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.

Be careful of what you wish for, Part. 94

Picture: Twitter/@TTuchelofficial

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When will they ever learn?

Well, we can't say we weren't warned. Frank Lampard's sacking has been on the cards, even before the mid-season slump. Some rumours suggest that the club was unhappy with things at the end of last season, Lampard's first in charge, and one which began with a transfer ban, the loss of Eden Hazard, and a reliance on fast-tracking youth, and ended with a FA Cup Final appearance, fourth spot in the Premier League and qualification for this season's Champions League (which, by the way, Chelsea are into the last 16).

But, then, this is Chelsea. Whatever the end-of-term report last summer said has merely been compounded by the indifferent form in recent weeks, losing five of the last eight league games and, then, not losing well. Yesterday's win over Luton Town in the FA Cup Fourth Round was a welcome fillip, but with more potential banana skin league fixtures coming up with Wolves on Wednesday and Burnley on Sunday, Roman Abramovich is clearly not taking any chances. The FA Cup is one thing. The Premier League is something else entirely. 

And, so, the wheel at Chelsea Football Club turns once more, with another manager making way after a short tenure. A penny, then, for the thoughts of Pep Guardiola, Jurgen Klopp and even Ole Gunnar Solskjær, none of whom produced spectacular results in the early days of their time as managers at Manchester City, Liverpool and Manchester United, and yet have, generally, come extremely good. Lampard has had just 18 months in charge, admittedly with six or so of those with £200 million-plus worth of new players under his belt, including the likes of Timo Werner and Kai Havertz, Germans of whom much has been expected, and yet haven't yet delivered. The thinking now is that Lampard will be replaced by a German-speaking manager to get the best out of the pair, with Leipzig's Julian Nagelsmann and former PSG boss Thomas Tuchel high on the list, as well as Southampton's Ralph Hasenhüttl.

As this blog (and its predecessor) has catalogued, depressingly, Chelsea's impatience is frustrating. Then again, you could argue, somewhat coldly, that Chelsea's habit of dispensing with managers so frequently has been key to their success. It does, though, leave this fan in particular feeling dispirited. Club loyalty isn't bought by success. While we have, in the Abramovich era, enjoyed a success that wouldn't have seemed possible when I first went regularly to Stamford Bridge, with Chelsea playing in front of crowds of 7,000 in the old Second Division, we have always enjoyed a sense of entitlement to being something bigger (and in those days, far bigger than we actually were). Today, Chelsea are considered part of the "big six", a fact that still sticks in the craw of Liverpool and Manchester United fans who've experienced their own wilderness years (adding Tottenham to that cabal for good measure). But we are where we are, and Abramovich's largesse has got us there. And so it's only natural that he should be ruthless in protecting his investment. But with each managerial sacking - especially with someone universally liked, and particularly so, in the case of Lampard - a little piece of the love for Chelsea dies.

I get it. It's a business, and if you run a business badly, your board will remove you. But football is also a different animal. It's sport, performance sport. Elite players are not plug-and-play components, and while I don't even pretend to understand the science that goes into football coaching, I know that you can't just match up a coach and a set of expensively-assembled players and it all falls into place. And even when it does, new challenges come along. Again, just ask Guardiola, Klopp, Solskjær, Mourinho, Arteta or any one of the other Premier League managers who, at various times, walk the tightrope.

Time, we know, is not in the football manager's gift, and Chelsea managers in particular know this more than most. What frustrates me more than anything else about Lampard's sacking is not his exalted status as the club's all-time record goalscorer and a proper club legend, but that he hasn't been given time to develop the project. Success under Abramovich has to be instant. This, I also believe, is because he has too many people in his ear who are more concerned with what the football commentariat has to say than the actual reality. It feels like Lampard has been talked into the sack by media headlines saying that, though I'm sure the decision-making process was a lot more thorough than simply looking at the back pages.

Taking out, for a moment, the emotional attachment fans have to Lampard, he represented a challenge that always was going to need time. In his maiden season in charge, it was clear that the youngsters (and club youth products) he was forced to play, like Tammy Abraham, Mason Mount, Reece James and Callum Hudson-Odoi actually represented a promising future. They still do, of course, especially Mount, who was given the captain's armband yesterday against Luton and looked like it was his destiny, especially having been at Chelsea since he was six-years-old. Managerial comings-and-goings are part of football, so even to these youngsters Lampard's sacking won't be a surprise. These kids will not have been immune to the ruthlessness with which Abramovich has axed his managers (which isn't all that different to the attrition rate under Ken Bates). But taking the helicopter view, it's a worry that, having been brought on so far, a change of manager and the likelihood of someone with absolutely no past connection with this talented group will impede their development. Look how many loan spells Abraham had before any first team head coach would give him a start.

It remains to be seen who Chelsea will go with now, but it's safe to assume that the names of Tuchel and Nagelsmann appearing in the press is no coincidence. Tuchel, in particular, will be a divisive appointment, given his departure from PSG and the nature of his relationship with the French club's hierarchy. The bottom line, though, is that there doesn't seem to be the ideal Chelsea manager. None last long, not even a favourite son like Lampard. The last such gamble on a younger manager was André Villas-Boas, appointed in June 2011 and fired the following March. His replacement, Roberto Di Matteo - another club legend - went on to win the Champions League itself...only to be fired in the November after a dip in form. And so the cavalcade of managers - some popular choices, like Carlo Ancelotti, some less popular, like Rafa Benitez - has come and gone. At the same time, the club has won four league titles under three different managers, five FA Cup finals under as many head coaches, and three European trophies under three bosses. Yes, there may be some method in the madness, but it leaves the bitterest of tastes in the mouth. As The Times' chief football writer, Henry Winter, wrote prophetically this morning: "A personal wish would be for Lampard to be given until the end of the season, given a chance to get Chelsea back into the Champions League, and if he fails, at least Abramovich can look a club legend in the eye and say thanks but goodbye. Lampard certainly deserves that respect." That he does, that he does.

Time for a Monday Moan? Not just yet

Picture: BBC Sport

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Red Rain

Picture: Getty Images

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

View from the VAR side

"It's hard to know where to start," said West Bromwich Albion manager Alan Pardew last night, as he was asked about the impact the Video Assistant Referee had on his FA Cup Fourth Round win over Liverpool. And he wasn't about to be positive, either. "I don't think that is what we want to see going forward, whether you are a Liverpool or West Brom fan."

VAR is only a matter of weeks old in English football, and - as with anything new and slightly clunky - is taking time to accept. We've moaned long enough about the need for video technology and when it finally comes in we moan some more. In last night's cup tie, referee Craig Pawson referred to VAR and the eyes of virtual referee Andre Marriner (in a box somewhere in London) a total of eight times. Three incidents reviewed via the system proved to be key the game's outcome - including a disallowed West Brom strike, Liverpool winning a penalty, and a contested Baggies goal being allowed to stand.

In its match report, the London Evening Standard talked about VAR being used "...during an action-packed first half". The problem is, VAR slows down that action completely. Craig Dawson's goal took more than a minute to be judged offside via VAR. "Firstly, there is no communication from the referee to us," Pardew complained, adding that the bigger issue was the four minutes it took to judge the Liverpool penalty claim after Mo Salah went down in the Albion box in the 23rd minute. "You are going from high-tempo workrate to nothing," said Pardew. "We had a hastring [injury] just after that." (i.e. "Just sayin'").

It's something I noticed at Stamford Bridge two weeks ago when Chelsea played Arsenal in the Carabao Cup. VAR reviews of, first, César Azpilicueta and Calum Chambers' coming together, then a challenge on Cesc Fàbregas, and again when Victor Moses appeared to foul Alex Iwobi in the penalty area, seemed to take forever for referee Martin Atkinson to resolve. If the managers didn't know what was going on, the players on the pitch certainly didn't and nor did we up in the stand, bored by the tedious 0-0 stalemate unfolding. From a television point of view, it was the sort of pause broadcasters hate - dead air, effectively - as Atkinson repeatedly held his finger to his ear like Chris Morris's spoof newsreader in The Day Today.

For us paying fans, we could easily fill the downtime by posting facetious tweets, but for the players at risk of hamstrings cooling down, it must have felt like eternity. It is, of course, only sensible to assume that VAR simply needs more time to get used to. We've needed video technology for too long now, and now it's here we should embrace it. Jurgen Klopp, the defeated Liverpool manager last night, was certainly more stoic than Pardew: "Normally after a game I have to explain to you a defeat which was not deserved because we din't get a penalty or they scored another goal. Is it cool in January to have delays when it's cold, especially for the players? Maybe not, but it will become smoother and more fluent in the future."

Definitely not impressed was broadcaster Danny Baker, who launched into one of his periodic football rants (and of a veracity not seen since he laid into a combination of England's shameful 2016 European Championship game against Iceland, and Glenn Hoddle's commentary of it). Of the more repeatable tweets, "VAR is sucking all the life out of what was a pulsating cup tie. Literally draining the atmosphere. So, we may have a correct game by computer but dull match in flesh and blood. Absolutely awful. yet this terrible thing will be rolled out" and "What numbs a crowd is the idea that now THEY aren't the people at the event, they are just watching something that is being judged and relayed from some remote office. Supporters are now just extras at their own event. VAR MUST BE ABANDONED."

I have a suspicion that this will run. And run...

The dead man walking walks away again

We've never gone short of bizarre things said by football managers. Even before the influx of foreign coaches, there were plenty of notable (or notorious) things uttered by the likes of Ron Atkinson, Brian Clough and Private Eye's "ashen-faced" Ron Knee, beleaguered boss of Neasden FC, and the magazine's go-to foil for anything football related. But the arrival of managers from abroad has brought with it the occasional mangling of their second (or third or - take note Brits - fourth language).

Last season, Claudio Ranieri brought us his baffling, but endearing "dilly-ding, dilly-dong". And yesterday, Liverpool's Jurgen Klopp, in reacting to Leicester City's sacking of Ranieri on Thursday night, declared: "For me there have been a few strange decisions in 16/17: Brexit, Trump, Ranieri.". There. Right there, the sacking of a football manager bracketed in with Britain's unexpected European departure and the insane Dorito being elected President of the United States.

But then while Klopp's sentiment may have been slightly wonky, it wasn't misplaced. Even José Mourinho chose to compare his own most recent sacking from Chelsea with Ranieri's from Leicester on Thursday (an irony, given that it was defeat to Ranieri's Leicester City that precipitated Mourinho's departure from Chelsea, as manager of the-then defending champions slid closer to the trap door, exactly as Leicester are doing now). Perhaps Mourinho's sporting of a Manchester United training top bearing the initials "CR" was laying it on a little too thick.

It would be the coldest of hearts who'd dismiss the fact that Claudio Ranieri is a much-loved individual. In fact, he'd been that way long before Leicester invited him up the M1 to take over a club desperate to stave off another relegation battle, and which ended up winning the most prestigious - and lucrative - prize in English club football.

Despite a somewhat so-so history at clubs in his native Italy and elsewhere in Europe (Gary Lineker reacted to his appointment with a dismissive "Claudio Ranieri? Really?" tweet), he was seen as a decent, dignified, endearing man. Prior to Leicester, his previous appointment as manager of the Greek national team lasted barely four months, prompting Italian football writer Tommaso Pellizzari to tell the Financial Times’ that Ranieri was “the perfect loser, with a capital L”, and that “everyone in Italy thought he was very nice, polite, kind, but please never call him to my team”. Chelsea fans still hold a torch for the man dubbed 'The Tinkerman', building the foundations that Mourinho built on to win successive Premier League titles in his first two seasons at the club, having replaced Ranieri, the ‘dead man walking’ whom the capricious Roman Abramovich fired in favour of the dashing Portuguese, fresh from winning the Champions League with Porto.

And here is the reality: before Ranieri came to Leicester, he actually had a decent managerial record. It just wasn't laden with glory, all the time. But compared with Arsène Wenger's most recent history at Arsenal, actually, not that bad. Moreover, in winning the Premier League handsomely with Leicester - who'd been 5000-1 outsiders at the start of the 15/16 season, Ranieri endeared himself to the nation. Even the hardest-hearted, deepest-embedded tribalists who unwaveringly follow their clubs without any consideration for any other team, fell for the endearing charm of the Roman. The sadness, then, at his sacking is entirely justified.

"Yesterday my dream died", said Ranieri in a statement. "After the euphoria of last season and being crowned champions, all I dreamt of was staying with Leicester. Sadly this was not to be. The adventure was amazing and will live with me forever. My heartfelt thanks to everybody at the club, everybody who was part of what we achieved, but mostly to the supporters. You took me into your hearts from day one and loved me. I love you too. No-one can ever take away what we achieved together and I hope you think about it and smile every day the way I always will. It was a time of wonderfulness and happiness that I will never forget. It's been a pleasure and an honour to be a champion with all of you."

Nothing can ever take away the fact that Ranieri achieved the almost unfathomably impossible with Leicester. But something has irretrievably been broken this season. Eerily, like Chelsea under Mourinho in his last spell, the players that Ranieri had so delightfully motivated to win the Premier League, have stopped playing for him. While it may have been classless for Leicester City's Thai owners to have sacked the very man who'd brought them unexpected success only last May, the club is once again staring down the barrel of relegation, in a tailspin that it doesn't seem to be pulling out of anytime soon.

Quite what the "painful but necessary" sacking of Ranieri will achieve is not known. The perceived wisdom was that he'd lost the dressing room, that players had actively sought to undermine him with the club's owners over his changing tactics and tinkering. And while there might be historic precedent for this, it seems frustratingly sad that the players Ranieri took over line to remarkable victory in May should have become so jaded and mutinous in February. Perhaps, as he did at Chelsea, 'Uncle' Guus Hiddink is now the solution to sooth bruised egos and help find the players' collective mojo again.

The reality is that it's probably too late. I do, actually, see the logic of Leicester's decision, or at least the business rationale of Premier League survival for the club's owners. But here we enter the choppy emotional waters of what makes football. Shareholders might have a different view, but for a season at least, Claudio Ranieri was the unlikely star of a fairytale, and a box office hit at that. What a sad, sad sequel.

Behind blue eyes

It may only have been a couple of weeks ago - and it was - that we bade farewell to the last football season with the somewhat anti-climactic final of Euro 2016, but even at the indecent hour of 5am this morning it felt like the new one was already underway.

Of course, the 2016-17 season proper doesn't start for another couple of weeks (Scotland, the Football League, Community Shield, et al, with the Premier League on August 13), but the intensity of this morning's/last night's apparent friendly in California between Chelsea and Liverpool provided a more revealing insight into what we can expect from Antonio Conte, in particular, and indeed Jürgen Klopp in his first full season at Anfield.

Chelsea's pre-season PR machine has certainly been keen to show off Conte's high-tempo, intensive training techniques, with videos and press images of players working on fitness and body strength with positively medieval-looking giant elastic bands, medicine balls and other gizmos that those in the know claim to be highly innovative.

Last week's friendlies in Austria were more boot camps than anything serious, a first opportunity for the Italian to run the rule over most of his squad (some who'd been in teams progressing late into Euro 2016 were excused to finish up their holidays). But this week's American tour under the auspices of the "International Champions Cup" - a four-way tournament involving the two English clubs, Real Madrid and AC Milan - looks like being a far more competitive affair. The all-Premier League tie at the Pasadena Rose Bowl was certainly uncompromising, with Cesc Fàbregas doing little to impress Conte by earning a straight red card for a sloppy studs-up encounter with Ragnar Klavan's ankle, and Liverpool picking up five bookings.

In principle, though, no one should be too excited by the result - 1-0 to Chelsea after a tenth-minute Gary Cahill header. As we are drilled to say, "pre-season friendlies don't matter". Well, at least that's how we responded to last summer's disastrous preparation, which included a humiliating 4-2 defeat to a significantly second-string New York Red Bulls team, adding to the precipitation of José Mourinho's mood and the entire team's season-long malaise.

But there was an exciting intensity to the Liverpool game of a kind that you would normally expect from these two teams meeting on a November afternoon in West London. And if that was the image that Conte, in particular, wanted to put across, both to fans and his new bosses, then he probably succeeded. In return, we got to see a steely Chelsea, and the Conte passion we were all thrilled by during the Euros, somewhat sweatily being played out on the Rose Bowl's touchline.

Twitter/Chelsea FC

Mental strength and physical stamina were, arguably, Chelsea's undoing last season, with the former most prevalent as the Mourinho cloud grew ever-darker, and the team going on to lose 12 games and concede 53 goals. What will certainly please Conte will be his defence, which last night comprised of Cesar Azpiliqueta, Gary Cahill, 19-year-old Londoner Ola Aina, and John Terry. Yes, the Terry who only re-signed for the club as the hours ticked down to his contract expiring at the end of May. Klopp was certainly impressed by the opposition his forwards came up against: "When a team with the quality of Chelsea defends so deep then every team in the world will have a little problem," he told the Liverpool FC website.

Terry, in particular, deserves credit for his performance against Liverpool. It wasn't necessarily spectacular - the game itself wasn't - or perfect (he is, let's be honest, beyond that now), but his application and fitness over this and the other pre-season games have shown what an inspirational captain he still is. 90 minutes for a 35-year-old in searing Californian heat should not be sniffe at. Not for nothing has he been putting in the hours to demonstrate his indispensability - and captaincy - to Conte, even with the club still looking for another centre-back (Napoli's Koulibaly an expensive possibility), and Kurt Zouma soon to return from long-term injury.

While Chelsea's high-profile signing N'Golo Kante is being spared the pre-season program following France's run to the Euro 2016 final, Michy Batshuayi's introduction two-thirds into the game provided another showcase of his potential. Same goes for Juan Cuadrado, whom Conte is determined to hang on to after an impressive loan spell at Juve. All that said, the core of Conte's team against Liverpool was from the Mourinho squad, with Willian, Traore and Loftus-Cheek looking sharp in attack, along with former loanee Victor Moses, who has been impressing in pre-season, as has Nemanja Matic, after his indifferent form last term.

With Hazard back to his best, and Diego Costa's head (and fitness) being mostly in the right place, regardless of new distractions from Madrid, there is a palpable sense - to use a phrase - that the Conte regime is already drawing a line under Chelsea's dismal championship defence, one which saw them flirt dangerously - and realistically - with the relegation zone until Guus Hiddink steadied the ship.

Twitter/Chelsea FC

It's easy, simplistic even, to become giddy during pre-season, with new players, the sunshine of a summer tour, and even a bright, shiny new kit to give everything a freshness. Conte, especially, is well into his Chelsea honeymoon, one gilded by such an electric run with Italy in the Euros. But with the forthcoming challenge of Mourinho's Manchester United and Guardiola's Manchester City, along with Liverpool, Spurs and, of course, defending title winners Leicester, honeymoons do come to an end early in football. But for now, it's nice to bask in the glow of a very bright start.