomas Tuchel, a win over Liverpool will lift the shadow that has grown over his team since their memorable win in Porto last year as sloppiness has crept in over the last couple of months.

Brothers in arms - Christian Pulisic and Mason Mount
Picture: Facebook/Chelsea FC

Beyond today, and the remaining two league fixtures, a new tomorrow beckons for Chelsea Football Club. Boehly must stem the outflow of players who, as soon as the sanctions were imposed, would have been on the phone to their agents. He must immediately suppress any uncertainty. In particular, he must retain the services of Granovskaia but, moreover, ensure that the club’s top talent is tied down to new contracts before they creep into the expiry zone. A priority must be the anchoring of Mount and Reece James, whose contracts may have two and three years, respectively, to run, but are players who would be coveted by anyone. And Boehly must also hang on to Tuchel, who has largely carried the club through these last three months of crisis, being the only senior figure to speak to the press as Granovskaia, chairman Bruce Buck and even technical director and former Chelsea goalkeeper, Petr Čech, have remained out of sight. You could argue that Tuchel’s opposite number and compatriot today, Jürgen Klopp, is the blueprint. It’s taken Klopp seven years to get Liverpool to where they are today, during which time Chelsea have had six managers.

There are those yet to be fully convinced that Tuchel is ‘The One’, but after that many changes of head coach it’s hard to actually say who or what would make the job definitive. All that I’ll say is that since the end of February brought Chelsea to a state of actual jeopardy, a period of stability is needed to address these months of uncertainty. That also means that Tuchel needs to be backed in the transfer market, allowing the arrival of fresh talent to replace either the malcontents or the misfits, and perhaps more critically, be afforded the time and patience to rebuild Chelsea into sustainable domestic title contenders. If not, Tuchel will be snapped up by, you name it, any of the European behemoths.

The other item on Boehly’s to-do list will have to be Stamford Bridge. With a capacity of just under 42,000, it cannot compete with the mega-temples being built elsewhere. Abramovich came close to rebuilding the club’s home since 1905 but abandoned the plan when he ran into politically motivated visa issues with the British government. The idea was to effectively reconstruct the stadium from scratch, constructing a new complex upwards from a deep foundation on account of the fact the ground’s footprint is bordered by the Fulham Road, a railway line and the Brompton Cemetery, and can’t go anywhere else.

Of course, there is the small matter of the Boehly consortium’s takeover getting passed by the UK government. But the fact that Todd Boehly has done proper due diligence on the club and its footballing challenges (and this week spent two days at the Cobham training ground meeting both the men’s and women’s teams) provides hope that the new ownership is serious about maintaining Chelsea’s status within the European elite. A win today will be the perfect springboard for the new era at Chelsea to kick on with. It’s just a shame that it’s the current Liverpool that stands in its way.

Putting the existential threat facing Chelsea into perspective

© Simon Poulter

When it was looking likely that Russia would invade Ukraine, and discussion began as to how the world would react, we Chelsea fans started shifting uneasily in our seats. Elephants can remain disproportionately hidden in a room: for 19 years we’ve enjoyed unprecedented success with our club owned by Roman Abramovich, into which he has poured his personal millions. We just didn’t question how those millions had been arrived at. Ignorance is bliss, and geo-politics is rarely a topic of debate on the terraces. 

Under the Russian’s ownership, open-top bus parades down the King’s Road have become regularity. “We’ve won it all!” we cockily bate our rivals. And we have: 21 trophies in all, including, most recently, the European Cup (for a second time) and the World Club Cup, plus five FA Cups and five Premier League titles in the Abramovich era. It was never always thus: when Chelsea went to Wembley in 1990 for the somewhat Mickey Mouse ‘Zenith Data Systems Cup’ it was the first time in my conscious lifetime that the club had competed for even a minor honour, let alone one of the big ones. Even 1994’s 4-0 FA Cup Final humiliation by Manchester United felt like Chelsea was finally moving into a higher echelon. Three years later we actually won it, but even then we couldn’t have imagined where, since Abramovich’s arrival in 2003, we would have gone next. 

When the away end at Stamford Bridge trolls us with choruses of “Where were you when you were shit?” I always mutter “right here”. I know exactly where I was: standing in the Shed, watching no more than 7,000 loyal, if deluded fans each match watching the Blues struggle in the old Second Division. So when Jesper Grønkjær scored his spectacular volleyed goal against Liverpool on the final day of the 2003-2004 season, securing fourth spot in the Premier League and a place in Europe, the club’s fortunes changed forever. Abramovich, who had apparently been choosing which out of Chelsea and Liverpool he would buy, acquired the club in blue. Success, not survival, became the currency at Stamford Bridge. Relentless silverware, and when there was no silverware, managerial change to fix the deficit.

In the early days of Abramovich’s ownership you could buy Cossack-style hats with the club badge on them - novelties that I doubt purchasers gave any thought to the cultural appropriation involved. It was just a good gag, the kind of irony football fans are renown. ‘Roman’s a Russian, ergo...’. I’m surprised there wasn’t a commensurate uptick of Lada ownership amongst the fanbase. As season followed season, and success followed success, we celebrated - quietly, it must be said - the oligarch whose personal largesse was making it all possible. We sang the name of the shy, seemingly reticent proprietor who’d bought our glamorous but serially under-achieving football club, turning football itself on its head in the process. And now it is the club itself that has been turned on its head. 

As Putin’s army rolled into Ukraine on 24 February there wouldn’t have been a single Chelsea fan - with their priorities and world perspective skewed as always - who didn’t sense that something existential might result. As the last two weeks of Russia’s increasingly genocidal “special military operation” has ensued, football - as it did during the height of the pandemic - has taken a deserved second place. How could anything matter more than the millions of fellow human beings being bombed, shot and displaced, whose lives and livelihoods have been destroyed forever? 

Even when Abramovich announced, out of the blue, on the eve of the Carabao Cup final between Chelsea and Liverpool, that he was placing control of the club into a trust, many speculated about the timing. It wasn’t lost on anyone that as the world looked to punish Putin, Abramovich would surely come within the scope of sanctions against the Russian oligarchy, looking for any opportunity to tighten the economic grip on Putin. Boris Johnson even let slip, in error, that Abramovich had already been sanctioned. MPs like Chris Bryant kept up the pressure; newspapers started to dig into the money trail that led Abramovich to owning Chelsea, linking him to the Kremlin through suggestions of influence and the toxic relationship that Russia’s oligarchs have with the country’s autocratic, expansionist and possibly deranged president.

Yesterday that pressure came to a head, with Abramovich sanctioned along with six others. With his assets frozen, it means the sale of Chelsea - which was looking like a fire sale when it was abruptly announced on 2 March -  is now on hold. Effectively, the club is now in government hands. For political reasons it holds the keys to the club’s future - and its survival. It is, apparently, open to a sale if a buyer comes along,  but with Abramovich apparently wanting £3 billion, an actual buyer might not be forthcoming. And then even if one is found, the government will need assurances that no proceeds will go to Abramovich. Meanwhile, commercial operations have been suspended, the club shop closed, and prospective player sales and acquisitions have been halted for the foreseeable future. 

Home Premier League games will now only be attended by season ticket holders, no new tickets will be sold for fixtures including cup ties, and while the club will continue to pay the wages of its staff (including players), the outlook, for a club in existence since 1905, seems uncertain. 

In the short term, play will continue. I’ll be at the Bridge on Sunday for Chelsea-v-Newcastle, which will surely be an emotionally charged game. “As long as we have enough shirts and a bus to drive to the games, we’ll be there and will compete hard,” head coach Thomas Tuchel said after last night’s fixture at Norwich. As he has been called upon to do in recent weeks, in the absence of anyone else from the club making themselves available to the media, Tuchel added: “Of course the [sanctions] subject is there, the talks are going on, so there is a certain distraction. The level of impact it has - the news of today is big - in time we don't know how big. We cannot influence it.” His Chelsea Women counterpart Emma Hayes, whose side was also playing last night, took a similarly stoic view, adding some necessary perspective: “I can’t get too wrapped up in it when there’s a war going on in Ukraine. We are Chelsea and we will prevail. There will be solutions, we just need to be patient.”

As ever, a source of rationality in all matters Chelsea has been Pat Nevin, the club’s cultured former winger who was yesterday speaking on a BBC podcast: “It is quite shocking for any Chelsea fan out there, all around the world. We are in uncharted water,” he said, adding that the future of Chelsea Football Club was serious. Of course, put into perspective, with maternity hospitals being obliterated and Mariupol being starved of water, food and electricity, “The only place to be/Every other Saturday” pales deeply into insignificance. But that doesn’t ease the discomfort we ordinary fans have with why Abramovich is being sanctioned now. It’s not like his association with Vladimir Putin is new.

The threat now facing Chelsea is without doubt existential. If - as is now possible - the club collapses, the big-name players will simply ply their trade elsewhere, continuing to draw the same mad wages from another benefactor. Those players already know it and won’t be worried. They younger players, the academy group and those less fancied by Thomas Tuchel (and, it should be said, Hayes) might have more to be concerned about. And, of course, the club’s employees - the physios, caterers, bar workers, matchday hospitality workers, grounds staff, medical, administrative, security, the list goes on - face the bleakest future of all.

“You are in different circumstances now,” Nevin told the BBC. “I can't say ‘everything will be OK’. There is a valuable asset there, long term [in Chelsea FC]. It would be stupid for the government to drive it into administration or liquidation. That doesn’t make any sense.” Nevin thinks the club will survive, but in what form he couldn’t say. “You can have a full recovery. Say if you sell it to another businessman or conglomerate, that’s fine. If they get lucky they could co on very well.”  The question, Nevin says, is who the club gets sold to, assuming the Government allows it. “[Abramovich] shouldn’t sell it to the biggest offer but the best offer, to the right people,” adding “The temptation will be to sell it to the biggest bidder if it is government owned within these sanctions. As a Chelsea fan you want it sold to someone you can trust to take it forward.”

There is a mix of emotion amongst Chelsea fans. Anger, sadness, bafflement, confusion, fear. For some, it’s the end of the world, while others have been more sanguine, concluding that the last 19 years, with its 21 trophies, has been a great run and nothing lasts forever. But to take that disposable view belies a club that we have supported through thick and thin. I’ve been a regular attendee at Stamford Bridge for over 40 years, and a season ticket holder for more than 20. I’ve not spent several thousand pounds in that time for a seat (not to mention all the TV subscriptions and merchandise) to just see it all disappear for the sake of political expediency.

Here, though, is where I can’t deny I’m not conflicted. The source of Abramovich’s money has been an inconvenient truth every single one of us who supports Chelsea has chosen to ignore, going right back to 2003. Did we ask what made him an oligarch in the first place? No, we just continued to froth with excitement with every new player acquisition, even in the inflationary environment that Abramovich’s ownership has led to. £98 million for Romalu Lukaku? Yeah, we’ll have some of that! A nailed-on centre forward in the ranks again, banging them in week after week! Not once would we have given a second thought to the fact that Abramovich allegedly controls Evraz, a company providing the steel for Russian tanks. 

But what is frustrating is the amount of faux indignation now streaming out of Fleet Street. The sanctions imposed yesterday have prompted a flood of “Why-oh-why?” pieces today, belatedly drawing attention to the moral ambiguities of Abramovich having been allowed to own and fund Chelsea for the last 19 years. I suppose, much like this blog post, something has to be written about the story, but it is ludicrous that sports writers who’ve freely gorged on the gifts that Chelsea have kept on giving - player acquisitions, managers being hired and fired, the ‘Chelsea-buying-titles’ memes - are now criticising the Russian’s ownership from the very beginning. One or two more dogged journalists have, to be fair, called out Abramovich’s associations (as they have done with the controversial Saudi-funded takeover at Newcastle), but for the most part, the media has simply gone with the Abramovich story. And what about the football authorities who seek to over-regulate the sport? As we know, from FIFA on down to local league associations, there’s little moral steerage at the game’s administration level. Money talks and that’s alright. If it’s OK to stage a World Cup in a country like Qatar, it’s clearly OK for a Russian oligarch with, apparently close ties to a dictator now trying to eradicate an entire nation of 44 million people to own a football club loved by Londoners for 117 years. 

Last week, The Times’ Matt Dickinson wrote that Abramovich’s arrival in English football got us hooked on money in the game, and that it had become a drug. Football has always been something of an opiate for the masses, but in the Abramovich era, it has changed out of all recognition, especially in the UK. Generations ago there were always remarks about the ‘Chairman’s Roller’ but then football owners were invariably local industrialists, self-made proprietors who pumped their relatively meagre fortunes, by today’s standards, into the town’s club as a community gesture. 

Football, irrespective of Roman Abramovich, has become a multi-billion pound/dollar/euro industry. Money from whatever source - Russian oil, Middle Eastern oil, name your lucrative commodity - has transformed the game in just about every dimension. It’s wishful thinking to expect football to return to the muddy pitches and players indulging in Saturday morning fry-ups that was the custom when I first started going to Chelsea at the end of the 1970s. 

As for what happens now, I genuinely don’t know what to expect, or what I want to happen now. I obviously don’t want my club to collapse - I hold a season ticket at Stamford Bridge because I derive enormous pleasure and entertainment out of going there, for good or for bad, for the pantomime traditions of fan banter, for the outrage at refereeing decisions and bafflement at substitutions. But if the worst was to happen, life would move on in a way it cannot for the 2.5 million Ukrainians who have streamed out of their homeland in the last two weeks, their homes bombed, their livelihoods destroyed. There really can be no equivalence.

With 20/20 hindsight...

I'm not going to rewrite my own history. Frank Lampard's removal in January still hurts (see posts passim). But what Thomas Tuchel produced on Saturday in Porto, out of the same group of players who’d started the season under Lampard, was a tactical masterclass. The result, a 17th major trophy - and for the second time, Europe’s most prestigious - under Roman Abramovich’s ownership suggests that the philosophy of silverware over managerial longevity works. 

To those of a principled nature, this apparently mercenary need for cups might sit uncomfortably with a more purist, romantic view of football. But Saturday’s win over the even more lavishly resourced Manchester City, whose owner even paid for the club’s fans to be flown to and from Portugal, revealed something of the notion that it’s not always about money. That might sound rich from the fan of a club where money has, actually, bought quite a lot. But money didn’t buy that victory - directly - it was Tuchel’s tactics, plus Pep Guardiola’s decision not to play start with Fernandinho and Rodri, and add a little bit of free stardust from the Chelsea Academy. 

One genuinely satisfying outcome of the Champions League Final was the sight of Mason Mount and Reece James making such outstanding contributions to the win - the former with his midfield-splitting pass to Kai Havertz for the goal, the latter for his robust maturity in preventing City’s fearsome attack from clawing back. You could also cite Andreas Christensen and Christian Pulisic, both of whom have experience of Chelsea’s youth system. Havertz’s goal was most satisfying, simply because the £71 million signing had taken a while to settle in the side since his arrival last summer, with a huge price tag on his shoulders. A nasty bout of COVID-19 didn’t help, either. Perplexingly, he’s still not the out-and-out forward Chelsea so desperately need. 

Timo Werner, bless him, once again demonstrated how a full season and the injection of a fellow German to manage him still hasn’t done anything to improve his finishing. A return of 12 goals in 51 games (and just two in 23) over all competitions is by any measure woeful for a striker, especially one who arrived from Leipzig last summer, having bagged 28 strikes out of 34 Bundesliga games alone. So with the sadly outcast Tammy Abraham - another youth product - and Olivier Giroud destined for pastures new, if Chelsea are to close the gap with City in the Premier League, Werner either needs to dramatically improve his lethality, or Mr. Abramovich has to get his cheque book out again.

The youth element of Chelsea’s make-up has been the core of the club narrative over the last two seasons. When Frank Lampard took over, he had little option but to play the youngsters, thanks to the UEFA transfer ban in place. His existing familiarity with players like Mount, as well as the history of assistants Joe Edwards and Jody Morris working with the Academy, meant their progression added chapters to the fairy tale. And thus it continued when Tuchel took over, though he fell back on experience and maturity to begin with, probably as a safety net, before increasingly seeing what Mount and James could do. The same applied to Ben Chilwell, who’d joined from Leicester last summer, but seemed to take a while to win the new coach over, with the unreliable (in my opinion) Marcos Alonso getting the nod over him. 

It would, however, be too easy to make Saturday night’s victory a romantic one about youngsters alone: just look at the shift the near-32-year-old captain César Azpilicueta put in, or the 36-year-old Thiago Silva, before his groin gave out, or even Antonio Rüdiger. And just how magnificent was the diminutive N’Golo Kanté, who turned 30 in March, placing him in the category of players Chelsea likes to offer limited-length contracts from now on (but would be utterly insane not to tie him down, based on the form he’s shown this season). Kanté was everywhere against City, and while it’s become something of a cliche to refer to him as two players in one, he was, once more, more than just a holding player, but frequently the origin of Chelsea’s forward runs, attacks that exposed Guardiola’s midfield folly.

Here, then, is where I run the risk of revisionism. Chelsea were in some trouble in January when Lampard - forever a club legend - was fired. It’s possible that they could have dug themselves out of it, but heads had noticeably dropped. I still can’t reconcile my thoughts: could Frank have benefitted from a more experienced director of football to manage him? Or was it just too soon, ultimately, to be managing the club? John Terry beware, if so. 

Thomas Tuchel is not naive. He will know full well of the managerial toll that has come with the successes of the Abramovich era. Saturday’s result was the third occasion Chelsea have won a title at the end of a season where the manager has changed midway through. Maybe the Russian owner knows what he's doing, after all. His instincts for pulling the trigger at the right time seem uncannily sharp, but it’s hard not to wonder why those instincts weren’t apparent when some appointments were made in the first place. Avram Grant, André Villas-Boas, Luiz Felipe Scolari, Maurizio Sarri, even José Mourinho (twice)  and Lampard himself were all, to some extent, experiments that failed, requiring Guus Hiddink or the detested (but successful) Rafa Benítez to be parachuted in. 

Tuchel took over an increasingly listless team, instilled some defensive fortitude into them and plugged the leaks. It’s likely that he will now be offered to extend his somewhat tentative 18-month contract. If nothing else earns it, the ‘cup with the big ears’ should do so (not that Chelsea winning it helped Roberto Di Matteo - appointed in March 2012, fired the following November). Tuchel’s tactical victory on Saturday over Guardiola has, at least, quelled the disquiet over Chelsea’s end to the domestic season, with their only-just fourth place in the Premier League, having lost games at crucial moments, and Leicester’s convincing victory in the FA Cup Final which denied Tuchel his only other chance of securing silver.

But taken into another context, along the way, Tuchel has now outsmarted Guardiola three times in six weeks, which poses the enticing prospect of Chelsea mounting a credible challenge to City next term. In the Premier League, Tuchel arrested any further decline and pushed Chelsea back into European contention, just. He took them into an FA Cup Final. And - most impressively - he masterminded superb knockout-round victories over Atlético Madrid, Saturday night’s hosts, Porto, Real Madrid and then City. It’s not been lost on commentators that the near-deity Pep Guardiola’s desire to win Europe’s biggest prize continues, while Thomas Tuchel has achieved it in only five months. He’s not the Special One, but on Saturday’s evidence, he is pretty special. Wish I’d known that when I wagged the finger of doom in January and said that Chelsea should be careful what they wished for. I mean, what do I know?

A game of two halves

It wasn’t, let’s face it, a particularly successful debut weekend for Chelsea's new home kit. Defeat on Saturday for Thomas Tuchel's side in the FA Cup Final and then a thumping 4-0 win, yesterday, by Barcelona over Chelsea in the women’s Champions League Final. It would have made for uncomfortable reading this morning in SW6 and in Surrey. Unsurprisingly, however, most of the media chin-scratching is over the challenge Tuchel now faces to keep his team in contention for Europe next season, rather than recognition of just how far Emma Hayes has brought Chelsea, and women’s professional football in England.

The women’s game has transformed out of all recognition in recent years, with most of the big clubs ploughing money into their women’s squads, making competitions like the Women’s Super League in England far more exciting as a result. Rather than treating them as ancillary operations, owners like Roman Abramovich have matched ambition with resources. Chelsea coach Hayes has been the beneficiary of a recruitment programme which, proportionately, has kept pace with - and even exceeded - that of the men’s squad, complementing the dedicated training facilities at the club's all-squad Cobham training complex.

Picture: Chelsea FC

It was no coincidence, either, that Abramovich himself was in Gothenburg last night to cheer - and console - Hayes’ players. And, yet, I wonder how much newspaper attention will be afforded Hayes in taking an English women's team to the pinnacle fixture in European professional football? The sports pages may have covered the final, but the women’s game is still painfully lacking respect from many sports editors, with coverage often buried. Even worse, from male football fans, of which a cursory gaze through the comments of any attempt by the Mail Online to cover games reveals a depressing litany of misogyny (I’m not even talking about casual sexism, either) and homophobia. 

Picture: Twitter/Alex Scott

I’m not trying to be woke in raising this. I just find it hard to understand, genuinely, how in the 21st century it should even be a ‘thing’ that women play football professionally. But here we are, in a world where former Arsenal and England defender Alex Scott, who has already built up substantial experience as a TV presenter and football pundit, is chosen to replace Dan Walker (who has never played football professionally) as anchor of BBC1’s Football Focus, and all of a sudden online forums are full of “box-ticking” comments about the BBC appointing a black women to present the Saturday lunchtime institution. 

At risk of stating the bleeding obvious, there are clearly a lot of people with a problem at the idea of women doing something that men can also do. It manifests itself in even darker ways, too: former England international and Chelsea winger Karen Carney contemplated taking her own life after being abused on Twitter following comments she made during Amazon Prime coverage in December about Leeds beating West Brom 5-0. Even now, Carney is a lightning rod for online abuse, often for her Midlands accent, something that rarely afflicts male commentators from the same region (with, perhaps, the exception of Alan Smith).

Chelsea’s defeat in Gothenburg last night will be of little consequence to those categorically opposed to the idea of professional women’s football, but to those of us who do take an interest (mine, admittedly, through Chelsea’s ever-increasing success), there was much to celebrate, even if the four goals Hayes’ side shipped in a devastating first 35 minutes of the fixture will sting for some time. Objectively, Barcelona exposed a gulf in quality, shockingly so, considering just how talented Chelsea are, with their usually on-point ‘Kerr-by’ forward partnership of the symbiotic Samantha Kerr and Fran Kirby, along with appearances from other dependable such as central defender Millie Bright and goalkeeper Ann-Katrin Berger. 

This was still the same squad that recently won the WSL, the women’s League Cup and next weekend will contest the FA Cup. Chelsea’s appearance last night also marked the first time an English team had appeared in the pinnacle European finale since Arsenal won it in 2007 (Hayes was assistant to Vic Akers that night, in a season where Arsenal won a historic quadruple). They were also playing a Barcelona that had won all 26 of their domestic league matches, scoring 128 goals and conceding only five in the process. And that, for contrast, is on a budget of just Eur 4 million, a fraction of the salaries and transfer fees the men’s game commands.

Picture: Twitter/ChelseaFCW

Hayes, though, is a breath of fresh air, in football as a whole. “I am not going to give you crappy platitudes,” she said, live on BT Sport after her side had beaten Munich to reach the Champions League Final. “I have worked my whole life for this day and I am so fucking proud of them players. They have delivered.” Yep, the F-bomb on a Sunday lunchtime (Ofcom sanction, no doubt, in the post). But it was unlike any of the pro-forma cliches you normally get from professional football managers, the Keegan meltdown notwithstanding. 

“This is thousands of hours, thousands of setbacks," Hayes continued. “I got to this level through my hard work and determination, and I am fortunate enough to be working for a football club that I adore, that give me licence to do this.” She then reflected on how her love of football began on the Islington streets of her childhood: “I entered that pitch every day as a nine-year-old, about to ‘play’ in the Champions League final. Oh my God, my dreams came true today.” While, ultimately, those dreams may have taken a dent last night, Hayes’ ambition to drive women’s football ever onwards won’t be dented. She wants to win over the naysayers and give nine-year-old girls everywhere the idea that they, too, could play in a European final one day. 

It’s this self belief that has made her one of the best coaches in the game, regardless of gender, even raising the idea of how she’d make a better manager than many of those running men’s teams. Earlier this year Hayes was linked with the vacant job at AFC Wimbledon, one she instantly rejected, partly because she was extremely happy at Chelsea (jokingly, because Wimbledon wouldn’t have been able to afford her, anyway), and partly on principle.

"The football world needs to recognise that while the game is played by a different gender, it’s the same sport,” she railed. The qualities involved in team management were exactly the same as for a men’s team. “We are talking about human beings,” she stressed. “We spend too much time talking about gender and ethnicity instead of the quality of candidates.” 

Hayes then got to the nub of the issue: “Women's football is something to celebrate, and the quality and the achievements of all the females I represent. It’s an insult to them that we talk about women’s football being a ‘step down’, with the dedication and the commitment and the quality they have. That's what I’m disappointed with, not being linked to a football job.”

Picture: Peckham Town FC

Things have come a long way, however. A couple of weeks ago BBC London reporter Chris Slegg fronted a compelling film featuring Mary Phillip, England’s first black international captain and a six-time FA Cup winner, who is now the manager of men’s side Peckham Town. She’s now used to the “she ain’t got a clue what she’s doing” barbs - even from rival managers.  “It is still perceived as a men’s game and I am in men’s football. But when you learn to play you are coached the exact same way a man is. The drills and tactics are the same.”

“I was born in the 70s, fell in love with the game in the 80s, played at elite level in the 90s, became a professional in the early 2000s and a manager in the 2010s,” Phillip told the BBC. However, her journey and the journey of millions of female players has been long. 

Women’s football first became popular during World War One, but faced cultural male hostility. In 1921 it was banned by the Football Association. In 1967 Tottenham met (and beat…) Chelsea in the men’s FA Cup Final, a game that had a profound effect on the-then 19-year-old Patricia Gregory, who wrote to a local newspaper to query why women didn’t play football, and then set up a team of her own. Within a couple of years, a league of 47 teams had been set up, and the Women's Football Association was born. The same year, finally, the FA overturned their 1921 ban.

More than half a century on, the women’s game gets TV coverage and attention, but the sense is that it’s still not regarded with any of the same blanket national obsession as the men’s game. There’s no doubt that things are moving in the right direction - Sky Sports and the BBC jointly signed a £24 million deal with the Women’s Super League that will make it the world’s most-watched women’s sports league. Coming on top of £20 million in sponsorship, the TV deal has been described as “a game changer”. UEFA also recently announced a Eur 24 million package for women’s Champions League teams, pledging that clubs in the group stage will receive a minimum payment of Eur 400,000. 

Further visibility and further investment - even if paltry by comparison to the eye-watering sums swilling about the men’s game - but momentum that brings Emma Hayes’ dream just that little bit closer to reality.

No pressure, then: the season ahead for Frank Lampard

If you’ve been hearing the noise of a chequebook creaking open and shut from Moscow, Tel Aviv, a Moonraker-style space station, or wherever Roman Abramovich bases himself these days, it’s because the Russian has made a spectacular return to the largesse that transformed Chelsea 17 years ago. The oligarch can be pretty much singularly credited for transforming the club from perennial strugglers, trading off former glories and lurching from existential crisis to existential crisis, into serial trophy winners and default members of the so-called ‘big six’.

Whatever the arguments about "buying success" (yeah, tell that to Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern Munich, PSG and, for a long period of time, Manchester United...), the outlay that marked Abramovich's first decade or so as Chelsea's owner made a notable disappearance as he appeared to lose interest, apparently the result of Britain having a downer on friends of the Russian regime. An abrupt halt was called to the redevelopment of Stamford Bridge amid suggestions (denied) that an application to renew Abramovich's 'investor visa' had been withdrawn. Even the oligarch himself was rumoured to be sounding out potential suitors for the club, though this proved to be nothing more than rumour. The club's spending profile did, though, appear more muted, to be curbed further by the UEFA ban on signing new players that took effect at the beginning of last season, just as Frank Lampard took over as head coach of the club where he is, rightfully, revered as a playing legend.

Picture: Facebook/Chelsea FC

You could say that Lampard, in only his second management role after just a single season at Derby County, was taking on the notoriously trepidatious Chelsea gig with one hand tied behind his back and both ankles strapped together.

His maiden season meant blooding in a talented pool of youngsters that had, hitherto, been out on a never-ending carousel of loans, along with somewhat ageing figures that, if push came to shove, would have been surplus to requirements. On top of that, he’d be shorn of the club talisman, Eden Hazard, sold to Real Madrid at the end of the season before. Given all this, a fourth place finish, resulting in Champions League qualification, plus an appearance in the FA Cup Final, could be seen as over-achievement.

In fact, at any other club it would be. But this is Chelsea. Even for a season that ended better than anyone gave Lampard credit for (most would have generously said “top ten” and left it at that), the club’s expectations of their young manager were still left unfulfilled, according to some suggestions. Luckily, Lampard spent 13 years at the club as a player, and saw plenty of managers come and go, including the revered Carlo Ancelotti, always believed to be the model coach Abramovich desired when he bought the club.

So, no pressure, then, on Lampard for his own sophomore season. Especially when the club has become the Premier League's most vibrantly active club in the summer transfer market, so far spending anything up to £230 million on exciting European talent. Kai Havertz (21), Timo Werner (24), Hakim Ziyech (27), plus Ben Chilwell (23), the veteran Thiago Silva and, we understand, the imminent arrival of goalkeeper Edouard Mendy, have all been acquired to augment a side that, last season, showed plenty of attack but lacked robustness at the back.

Hakim Ziyech and Ben Chilwell
Picture: Twitter/@ChelseaFC

There is still the possibility, too, that Declan Rice - a Chelsea academy product - might be prised away from West Ham, though not if David Moyes has his say, having slapped a £90 million sprig of garlic around the versatile centre-back’s neck. Given that Chelsea’s net outlay is 'only' £80 million in this window, due to the fact Hazard’s residual fee will eventually reach £150 million, Rice might still prove an irresistible target for Marina Granovskaia’s impressively administered kitty.

The need to strengthen Chelsea’s squad hasn’t simply been to plug the obvious defensive gaps that could, last season, have undermined things more seriously. While 2019-20 was accepted as a fallow year, given the ban and an accommodation around the youth/ageing contingent, a gulf opened up with Liverpool and, to a lesser extent, Manchester City, the latter of whom enjoy a similar lap of benefactor luxury. This time around, Manchester United continue to be a threat - perhaps more than they did last season - and Arsenal under Mikel Arteta are growing in stature, buoyed by titles acquired at both ends of August. And there is still Tottenham, but let's just leave that there for now.

Liverpool’s Jurgen Klopp may have recently dismissed Chelsea’s summer spending, but the reopening of the Abramovich coffers has allowed the club to remain supremely competitive in the attacking department. Havertz is one of Europe’s hottest properties - coveted, apparently, by both Liverpool and City - and accordingly didn’t come cheap, especially at a time when most clubs have reigned in spending. Chelsea have appeared to remain in relatively good fiscal health throughout the last few months, apparently not having to make any redundancies or even (from what I hear) furloughs due to the pandemic. Even the season ticket situation remains up in the air for 2020-21 renewals (we’re still in credit for the games closed off to spectators since March). Normally they can't wait to send out the renewal notice in May. All of this doesn’t mean the largesse hasn't come at a price. There are still surplus players for Granovskaia to offload in order to reduce a wage bill that represented almost two-thirds of the club’s 2019 turnover. And that challenge will potentially include finding a home for the arguably toxic and decidedly pricey Kepa Arrizabalaga.

As Chelsea’s season kicks off, properly, tonight at Brighton, there's no guarantee that the new crop will inject last term's missing ingredients, but from the outset, they certainly look like an exciting set of additions. Lampard’s challenge is to make them gel, to fit an effective system and then ensure none of the home-grown products who stepped into the breach last time are alienated. There’s no doubt that in Havertz, Ziyech and Werner, significant competition has been provided for Mason Mount, Ruben Loftus-Cheek, Callum Hudson-Odoi and Tammy Abraham, the serial loanees returned to the fold by Lampard, with only the pre-ban signing Christian Pulisic to augment things. On balance, they all did well, but they still enjoyed something of a free ride without a vast amount of hard challenging from within the squad. Fresh challengers will only do them good, as long as ambitious agent-fathers/brothers/uncles don’t start agitating via the tabloid back pages.

While attention will inevitably fall on the exciting array of attackers now at Lampard's disposal, scrutiny will not ease on the defensive shape that collectively shipped 79 goals in all competitions last season. The arrival of Silva’s experience and Chilwell’s much-needed left-back capabilities will shore things up (and Rice would be a compelling addition to either defence or the base of midfield), but Lampard will also need to settle on a line-up that went through endless permutations, with eight different defenders starting in ten matches or more last season. There will need to be further maturing, too, of Reece James and, if he isn’t loaned out to Everton, Fikayo Tomori, both exciting talents but with some development still do be done.

Picture: Facebook/Chelsea FC

Taking the bigger picture, Lampard is, at 42, in an incredible position. He probably has more leeway than most Chelsea managers - though only just - and as long as Abramovich and Granovskaia let him get on with shaping a squad of undoubted youthful talent, the prospect of giving Liverpool and City a run for their money is high. Lampard, former Chelsea winger Pat Nevin said recently, isn’t just building a team, but “a dynasty”. Quite a bold claim. "If you equalise [the outlay] over the two years, it's not a mad amount of money with the income from Hazard and Morata [Alvaro, a £58 million distress sale to Atlético Madrid],” Nevin told the BBC. “Also, Chelsea weren't expected to reach the Champions League two seasons in a row, which makes a massive difference to their finances."

In Granovskaia, Chelsea have a shrewd businesswoman. The £71 million paid for Havertz could be realised tremendously, much as Hazard was, bought for £32 million and whose sale to Real Madrid made four times that amount. Lampard, though, won’t be looking at his squad of young talents as lucrative investments to be harvested. He’ll be focused on one thing: not getting sacked. There’s no immediate suggestion that he is in the firing line, but Abramovich, lets face it, has form. Last season’s fourth spot, Champions League football secured and a cup final appearance will never be enough for the Chelsea owner.

The conventional wisdom, then, is that Lampard’s backing by the club’s supporters, as well as his legacy in blue, would make him harder to sack than any of the predecessors strewn along the way by Abramovich. But the Russian hasn’t shelled out £200 million-plus in recent weeks without expecting an immediate return, and football results - arguably more than even financial results - are what he craves the most.