Andre Villas-Boas's sacking from Chelsea at the weekend is another victory for player power at the club. While the results were poor for the Portuguese coach — he had both the lowest win percentage and points-per-game average of any Chelsea manager since Roman Abramovich bought the club — he was brought in with the long-term objective of making significant changes at Stamford Bridge. He was meant to not only oversee a transition from an ageing squad into a more youthful one but also to change the whole culture of the club, from the formation and style on the pitch to the way things operated off it.
Such things take time, a commodity rarely afforded to the man in the Chelsea hot seat. Villas-Boas was no different, despite his supposed forward-thinking brief. He would occasionally put some of the more senior players on the bench, and that immediately got them upset.
A big fuss was made every time Frank Lampard was not in the starting line-up but he has played in 23 of Chelsea's 27 league games so far this season, starting 20 of those. In fact, if you look at the team sheets for Chelsea's most disappointing results under Villas-Boas, Lampard started many of those games. But he and the other established stars at the club seem to be beyond reproach. It is always the manager who carries the can as far as Abramovich is concerned.
The players who had brought the trophies to the club over the past decade obviously got nervous at the thought of their positions being threatened, but you cannot stop the march of time. Every footballer, even the greatest ones, has to accept that eventually they have to start winding their involvement down.
If you look at players such as Ryan Giggs or Jamie Carragher, the reason they still have a place in the clubs they have served so well over the years is because they have made peace with the fact they no longer have an automatic place in the team, despite previous successes in which they were instrumental. They are happy to play whatever part their manager sees fit for them, and are ready to do so at all times. You cannot say the same for many of the current Chelsea squad.
For there to be so much player power at a club the size of Chelsea is, quite frankly, a disgrace. I have never seen anything like it before. I suppose it is a symptom of the age, with salaries so much greater than they were and egos to match.
Finding the right man to manage that below him and contend with such an impatient employer above him is very difficult. They say that managing England is the impossible job, but being in charge of Chelsea must run it a close second. With Chelsea seemingly going backwards and them no longer enjoying the same financial advantage over their rivals as they used to, it is a genuine concern that they will not hit the heights of a few years ago again any time soon.
The club needs a whole new ethos, cemented from top to bottom, if it is going to recover from this and meet the high standards set during the early years of the Abramovich era. However, that will take time, something that it is hard to see any manager getting at Chelsea.
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