Those teams took decades to build into the forces they are. Chelsea will never be at their level if they continue their current ways.
Chelsea remind me very much of an old art class I had whilst at school. We went through five teachers one year. By the time the third came in we realised that if we didn’t like a teacher it would be very easy to drive them out. We were about 14. This Chelsea squad, about double that age, has precisely the same mentality.
That may be harsh on some of the more mature players in the squad; which ironically appears to be younger players like Juan Mata and Daniel Sturridge, whose brilliant efforts this season were not enough to save their talented manager. But it is certainly true of the cabal of players, which is still at Chelsea, who have done for Villas Boas. Villas Boas did not get sacked. He was taken out by friendly fire. Roman Abramovich merely called an end to the infighting.
Yet that infighting will only resume unless the players get the manager they want – Jose Mourinho or Guus Hiddink. Hiddink is at Anzhi Makhachkala and that leaves Mourinho. But for all his success, Mourinho has never been able to win anything without significant financial backing – apart from his time at Porto. And let’s face it – Villas Boas’ achievements at Porto stand up to those of Mourinho, his mentor.
Abramovich, rather than suspending the civil war which has paralysed the club, needs to step in and make decisive acts which don’t involve firing the man in the dugout. It is time, now, before it is too late, to do away with John Terry, Frank Lampard and Didier Drogba in one clean swoop. Drogba wants one big last payday and his powers are on the wane. Terry has always been overhyped but he has lost much of what made him a competent defender in the past. And though Lampard is good enough to repeat what Ryan Giggs has achieved at Man Utd in his latter years of his career, he appears to be too big for his boots at the club. Giggs has never had a massive ego, which is why Ferguson has kept him longer than those who did – David Beckham, Ruud van Nistelrooy, Cristiano Ronaldo. Lampard seems to, if reports are to be believed. And if they are, he had a lot to do with Villas Boas’s sacking.
Chelsea cannot move on until these three players are gone. Teams that need rebuilding have to do so either without the players who made them great, or with those players accepting their diminishing stature, as Giggs and Paul Scholes did at United. But Giggs and Scholes are men whose egos are, if anything, smaller than one would expect. Chelsea’s players are the opposite. Encouraged by the numerous managers they have stabbed in the back and got away with forcing out, they have too much power. It is time for Abramovich to end this farcical state of affairs, or Chelsea will not be here for much longer.
