It’s a little ironic that Chelsea fans are celebrating the departure of the unfortunate Andres Villas Boas following his sacking last weekend. Then again, given that the club owned by a fan is also, sadly, run like a club owned by a fan, that reaction shouldn’t be too surprising.
Let’s face it; for all the emotion and passion fans invest in their clubs, they are hardly best placed to make management decisions in the best interest, both short-term and long term, of the club. Of course, Roman Abramovich invests much more than his emotions in the Stamford Bridge club, yet his track record – with both manager and player acquisitions – suggest many of his key decisions are down to his emotional whims rather than the business logic one would expect of a club with Chelsea’s aspirations. The fact that Abramovich’s Chelsea have now seen off 7 managers – including some of the best names in the game - in 7 years only underlines Roman’s fan mentality: quick to covet, quick to discard.
Don’t get me wrong; it’s not so much that the sacking of AVB in itself was a surprising or illogical conclusion to this tryst. It has indeed been a hugely disappointing season for the Blues. It’s not just that the results have seen a squad packed with expensive talent trailing in 5th place, the team has seldom performed well all season. Defeat at West Brom may have ultimately sealed Villas Boas’ fate, but they were equally abysmal in a 2-0 loss at Everton a fortnight earlier, and they were fortunate to tie Championship team Birmingham at home in the FA Cup a week later.
Where the questions must be asked of Abramovich and the Chelsea higher ups would be in their original decision to bring in Villas Boas last summer and what their expectations of this young coach and the squad were for this season.
On the face of it, few would argue that Chelsea’s aging squad has been in need of fresh blood for the better part of the last four years. Indeed, the club’s procurement record over the last year or so appears to be an attempt to begin the transition. Ramires, Fernando Torres and David Luiz arrived last season, followed in the summer, at great expense, by goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois, Oriol Romeu, Juan Mata, Raul Meireles, striker Romelu Lukaku – and the return from loan of Daniel Sturridge. January saw the club sign another Belgian; Kevin de Bruyne from Racing Genk.
Was Villas Boas brought in to ease out the holdover veterans from the Jose Mourinho era – Petr Cech, John Terry, Frank Lampard, Ashley Cole, Didier Drogba, Nicolas Anelka, Michael Essien – and bed in these new faces? And if so, was that supposed to happen this season or at a more relaxed pace? And if the new boys were supposed to take over right away, did Chelsea spend wisely in bringing in a clearly unready Lukaku, a goalkeeper in Courtois that has spent this season on loan at Atletico Madrid, and de Bruyne, still playing on loan at Genk?
Beyond the supposed transition and its pace, there are tactical considerations too. If Chelsea were well aware of Villas-Boas preference for a high defensive line and energetic pressing, why hire him to manage a squad so clearly ill-suited, at least in the short term, for such a tactical framework? In their defence, Chelsea isn’t the only big club to fall into this trap. Inter Milan found themselves in the same mess this season, when they brought in a coach in Gian Piero Gasperini whose preferred 3-4-3 system, so effective at Palermo, was ill-suited Inter’s squad. Unlike his Portuguese counterpart though, Gasperini didn’t make it to Christmas, making way for ex-Chelsea man Claudio Ranieri after just three months in charge.
But Chelsea’s courting of the high profile Villas Boas, on the back of an unbeaten triple winning season at Porto, smacks of the same kind of thinking that prompted the arrival of Torres from Liverpool last January. Once again Chelsea were quick to covet a shining star – like most fans – with seemingly little regard for how that star would match their existing system.
Of course, it wouldn’t matter one jot if AVB had been brought in to change that very system. But if that were the case, it is clear that he has been given neither time nor personnel to effect that change.
If on the other hand, he was brought in to cajole this squad to another title challenge – nay, a first Champions League win – then it’s easy to conclude that Chelsea picked the wrong man from the off.
As things stand, it is interesting that whatever hopes Chelsea have left for the season – essentially the FA Cup and a place in the top four – now lie in the hands of a coach that, just a year ago, was deemed not good enough to save West Brom from relegation.
