Dreams can come true - it’s just that this one is a fever dream

I have only once seen Real Madrid play in the flesh, and that was when a business associate took me to the Santiago Bernabéu Stadium some years ago for a home fixture against Getafe. It was a new football experience for me: kick-off at 9pm on a Sunday evening followed - as is the local custom - by dinner in a highly agreeable meal nearby (which meant not getting back to my hotel until almost 1am - perfect, then, for a critical meeting at 8am later that morning...). The football was average, but the atmosphere inside that awe-inspiring colosseum was electric.

Contrast that, then, with the atmosphere at Stamford Bridge around 5pm last Saturday, and what that means for mood around the ground tonight as Chelsea face Real in the second leg of their Champions League quarter final. Somehow, I don’t expect my second experience of seeing the serial European champions for a second time will match my first.

In fact, tonight promises to be a somewhat surreal episode in the fever dream that Chelsea’s season has been from the off. No one, not even the most rosy-cheeked optimist, is giving Frank Lampard’s team a hope in Hell of overturning Madrid’s 2-0 advantage from last week’s first leg. And with tickets at over £70 a pop, I’m even struggling to justify the “but it’s Real Madrid…” reasoning for seeing los blancos in the flesh against Chelsea in their current state. However, a lifelong fan does what a lifelong fan does.

Even by this season’s depths, Saturday’s defeat to an in-form Brighton at Stamford Bridge was a new low, and compounded by being Lampard’s first game in charge in front of the fans he played so brilliantly for over 13 years. The trouble is, on the evidence he’s presented over three games as interim manager, his appointment was purely a PR move by Todd Boehly and his co-owners. And even that looked like it had backfired when the American was seen remonstrating with fans in the tier above his executive box on Saturday.

Yesterday it emerged that an apparently excised Boehly followed his impromptu fan chat by marching from the West Stand across the vacated pitch to the home dressing room in the East Stand, telling the players that the club’s season has been “embarrassing”, and that the board expected better of a squad that has been added to with a £600 million spend during the two transfer windows that the Boehly-Clearlake Capital consortium has been in charge. Rumour has it that one particular player - thought to be Raheem Sterling - was made to feel particularly uncomfortable, given the princely sum that lured him from Manchester City last summer, for limited return since. However, to single out one player would be grossly unfair, given how awful almost all 16 members of the squad involved in Saturday’s game performed.

No doubt Boehly was trying his best to motivate the squad ahead of tonight’s game, with the Champions League now Chelsea’s only prospect for silverware this season, not to mention the only route back into Europe next term. It was reported that Boehly and his fellow board members, Behdad Eghbali and Hansjörg Wyss, spent about an hour in the dressing room, with one eye witness describing the scene as “weird”.

Goalkeeper Kepa Arrizabalaga, appointed Chelsea’s umpteenth captain of the season for the day on Saturday, downplayed the Boehly intervention, saying that it was “normal” for the American to visit the players after games. Lampard himself continued to apply his exemplary political skills during his pre-match press conference yesterday. “When an owner is invested in the team and wants to help and improve, it’s their prerogative to have the input they want,” adding that “past owners” - by which he clearly meant Roman Abramovich - weren’t always present in the dressing room. When the Russian did, it was either to celebrate a trophy, or to be a harbinger of doom for the current manager. “[Owners in the dressing room] is not a bad thing in terms of the identity of the club and where you want to get to,” he told journalists. “There is no problem with it. I had my things to say after the game. If the owner comes in and wants to be positive and speak to the players, then I think it is his part to do that.”

Much of the fanbase, however, pins the blame on Boehly for the mess Chelsea are in, with the £4.25 billion takeover - which did save the club after Abramovich had been forced to sell up - followed by the eye-watering outlay that brought in a phalanx of new players like Sterling, Enzo Fernandez, Mykhailo Mudryk and the loanee João Félix. In of themselves, exciting players, but injected into a squad with seemingly no plan or strategy for playing them. Thus, Graham Potter found to his cost that he was unable to get the best out of his expensive new charges, while still being saddled with wantaway deadweights like Hakim Zyech and Christian Pulisic (whom, inexplicably, he both continued to play). Lampard has now inherited the problem. Not only that but, in his own words, players he considers unfit, with some appearing unable (or unprepared) to carry out basic running at opponents.

All, then, is not happy in the Chelsea camp. Some fans will sympathise with Lampard, even if they’re not entirely convinced he's going to be able to restore any dignity to the remainder of the men’s team’s season (compare that with Emma Hayes’ Chelsea Women, who on Sunday booked themselves a place in their third consecutive FA Cup Final). However, Lampard does not have unanimous support: it is understood that in Boehly’s heated exchange on Saturday, sharp comments were made to him about Lampard’s interim appointment. You might think that to be an act of heresy, but such is the sulphurous mood at the club, that the side was booed off after the Brighton match, despite being the homecoming of “Super Frank”.

“With regard to the ownership and fans, passion goes both ways,” Lampard said yesterday. “The fans show passion and I don’t think the owners or anybody who comes to Chelsea can expect anything else. We have been fortunate enough that the club has been successful over the last 20 years or so. That means you want more of it.” Ever the diplomat, he continued: “The word passion is coming from both sides. These are passionate owners who want to bring a real vision to the club and we are probably the early stage of the process in those terms. We can all be passionate together and work in the same direction.”

The trouble is, there’s scant evidence of that on the pitch. Indeed, an impromptu team meeting led by Arrizabalaga in front of his own defensive area mid-game suggested that the players were starting to make it up for themselves. Lampard, you’d have hoped, should have been able to get this group of misfits playing for the shirt he graced as part of a team of serial winners. On Saturday, only Conor Gallagher and, to some extent, Mudryk, demonstrated any passion. Others, including the dependable wingbacks Reece James and Ben Chilwell looked off their game, possibly embarrassed by what and whom they were working amongst. 

There were too many other lows on Saturday to list here, though the ignominy of Sterling getting booed off stands out. Imagine that, happening to an English player and one of national distinction. But given that Sterling has apparently cut an isolated figure around the training ground, and is believed to have grown increasingly dissatisfied with the club (despite it paying him north of £300,000 a week), it could be said that he has become indicative of the toxicity at Chelsea, as they spiral deeper into the lower half of the Premier League.

Meanwhile, the process to appoint a permanent manager continues. Luis Enrique has already been interviewed, Mauricio Pochettino and relatively unknown Portuguese coach Ruben Amorim also remain under consideration, with Julian Nagelsmann looking increasingly the favourite (with members of the Chelsea board reportedly warming to him having initially been indifferent). However, the challenge for whoever gets the gig is that, on current evidence, Chelsea look unmanageable. To confound things further, Financial Fair Play considerations could leave the successful candidate with a squad drastically depleted by an end-of-season fire sale. Barely a day goes by without another name being added to the list of assets to be stripped. While the eBay catalogue of players many fans would readily eject writes itself (Zyech, Pulisic, Chalobah, Loftus-Cheek, Cucurella, Koulibaly and Sterling, at least), others might be more painful to part company with, most notably Academy graduates Mason Mount, Conor Gallagher and the highly rated young defender Levi Colwill, who could all leverage decent returns. Plus, to add to the new manager’s headaches, Romalu Lukaku will return to his parent club after Inter Milan signalled that they would not be renewing his loan deal, meaning a tricky ego will need reintegrating into a fractured side, despite being one criminally bereft of a nailed-on striker.

Even before the Boehly-Clearlake consortium arrived on the scene, Chelsea suffered from a bloated squad, only lightly offset by myriad loan placements. With a squad of 32 players today, including those acquired over the summer and January windows, Potter and now Lampard have had a near-impossible task keeping everyone happy. There have even been reports of not enough space in the changing room for everyone. More seriously, a working group that big presents challenges for the coaching staff at Cobham, let alone what Lampard must have to do to pick his best 11. On top of that, the new ownership brought with it a number of behind the scenes changes to technical and medical staff, which may have been reflected by some signs of player dissatisfaction spilling into matchdays.

‘Chelsea Twitter’ has been an unpleasant place for most of this season, where even the anonymous keyboard warriors - who’ve probably never set foot in SW6 - have whipped up dissent towards even favourite sons like Mount and Chilwell. The #PotterOut fraternity remained largely online until the crowd became noticeably more muted at Stamford Bridge itself, before becoming openly hostile towards the manager. By the time he was fired last month, Potter had largely lost the broad support, which forced the Chelsea board to act. But, by Saturday evening, after Chelsea’s third defeat in a row under Lampard, even the unthinkable of arguably the club’s greatest midfielder getting stick, was audible. 

The conclusion, then, is that Season 22-23 is lost. Lampard’s totemic figure notwithstanding, Potter could have been replaced by a house brick for the remaining games this term, and the dysfunction would probably be just as bad. Whoever gets to pick up the mess for next season will have a mountain to climb. He will have to rebuild a fractured squad, ensuring that some of the pricier additions who survive the summer cull are in the right frame of mind to compete for just the Premier League, the FA Cup and the League Cup. 

As many a wag has commented, there’s not a manager in the world who can come in and rescue this season for Chelsea. It remains to be seen whether Nagelsmann, Enrique or any of the others on the shortlist can quickly restore Chelsea to the European elite that, under Abramovich, London’s serial under-achievers became a part of. 

Perhaps, though, a fallow season or two is just what the club needs. That’s unless there’s an exceedingly unlikely miracle tonight in West London. Followed by another next month. And another, in Istanbul in June.

Grotesque doesn’t even cover it

The other evening I happened across an episode of Dad’s Army, 'Is There Honey For Tea?', in which the Walmington-on-Sea Home Guard rally around Private Godfrey and his sisters Dolly and Cissy when their idyllic Cherry Tree Cottage comes under threat of demolition. The house is a perfect rose-decorated slice of bucolic English perfection which, Sergeant Wilson wistfully remarks is “just what we are fighting for”. Britain was a different place in 1975, when the episode first went out, beset by grey skies, strikes and British Leyland cars, an altogether different era to the somewhat confected view of tradition which, even as the set-up for comedy, that episode of Dad’s Army set out to convey. But it brought home a point. Tradition does count.

The timing of the episode going out was prescient. Tradition is under attack again from the announcement that England’s so-called ‘Big Six’ league clubs - Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea, Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester City - are to join a new and exclusive European Super League along with Real Madrid, Barcelona, Atlético Madrid, AC Milan, Internazionale and Juventus (notably, none of the likes of Bayern Munich, Ajax or PSG are involved). It’s been some time coming: the clubs are believed to have been in talks for some time about creating their own rival to the Champions League, but formal confirmation of the consortium has brought the morality of it all into acute focus.

Football supporters, commentators, the domestic leagues and politicians have all, quite rightly, condemned the plan. There have been murmurings of points deductions, international player bans and other sanctions for those clubs who take part. Overall, the move has been roasted, demonstrating the grotesque arrogance of football clubs in failing to understand the ethos of what supporting football is all about, and why fans are prepared to dip into their hard-earned to follow clubs at every level for sometimes perverse and random reasons. 

I make no secret of my patronage of Chelsea, one of the clubs who’ve signed up for this folly. And it’s not out of arriviste glory-hunting, either: I started visiting Stamford Bridge as a child, when the club was near bankrupt, flirting with the old Third Division, and crowds of just 7,000 were turning up to see warhorses like Micky Droy and Ron Harris kick lumps out of opponents. Liverpool were then the dominant English side - even Ipswich were in the ascendancy - and the sort of riches that surround Chelsea today weren’t even dancing on the wildest stages of our imagination. That’s not why went to the Bridge. It was our club, just as whichever berth you call your home club is yours. It is, of course, an added bonus if you have superstars to watch. Even better if your club gets to play the European elite - nothing gets the hackles up quite like watching a load of cynical Spaniards falling over a lot in front of you on a Wednesday evening. But to some extent, this is mere confection, fairy dust sprinkled on the more prosaic form that is the Beautiful Game.

"We have all spoken forever about the importance of the ‘pyramid’ - the dream, the aspiration of clubs developing, they fall, they get promoted,” former  Football Association and Manchester City chairman David Bernstein told Sky News this morning. “Clubs like Manchester City who, 20 years ago, were in the first division and playing Gillingham in a play-off final at Wembley, become what they are now. Leicester City now have punched above their weight. "So I think you are moving all that dream, that aspiration, and I think that's sad and very dangerous."

Football fans have expressed similar sentiment, especially supporters associations of the clubs embroiled in the breakaway. The Chelsea Supporters' Trust branded it “the ultimate betrayal" and a decision made “with no consideration for the loyal supporters, our history, our future or the future of football in this." One Liverpool group accused the club’s US-based owner, Fenway Sports Group, of appropriating a property that is "ours not theirs”, while another said it was withdrawing support to a club “which puts financial greed above integrity of the game.” The Manchester United Supporters Group posted a picture of the Grim Reaper kicking a football on its website, along with a statement opining that the new league “has no sporting merit and would seem to be motivated by greed,” adding that it had been created without any input from the grass roots of the club’s support. "These owners, irrespective of where they come from, seem to think football belongs to them; it doesn't it belongs to us - the supporters - irrespective of which team we support."

I’m not saying that Doncaster Rovers are any closer to playing Real Madrid in the Champions League, but why can’t they aspire to the Premier League and therefore a shot at a top four place? Unlikely that they would, but who is to decree that they can’t, simply because a self-appointed elite has elected to create a closed shop into which only they can play. And for those fans of clubs in this super league - do we really want to play the same 11 teams all the time, including six we meet at least twice a season in our home league? There’s no dodging the fact that competition for the Premier League title and for the Champions League itself is dominated by the same clubs season in, season out, but there’s still enough margin for variety that we can, for example, see West Ham challenging for a Top Four league finish this season, and thus a shot at the European elite next season at the expense of one of the so-called big six.

Tradition, of course, doesn’t even enter the equation. It’s all about cold hard cash. Larceny, actually. The big clubs and their owners have shown their true colours and a patent absence of any understanding of what they’re custodians of. By reducing European club competition to, essentially, an exhibition tournament, they are effectively turning the 12 teams into football’s version of the Harlem Globetrotters. I’m sure we’ll see all the tricks in the book, but it will soon get pretty boring watching them play the Washington Generals every time. European nights haven’t been made by predictability, but by the complete reverse. We still talk now of José Mourinho leading Porto to the Champions League title in 2004, or even further back, Brian Clough doing the same with Nottingham Forest, twice. 

What I bridle with the most is that these clubs believe, to begin with, themselves to be a self-appointed elite. Even thinking about my own club, Chelsea are where they are today thanks to Roman Abramovich's largesse. Do Arsenal or Tottenham have any right to see themselves as elite on their form this season? No, and frankly that statement extends back even further. Elsewhere, neither Liverpool or Manchester United have been exactly polished this term, ditto Barcelona and Real Madrid. The only thing that distinguishes these clubs is the wealth behind them.

What the proprietors have declared, in forming the super league, is their disdain for everyone else, and that frankly is the ugliest aspect of all this. I’m not going to pretend that football is a purely altruistic sport, where hard work and endeavour is the only measure of progress. Because clearly when you’re able to spend £70 million on a single player, whereas other clubs in your same domain struggle to spend that on a squad refresh, you’ve got a performance advantage (even if the litany of expensive flops proves that all that glitters isn’t always gold). Essentially, the breakaway clubs have given a massive ‘up yours’ to the rest of football. They have even doubled down on this by taking pre-emptive “protective steps” to legally prevent football authorities from taking sanctions out against the clubs, with measures talked of including players being banned from playing for their countries, one of the ultimate objectives they strive for.

Let me return to this thing about tradition. It’s a thorny subject. A procession of interviewees today have referred constantly to the role all football clubs, even the big ‘corporate’ behemoths, historically play in their communities, and that the big six are showing this contempt. They will all dispute that, going to great lengths to demonstrate their community programmes, from grass roots support to dispatching their first team to children’s wards at Christmas. But you can’t ignore that even the most historic clubs now looking to join the super league are living a world away from the traditions they come from. 

“He’s more machine than man,” Obi-Wan Kenobe tells Luke Skywalker about his former protege, Anakin in the 'first' Star Wars film. You could say that about the clubs involved in this venture.  “They pretend ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’, the people’s club, the fans’ club,” railed Gary Neville yesterday about Liverpool. And he had this for the club he played for: “Manchester United, 100 years, born out of workers. And they are breaking away into a league without competition, that they can’t be relegated from? It is an absolute disgrace. We have to wrestle back power in this country from the clubs at the top of this league, and that includes my club.” His former manager Sir Alex Ferguson - who remains a director at the club - told Reuters: “Talk of a Super League is a move away from 70 years of European club football.”

You could take a step back, breathe, and conclude that football is in constant flux. That progress should be embraced. Even Private Godfrey concluded that if his cottage had to be destroyed for the war effort, so be it. We can easily descend into romanticism, but I think that risks missing the point. We support the clubs we follow - regardless of their status - because of something else, something intangible. Even we Chelsea fans, contrary to the jibes, are not glory hunters. We’ve endured bad times and frustrations. We even appreciate the good fortune we find ourselves in, to follow extravagantly financed teams staffed by exciting talent. But that doesn’t entitle the custodians of our clubs’ histories to ride roughshod over them and our patronage. 

You could even take the harder view that football has been a divided kingdom for a long time, of an elite and all the rest. In the grand scheme of things, does anything fundamentally change with this super league? Yes, pretty much the same clubs who vie each season for the knockout stages of the Champions League are involved in it, but there’s a fundamental here: there’s no reason why other clubs can’t also be in the mix, working their way up the pyramid. And that’s what we scream and shout for. Not some glorified showcase, a friendly tournament in all but name, and one designed purely to line the pockets of the proprietors, and do nothing for the humble supporter, many of whom will be now questioning where they put their disposable income when it comes to football.

Hazard ahead: exiting the garden of Eden

Picture: Twitter/Chelsea FC

There is, at times, too much to like about Eden Hazard. For a footballer, and a preposterously talented one at that, he is bright and articulate. And also supremely knowing. Things that might come across as gaffes by other footballers are delivered with poise and purpose by the 28-year-old Belgian, as well as with a twinkling glint in the eye. Which is why, when you first examine the situation, we are to believe that he hasn’t made up his mind whether he wants to stay at Chelsea, or move to Real Madrid. Personally, I think that he’s already on his way to the Santiago Bernabéu Stadium, and it’s just a (small) matter of the Spanish giants making the right offer (which, of note, they haven’t so far). Moreover, Hazard has now said that does, now, know what decision he will make, but coyly won’t reveal what it is until “the right moment”.

Friends have allegedly been told that he will join Madrid, although there is the small matter of Real matching a suggested price tag of at least £100 million that Chelsea would expect from any deal. That, to be honest, sounds like a good bit of business, given that Hazard’s current deal with Chelsea continues until the summer of 2020. However, we’d be wise not to get too carried away…yet. The rumours and speculation about Hazard have been with us for some time now, but they were cranked up a notch or three the other day by the sudden surfacing of a brief clip from an interview Hazard gave French radio station RMC two months ago. Now, the full interview has become available, and inevitably it presents a somewhat less dramatic view. “For now,” Hazard tells the station, “the only thing to think about is playing well for Chelsea. I have a year-and-a-half left on my contract, everyone knows. My decision will be known soon, but it’s not something that affects my mind. I think about it, but without thinking about it. When I’m in the field, I just want to play. We’ll see what happens after.” Hazard does admit that a decision has been made “more or less”, but not when he’ll reveal it. “I do not know, we’ll see. I will wait for the right moment,” he maintains. This is both Hazard being the diplomat, and Hazard being slightly disingenuous.

As a fan, I’d be sad to see him go - he is a rare talent, one of a kind we haven’t seen at the club, probably since Gianfranco Zola’s time as a Chelsea player, and even then it would be hard to fully compare the two.  Having someone of Hazard’s genuinely unique talent, who can justifiably be compared as a game-changer with the likes of Messi or Ronaldo, is a valuable commodity that any other team would love to have in their ranks. But if you’re going to cash in on a player that has probably had his head turned by the idea of playing for Real Madrid, now’s the time to do it.

No one can say we haven’t had value out of a player Chelsea signed as a 21-year-old from Lille in 2012 for £32 million. Given that Chelsea have had players on its books even older than that who’ve never played a minute for the first team, that fee seems like a bargain now, given the 104 goals he’s scored for the Blues since joining in June 2012. He’s been mostly on scintillating form this season and is currently the Premier League's fourth top scorer with 12 goals, as well as having made the league's most assists with 10. The arrival of Gonzalo Higuain to replace the anemic Álvaro Morata and give a more muscular striking alternative to Oliver Giroud should give Hazard a new lease of life, enabling him to drop out to his favoured left wing, rather than toil in the 'false nine' role Maurizio Sarri frustratingly plodded on with. It will keep him engaged as Chelsea chase a probably fourth place finish and Champions League football next term. It won’t, however, be enough to keep him in West London. Even if Chelsea are able to dangle a new contract, thought to be well in excess of £300,000 a week, to keep him, I’d be amazed if he stayed. And good luck to him.

Sarri's recent clumsy attempt at, what I'm in no doubt was, reverse psychology, berating the Belgium for being "...more an individual player than a leader", seemed to cascade off Hazard like water off a duck's back. The player has said that he frustrates managers almost as a matter of course, something Sarri has already acknowledged: "You know very well that Eden is a wonderful player but he’s an individual player. He’s an instinctive player. For him, it’s very difficult to play only in one position. He likes very much to go in the direction of the ball, wanting the ball at his feet.” That, Sarri should recognise, is precisely why Chelsea will miss him when he’s gone. The Italian's dogmatic obsession with choreographed possession is at odds with Hazard's mercurial free spirit. Don’t forget, this is a player who once arbitrarily switched flanks midway through a match simply because he'd had enough of Antonio Conte barking in his ear on the touchline. A maverick tendency like that will never sit well with Sarri's studious and rigid philosophy, which might explain why the Chelsea coach was somewhat sanguine the other day about the prospect of a Hazard leaving (“Eden is 28. If he wants to go, I think he has to go. Of course, I hope the opposite. He has the potential to be the best player in Europe.”).

Picture: Twitter/Eden Hazard

If he does leave (and that does still depend on Real Madrid actually wanting him - a point that's not entirely clear, since PSG's Neymar and Kylian Mbappe are said to be their preferred target) - Chelsea have options. One must surely be keeping Callum Hudson-Odoi, the 18-year-old with the potential to be as unique and effective as Hazard. And there will be the summer arrival of Christian Pulisic, joining from Borussia Dortmund for £57.4 million (an arrival, though, that could see Hudson-Odoi moving in the opposite direction to Bayern Munich). Another possibility might be going after Barcelona's reportedly unsettled Philippe Coutinho. Neymar and Mbappe not withstanding, Hazard must be of interest to the Bernabeu power brokers, who are yet to have backfilled the starring role Cristiano Ronaldo enjoyed for nine seasons. That said, slapping a price tag of more than £100 million might put them off Hazard, even with the prospect of loanee Mateo Kovačić being used as a makeweight. If that stalls a move, Hazard will simply run down his contract, and who knows which Eden Hazard Chelsea will have to deal with in his final season. Unlike the ugly manner with which Thibaut Courtois angled his way out of Stamford Bridge, one would hope that the classy manner with which Hazard has mostly carried himself would see him remain hungry to contribute in what would be a final full season. Even if Hazard himself now knows what he’d like to do, there are still too many variables beyond his control, not least of which Chelsea, who would presumably still want to keep him, and Real Madrid, who have yet to publicly show their hand.

The Monday Moan is back, back, BACK!

Well, I say "the Monday Moan" and "is back", but to clarify, this Monday morning, all is well at Chelsea Football Club. The time when my Monday Moans were a weekly occurrence date back to that painful period between 8 August and 17 December in 2015 when my previous blog involuntarily recorded Chelsea's actual, physical, literal, visible decline, from defending league champions to one place above relegation. And, you guessed it, you know why the Moan has been resurrected now.

Manchester United are not, as yet, in danger of relegation and I very much doubt they ever will be. But the toxicity José Mourinho is currently creating around the club is absurdly identical to that he generated in his final months at Chelsea, which even kamikaze pilots would have regarded as a reckless trajectory. But it wasn’t just at Chelsea: look at how things fell apart at Real Madrid, when the club’s galacticos rejected Mourinho’s defensive tactics. When he left, and Zinedine Zidane took over, Madrid went on to win three Champions League titles. Funny that. Oh, and who is now being rumoured to be of interest in Manchester?

Literally everyone (OK, an exaggeration, but almost) said it would happen like this: pundits and saloon bar sages alike predicted that José would repeat the three-year cycle he's rolled through seemingly everywhere else - arrive, rebuild, win something, implode - after he'd spent most of his time immediately post-Chelsea positioning himself to be United’s next manager (a job, at the time, already filled by the hapless Louis van Gaal). But once he’d installed himself and his usual entourage of assistants at Old Trafford, hardly anyone expected things to go any differently to that which played out so vividly at Chelsea.

Seeing Mourinho go to Manchester United was like watching some celebrity car crash of a marriage - a tabloid bad boy and a TOWIE bimbo getting jiggy with it on Big Brother, followed by some lovey-dovey appearances together on The Graham Norton Show before it all goes badly wrong with a drunken shouting match outside China Whites. That’s where things stand now between Mourinho and - not just Paul Pogba, but mainly - several players he’s publicly vilified.

Clearly, though, the focus is on the battle of wills between Mourinho and the £89 million Pogba, a player the manager had been reluctant to take on in the first place, and is now making that abundantly clear. Pogba, for his part, hasn’t helped with his own attitude: getting caught larking about on Instagram while your side is going out of the League Cup to lower league opposition is not conducive, especially with a manager as capricious as Mourinho. Pogba’s public criticisms of United performances, such as the 1-1 draw with Wolves, have been either naive or unnecessarily (and riskily) antagonistic. No wonder Mourinho took the captaincy off him. However, left back Luke Shaw’s own seething assessment of United’s performance the other day against West Ham is another sign of the growing dissent within the Manchester United camp that is tearing the club apart. Shaw, himself, has been criticised by Mourinho, so for him to have a pop back appears to be particularly open war-like. Add to the list Anthony Martial, of whom Mourinho criticised for being “not very, very focused on his defensive duties”, and Alexis Sánchez, who was given a dressing down in front of the entire United Squad. In the same team meeting Mourinho laid into the saintly Juan Mata, the player he’d shipped off to United when Chelsea manager (much to the fans’ displeasure), whose future looked bleek when Mourinho followed him there, but whose worth to the Portuguese has, though, been one of the soothing ointments to his time as United boss. Not surprisingly, the smart, intelligent Mata has - along with fellow Chelsea emigré Nemanja Matic - been running diplomacy in the fractured dressing room, trying to sew unity for the sake of the team’s future, though not necessarily for the manager’s future.

Manchester United maintains that Mourinho’s job is not in danger, and on paper it would be absurd for any club to sack a manager after just seven league games, let alone Manchester United (not a sacking club) getting rid of a manager as big as Mourinho. But is Mourinho that big? The Special One clearly has had it - and loves reminding everyone of what ‘it’ is - but the build-win-implode cycle surely now has been found out. What club would, now, be mad enough to bet on the certainty of Mourinho repeating the pattern again if they took him on? And given United’s normal reluctance to make any changes until the end of a season, how bad do things need to get before they are forced into the decision Chelsea had to make on 17 December 2015, having lost nine of 16 Premier League matches, and generating “palpable discord” with his players.

One big difference between then and now was that there weren’t any Chelsea players speaking so brazenly in public. Diego Costa’s flounce with a warm-up bib against Spurs at the end of the November that year was the first real sign of the discord Michael Emenalo would speak of three weeks later. Now, the concerns - mostly private but some less so - of United’s players are becoming known. Mourinho and his assistant managers have a Herculean task ahead of them to bring harmony to this group. If they don’t, it will only get worse, as will the results. And then, Manchester United may just be forced into making an unprecedented decision, one we Chelsea fans have grown used to, but to the Old Trafford faithful, only now getting used to life without Alex Ferguson, such a rupture mid-season would be unthinkable (“nonsense” according to the club). For now, it is, but let’s see what happens come the end of this week.

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.

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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.

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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.