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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Picture: Chelsea FC

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

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

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

A gentleman to the end

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Picture: Getty Images

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

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

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

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

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

Gianluca Vialli - 1964-2023

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.

A glimpse into the future...but for whom?

Twitter/Chelsea FC

In three weeks' time Antonio Conte could be collecting a FA Cup winner's medal from whomever Prince William deputises to the task while he's busy delivering the best man's speech at his brother's wedding. If Chelsea do beat Manchester United at Wembley on May 19 it will be a welcome reversal from last year's abject display against Arsenal in the same contest (one for which - without any bitterness at all... - I bought a ticket for myself and my best mate for his 50th birthday...), in which Conte's then-Premier League title winners forgot to turn up. Or, at least, they turned up with Victor Moses, who forgot what occasion he was playing in.

Some say Chelsea are cup specialists. There are those, too, who maintain that no other club in the modern era has made the FA Cup Final quite their own. In this regard, they have a point: in the competition's modern history Chelsea have won the cup seven times out of a total of 12 appearances. They won the last final at the old Wembley in 2000 and won it in the first final of the new stadium in 2007, beating Manchester United by a single Didier Drogba goal. For those of us who were there, this was sweet revenge for the humiliating 4-0 defeat by United in 1994 (even if that experience - which led to a European Cup Winners Cup run - somewhat marked the 'return' of Chelsea to the big time, having spent the 1970s and 1980s in a dark, financially ruinous an largely anonymous, success-wise, place).

Indeed, it would be three years later when the team, under Ruud Gullit's management, captained by Dennis Wise and peppered with internationals like Gianfranco Zola, Frank Leboeuf, Gianluca Vialli and Roberto Di Matteo (who famously scored after just 42 seconds), would beat Middlesborough 2-0 and win their first 'grown-up' silverware for a quarter of a century.

"Chelsea are back!" we sang, and they were. I won't bore you with all the stats that have followed, save to say that the FA Cup has been an ever-constant in much of the Abramovich era, a period that, yes, has seen Chelsea win the Premier League five times, but has also seen them win the Cup four times in the last 11 years. That, however, isn't the point of this post. Nor is the cycle of management - you know the drill: Chelsea hires head coach, wins a trophy or two, parts company with head coach, hires head coach, wins a trophy or two, parts company with head coach, repeat ad nauseam. Nope. Not this. Even if, surely, Conte's appearance with Chelsea at Wembley later this month will be his last in charge.

No. Because when Roman Abramovich assumed ownership of Chelsea, apart from wanting to turn it into London's AC Milan, he also gave instruction to his minions to create a successful academy system that would generate future stars for the club. On paper, at least, that hasn't happened. John Terry is, arguably, the last youth product to have achieved first team regularity (although, this season, Andreas Christensen could be considered to have broken through, tentatively). Looked at from a broader, historic perspective, the Chelsea academy hasn't been without longer lasting successes: Jimmy Greaves, Bobby Tambling, Peter Bonetti, Terry Venables, Ron Harris, John Hollins, Peter Osgood and Ray Wilkins all came through its system, along with more recent graduates like Terry, Ryan Bertrand and Robert Huth. However, the absence of sustained careers at the parent club remains a key issue for the current era. Perhaps it's not even the academy's mission? Perhaps generating new talent, who glimmer with prospect for first team appearances before being sold or loaned out is merely the business model, nothing more than a form of husbandry and a secondary process to first team recruitment? For fans this isn't without its frustration. Chelsea loaned out academy product Ruben Loftus-Cheek and replaced him - for £40 million - with the profoundly disappointing Tiémoué Bakayoko. There are many more examples.

Twitter/Chelsea FC

Which brings me - six paragraphs later - to events last night at the Emirates Stadium and the point of this post. Chelsea won their fifth consecutive FA Youth Cup, an achievement you have to go back to the Busby Babes of the 1950s to match. Thrashing Arsenal 7-1 on aggregate recorded the Chelsea Under-18s their seventh FA Youth Cup trophy in all since 2010. The feeling amongst football writers is that it is unlikely to be their last, either, and that a fifth consecutive trophy could easily become a sixth, seventh or more.

Imagine a first team recording such persistent success. They'd be regarded with the same superlative as Manchester United's dominance under Sir Alex Ferguson, or the modern Barcelona, or Liverpool in the late '70s and early '80s. And yet, when you think about it, seven years of success for a youth side should mean, applying basic mathematics, that there has been a steady flow of graduates into the Chelsea first team. The truth is, there hasn't been. Amongst the current crop, Callum Hudson-Odoi (who scored twice last night) has had a few runouts this season under Conte, during which he has looked a very exciting prospect, with lightning pace and an exceptional turn of foot. Others, like Dujon Sterling and Ethan Ampadu have also enjoyed the odd taste of the big time as substitutes. The $64,000 question is - what next? Will that be it?

Another key question is about the future of Jody Morris, the Under-18s manager. A Chelsea academy graduate himself, once a combative midfielder who came through the ranks alongside Terry and made 124 midfield appearances between 1996 and 2003, he has quietly got on with playing a huge part in the youth team's remarkable run of success since being appointed four years ago. While it might be highly unlikely that he would be considered an immediate replacement for Conte, should he leave (and with a predictable list of European exotica being lined up), surely a record like his won't go unnoticed?

All of which begs the more existential question about what is Chelsea's strategy when it comes to players and managers alike? To win five consecutive trophies suggests that the club is sitting on a gold mine in Morris and his players. No one, though, would be so naive to suggest that any of their success would translate instantly into the first team: but, all the same, it would be a tragedy to see that talent just ebb away to other clubs. I might be ludicrously idealistic, but why not get some of these youngsters blooded in properly at the top level, and see what raw, precocious talent can do? Alan Hansen's infamous statement in 1995 that "You can’t win anything with kids" has often been proven right, even if it was immediately proven wrong by Fergie's youngsters (Gary Neville, 20; Paul Scholes, 20; Ryan Giggs, 21; Phil Neville, 18; Nicky Butt, 20; and David Beckham, 20) going on to win that season's Premier League. The trouble is, is any club willing to give it another go now?

Behind blue eyes - Ciao Antonio, come stai?

The last time anything took as long as the appointment, confirmed today, of Antonio Conte as Chelsea's new manager was, possibly, the tectonic movement that formed the continents.

For almost as long as there has been the vacancy at Stamford Bridge, following José Mourinho's sacking in December, the 46-year-old with frankly scarily ice-blue eyes has been in the frame to become Roman Abramovich's next club manager, although unrealistically Pep Guardiola and Diego Simeone were higher up the short-list.

Of course, Conte still has the trifling job of managing Italy's progress through the European Championships this summer before he takes over at Chelsea, but when he does he will have his work cut out and then some. Even with his pedigree - 400 midfield appearances for Juventus, winning five Serie A titles and the Champions League with them, and then winning the domestic title for Juve in his first season as manager of the Bianconeri (and two more Scudetti in each season thereafter) - the task of rewiring Chelsea to be both a Premier League and a European contender once more will be huge.

I say "rewire" as the job in hand isn't necessarily about reconstruction. Many, if not most, Chelsea fans will say that now is the chance to rebuild the club around the exciting youth prospects that exist, including those in the trophy-gathering Under-18 and Under-21 teams, as well as those expensively cast out on loan in Europe, their futures uncertain. As Tottenham's Mauricio Pochettino and even - gasp! - Louis van Gaal have shown, young prospects can convert hunger and prospect into excitement and results.

Quite why Chelsea have acquired so many young players and, under successive managers including Mourinho and even 'Uncle' Guus Hiddink, not played them at all or very little, has been baffling. Unless the club academy responsible for their development, or the executives responsible for signing them, simply haven't delivered the goods, in which case they should be sacked at the earliest opportunity.

The second scenario is that Conte may just want to hang on to the players that have been part of this, Chelsea's worst season, relatively speaking, in many years. Athletico Madrid want Diego Costa to return, and the Brazillian-turned-Spaniard's easily combustible nature has suggested that he hasn't settled in London. Conte, though, apparently sees him as the ideal spearhead, and there's no doubt that when Costa is focused on simply being the best goal hanger on the pitch, he can still do a fearful job for Chelsea.

And then Eden Hazard. Player of the season one minute, embarassing refusenik the next. Conte is said to have told people that he will wait until he's fully on board at Chelsea before speaking to the mercurial Belgian, but if body language counts as 90% of all communication, Hazard is already on his way to Paris or Real Madrid, his dream destination. It would be a supreme loss of talent - Chelsea were right to sign him up to an extremely lucrative deal - but when the head's gone, the body follows soon after, and that seems to have been the case this season, from the moment he scuffed a keeper-to-beat opportunity against Petr Čech in the Community Shield at Wembley, and when he went down injured the following week at Stamford Bridge, sparking the whole Mourinho-Carneiro hoo-ha. His season has been unbelievably poor ever since.

The other player Conte should give significant thought to ejecting is Thibault Courtois. He was the much-exalted successor to Čech, who kept him out on loan at Athletico because the Czech stopper was - and still is - that good. Like his fellow Belgian, though, Courtois' head seems to have been turned by interest from elsewhere. But the truth is that he hasn't consistently demonstrated that he is as good as Čech was, if ever, if I was to be brutal. Indeed Asmir Begovic, who covered for Courtois in the early weeks of this season, showed that he was equally up to the task. Having two top-quality No.1s is never ideal, from a player management point of view, but Begovic has maintained his dignity and fan respect since Courtois returned from injury before Christmas. Perhaps Chelsea could cash in...and pick up a bargain like Southampton's Fraser Forster as a result?

Conte will have other issues to consider: one of the most pressing is in central defence. John Terry is unlikely to receive a new playing-only contract, but could he be persuaded to stay on in a player-coach capacity? Some believe that Chelsea should cut their losses altogether with Terry, and adopt a new-coach, new-era approach, and there is some credence to this. Traditionalists, though, will see that keeping Terry and his natural leadership around could be valuable for a young squad looking for icons - of which he is about the only one left - at the club. One thing is certain, Conte keeping Terry would certainly not be a simple issue of age. "There is no young and old, only victory or failure," he told Tuttosport last year, sounding an awful lot like Robert Duvall's Colonel Kilgore in Apocalypse Now.

But what, too, of Gary Cahill - who plays worse the less Terry appears - and the criminally inconsistent Oscar. And Matic - who has stubbornly failed to regain his 2014-15 form - and Loic Remy, who has been pushed so far out to the fringes that it would be best for all concerned for him to move on.

That would leave Conte with the likes of Willian - the only real candidate for player of the season this term and also a player who would definitely fit the Conte mould - plus Branislav Ivanovic (himself no spring chicken), the promising Betrand Traore, Kenedy, Kurt Zuma when fit, the dependable Cesar Azpilicueta, young American Matt Miazga, Cesc Fabregas as a new permanent captain, and the still-to-be-polished diamond that is Ruben Loftus-Cheek. With the wealth of talent out on loan, such as Nathan Ake, Marco van Ginkel, Nathan Chalobah, Dominic Solanke and Isiah Brown, plus a few marquee signings (forget Pogba, but why not Cavani?), and Conte has the potential for a young, lively and - most important of all - unpredictable team.

One of Mourinho's failings was his lack of variety. Once opposing teams figured out how to shut down Hazard or crowd out Costa they exploited Chelsea's predictability, who failed to have a plan B ready. Thus there was little squad rotation, little change from 4-3-3 and little chance of fringe and youth players getting a chance, all of which surely added to the team's mental and physical collapse and their season's success being measured only by how they avoided relegation.

Not that Chelsea's still-bruised and battered stars can expect any respite from Conte: by reputation he is an unrelenting taskmaster who built his own playing career on hard graft and has come to expect the same of anyone playing for him. Perhaps that might prove too much for some at the Bridge, though Chelsea won't want to see a repetition of this season's abject collapse until Hiddink's brand of Dutch lassez-faire restored confidence. And the results have clearly followed.

Life under Conte will not necessarily be any more comfortable than they were under Mourinho. In his autobiography, former Juve star Andrea Pirlo recalls how Conte had a volcanic temper, describing dressing rooms filled with flying water bottles and even stronger invective when things weren't going well: "When he talks, his words assault you," Pirlo describes his former coach poetically. "They crash through your mind, often quite violently, and settle deep within."

Regardless of how the azzuri do in France this summer, it's clear that Antonio Conte will join Chelsea with a history of success for a manager who is still only in his mid-40s. Even with some residual reputational baggage hanging over him from the ten-month ban he received during his time as coach of Siena (he was charged with failing to report a match-fixing attempt - which he strenously denied), the Premier League is a vastly different place to Serie A. That may not be a concern to Conte from a physical point of view, but it will inevitably inform his tactical outlook, and obviously the choice of players he might ask Marina Granovskaia and Michael Emenalo to deliver (though he shouldn't hold his breath if the experience - and latterly barely concealed frustration - of Mourinho last summer is anything to go by).

Ultimately it will be Roman Abramovich himself who will have to accept that no matter Conte's history, the 2016-17 season will be a relatively fallow one, especially without any European involvement (unless a Europa League comes unexpectedly good in the next month). Abramovich might, to some degree, shoulder some blame for Chelsea's state this season (though given his remarkable benevolence and genuine enthusiasm - take note, R. Lerner... - it would be hard to go further than that), as he appointed Granovskaia and Emenalo to their posts as, respectively, executive in charge of player acquisitions and technical director. These appointments have led to the ridiculous state of affairs of more than 30 players out on loan and the abysmal transfer deadline day grab of soon-to-be-forgotten players last September.

Conte will have to deal with that haphazard mechanism above and aside him. He might ask for Pogba, just as Mourinho did, but it will be a wonder if such a player can be lured to a club which is hardly one of Europe's giants (even if it thinks it is) and most probably will only be focused next season on domestic honours.

One thing, however, is certain about Conte joining Chelsea: the club has benefitted immensely from its recent history of Italians. Even now I can't believe that the Chelsea of 1996 was able to sign the gentlemanly Luca Vialli, soon after he lifted the European Cup as Juventus captain; and I still revel in every twist and turn that I saw Gianfranco Zola put in during his mesmerising spell at the club.

Italy and everything Italian suddenly became cool again in London (as it had been in the Mod era of the 60s). Not that long after Italia 90, the arrivals of these Italians, and those who'd played in Italy like Ruud Gullitt, may have come towards the end of their playing carreers, but to this Chelsea fan and committed Italianophile, they marked the end of a period of moribundity at the Bridge. All of a sudden, a club that had history but little to show for it, had panache and style, on the pitch and off. Even Roberto di Matteo's restaurant, La Perla, was an exquisite dining experience.

Conte will become the fifth Italian to manage Chelsea, and the sixth to have managed in Italy, if you include Mourinho's spell at Inter. The expectation for success will come from Abramovich alone: his acquisition of Chelsea in 2003 was, it is believed, in order to create an English version of AC Milan, complete with Andrei Schevchenko and a rumoured attempt then to lure Carlo Ancelotti away from the San Siro. That he eventually did, with the arch-eyebrowed one winning the Premier League title, the FA Cup and the Community Shield in his first season in charge, 2009-2010. Vialli became player-manager, winning the FA Cup, League Cup, UEFA Cup Winners Cup and UEFA Super Cup, while di Matteo 'just' won the Champions League. And Claudio Ranieri? I believe he is now at a club called Leicester City.

Benvenuti, Antonio, e buona fortuna.