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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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