Glad it's all over?

Picture: Twitter/Chelsea FC

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Picture: Twitter/Chelsea FC

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

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

Dead men walking

Imagine, for a moment, being sacked by the media before your employer has formally relieved you of your position? Imagine knowing for weeks that the person most likely to take your job hasn’t officially left theirs, even though someone has been appointed to replace him? Imagine maintaining, amid all the speculation, that you plan to see out your contract? Imagine turning up for work on a Monday knowing the it was only a matter of when, not if, that your successor would be announced? Imagine, then, being a dead man walking.

"People have said I am a dead man walking but I am not - I am still moving. It is difficult to kill me" - Claudio Ranieri

It was Claudio Ranieri who rose, stoicly, above the rumouring when still Chelsea manager to respond to media claims that he was a “dead man walking”, following Roman Abramovich’s acquisition of Chelsea. The Italian - a dignified figure then and still a much loved figure to this day - was being written out of a job by the sports press who hypothesised that the so-called “Tinkerman” (on account of his sometimes eccentric susbtitutions) would not be the manager Abramovich would want to implement his vision of turning Chelsea into the AC Milan of West London. Enter José Mourinho.

As long drawn out public executions go, Antonio Conte has been on Death Row for the last 12 months. Even as he was celebrating winning the Premier League - perhaps unexpectedly - in his first season in charge at Chelsea, the Italian was sowing the seeds of the departure announced this morning by agitating for more investment in players, or investment in better players. This became the narrative of an otherwise disappointing second season for Conte at Chelsea. Given Roman Abramovich's history of trigger-happy knee-jerk dismissals, Conte was playing with fire. That it's taken such a protracted time for him to go is, actually, baffling. Chelsea managers have gone far sooner and for less.

On Monday this week Conte took charge of Chelsea's first official pre-season training session at the club's Cobham base. It was the first time he'd been seen in public with Chelsea since the FA Cup Final at Wembley in May, when he paraded with his squad and the trophy. His future remained ambiguous: he maintained he was going nowhere, that he had a contract and he would fulfil it. The club said nothing, but the rumours continued that it was actively seeking a replacement, with Napoli's Maurizio Sarri persisting as the lead candidate. Today, Conte's status, at least, has been finally clarified: "Chelsea Football Club and Antonio Conte have parted company," was the headline on the club's website, following the somewhat basic "During Antonio’s time at the club, we won our sixth league title and eighth FA Cup. In the title winning season, the club set a then-record 30 wins in a 38-game Premier League season, as well as a club-record 13 consecutive league victories. We wish Antonio every success in his future career." 61 words, and none of them including the customary "we thank XXXX for his contribution to the club's success over the last XXXX years" or "by mutual agreement". It's a statement that no doubt, had been crafted by a lawyer. Just the right side of acknowledgement, just the right side of liability.

The period since the FA Cup Final has been, even by Chelsea's modern standard of dysfunction, chaotic. According to various reports, Conte's departure was protracted while lawyers haggled over the terms of his payoff, rumoured to be worth up to £9 million, as well as payoffs for his entire coaching staff, which includes his brother Daniele. Whether Conte had accepted his fate, or not, remains to be seen, and the sight of him on Monday taking training came across as either an act of accommodation or resilience on a scale not seen since Monty Python's Black Knight declared "it's just a flesh wound",  as blood spouted from a socket vacated by his severed arm.

Sources in Italy claim that Conte has been "disgusted" by his treatment, but as likeable for fans as he was, he should not be surprised. On top of the precedent set by eight previous managerial sackings, often with considerably shorter lead times, Conte needs to reflect on the way he went about things: effectively firing a sellable asset like Diego Costa by text message wouldn't have gone down well; then there was the constant niggling about players, plus an apparent deterioration in his relationships with key figures on the playing staff like Eden Hazard, Willian, David Luiz and Thibaut Courtois; and then a season - a title-defending season - in which consistency and indifference became the norm, rather than the bright, exciting excellence of the previous term. If the griping about players wasn't enough, a post-Christmas run of three consecutive 0-0 games and seemingly routine defeats to Manchesters United and City raised questions. The 4-1 reverse to Watford only raised more. A league record of 21 wins, seven draws and ten defeats, with a fifth place finish, may not be a disaster, but in contemporary Chelsea terms, not enough. The 3-0 away defeat to Newcastle on the final day of the season probably sealed Conte's fate - even with the Cup Final win to come - as it simply summed up a season of seeming indifference. That Chelsea would fall outside Champions League places - still the measure of Abramovich's expectation - added one more nail to the Conte coffin as Chelsea manager.

Given this record, it seemed to be an unavoidable conclusion that Conte would go. What has delayed the process has been the even more protracted legal wrangling to land Maurizio Sarri as his replacement. Despite Napoli appointing Carlo Ancelotti as manager some weeks ago, Napoli have been haggling with Chelsea over minutiae in an agreement to release Sarri from his contract, and prevent Chelsea trying to poach Neopolitan players. Presumably, the timing of this morning's terse, 61-word statement about Conte means that Sarry's appointment, plus the signing of Italian midfielder Jorginho, all part of a £54 million deal with Napoli, will go ahead.

Just as well: the club's website yesterday trilled that there's just four weeks to go before the start of the season. Never has there been such an alarming lack of preparedness for a new season. The club might, apparently, seem calm about it, but its fans are restless. As Spain found a few weeks ago, sacking a manager just before a major competition can have disastrous results. I hope Chelsea - lacking a Director of Football since Michael Emenalo left for Monaco, with an owner seemingly barred from the UK and calling a halt on the development of Stamford Bridge - are prepared for the consequences.

If there is one good thing about finally solving the manager issue, it's that the club can start making summer signings. The suggestion is that since discussions began with Napoli over Sarri's release, the manager-in-waiting has been feeding instructions or at least requests on who he'd like Marina Granovskaia, the club's de facto chief executive, to sign. More hangs on this than just a sign of activity: Eden Hazard's stock has risen in Real Madrid's eyes since Ronaldo hopped off to Juve, and with the Belgian rattling his sabre over Chelsea's lack of signings so far in the window, Sarri's first task will not be bed in new players but to keep those like Hazard from fleeing. Conte's man management left a lot to be desired, and stories have even surfaced this week if him carrying an intimidating air about him around the club. Sarri will have to work hard and work fast to galvanise the squad, parlay his vision and get them working to it in time for the Community Shield face-off with Manchester City on August 5, and a week later, the opening game of the Premier League season, a tricky away tie to Huddersfield. It all feels just a little too much, a little too late.