Save us from the executive CLOTS!
ANDRE VILLAS-BOAS was joking when he said he got a call instructing him to return Frank Lampard, Ashley Cole and Michael Essien to the starting line-up; but it was hollow laughter, really. Chelsea’s manager knows that, had his latest selections not beaten Bolton Wanderers, there would have been another meeting, a familiar inquisition, another call, after which he would have to explain those choices and methods to the owner, Roman Abramovich.
It happened after the defeat by Napoli and it is no way to run a football club or to empower a manager whose aura of authority is vital to the success of his project.
Instead, after losing in Naples, Villas-boas revealed that — via overpromoted technical director Michael Emenalo — he was made to explain himself to Abramovich. ‘He was disappointed with the result and was asking questions about how we set up the team,’ Villas-boas explained. ‘That is the normal way we communicate.’
Indeed it is. The manager picks the team, the team lose a game, the manager is made to stand in the corner like a naughty schoolboy. Business as usual at Chelsea, but not normal, not really. If Villas-boas wants normal he need only to look up the table to Manchester City, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur, three clubs with very different ownership models but each with managers who are supported by their board.
Can you imagine the Glazers demanding an explanation of Sir Alex Ferguson over the team he picked — and by his own admission misjudged — against Ajax? Would a Chelsea manager have received the same level of support as Roberto Mancini over the Carlos Tevez affair? Harry Redknapp could not speak highly enough of Tottenham, who stood by his side through his court ordeal.
The constant demand on Chelsea managers to reveal their thoughts game to game is unhealthy and is now aped by other executive clots: Steve Morgan at Wolverhampton Wanderers, bursting into the dressing room after a defeat at Liverpool and, more extraordinarily, Irena, the wife of Bournemouth co - owner Maxim Demin, who behaved similarly at half-time during Saturday’s match against MK Dons.
Eddie Mitchell, Bournemouth chairman, described Mrs Demin as not very football intelligent and unable to speak much English. A real boon to the half-time team talk then, interrupting the work of manager Lee Bradbury, who made more than 500 league appearances and was recently considered worthy of a new contract lasting until 2015, so might have had a little more idea of what was actually going wrong. At the time of Irena’s uninvited intervention, Bournemouth were losing 1-0 to a side who began the day 19 points and six places above them. The score remained unchanged, despite her assistance.
‘She and her husband have put a lot of energy and a lot of money into the club through me and she is entitled to express her opinion,’ said Mitchell. ‘We are 100 per cent behind the manager but we watch the game and we feel frustrated. Modern football is
MARK HUGHES says he reacted angrily at the end of the match with Fulham on Saturday because he thought Martin Jol was going to pat him on the head. Hughes has lost five of his first six league matches at Queens Park Rangers, and won a single game, at home to Wigan Athletic. Nobody is looking to pat him on the head.
changing. We are allowed to filter our frustration down to the changing room — people have got their lives and money on the line.’
No, they haven’t. Nobody’s life is on the line over Bournemouth versus MK Dons, or even when Chelsea play Napoli. Livelihood, maybe, given that owners are so trigger-happy these days that Redknapp’s three-and-a-half years at Tottenham put him in the top 10 longest- serving managers in the English game and that Tony Pulis makes the top five with six years at Stoke City.
Money is what this is about. The new breed of executive believes cash buys the manager as well as the club. Too few understand that, with the money, you buy the wisdom of a football expert — a title-winner such as VillasBoas or a promising young coach in his first job, like Bradbury — and let him manage. Bradbury took Bournemouth to the play-offs last season and failed to make it to Wembley only on a penalty shootout against Huddersfield Town. The club sold players in the summer but are five points off the play-off places again with 13 matches to go. Bradbury is doing fine.
How l ong that will continue is another matter because players sense weakness and a manager forced to defer to the co- owner’s spouse no longer exudes the same authority.
That is Villas-boas’s problem at Chelsea. Abramovich has given him orders to rebuild an ageing team, but destabilises him almost weekly with these needless shows of strength. Perhaps this is why the manager then over-compensates in his dealings with senior players and his relationships become counter-productively confrontational. Frank Lampard is 33 and an
intelligent man. He will know his days of 60-game seasons are gone. If a manager sat down with him and explained the changing circumstances and evolution that was required, he would understand.
Lampard is far from finished at Chelsea. Even in and out of the team he is the top goalscorer this season, and the only player at the club in double figures in the Premier League. Replacing him will be the most difficult job any Chelsea manager has faced in modern times, because players who score 20 from midfield almost every season cost upwards of the £50million paid for Fernando Torres and are not available very often.
At Real Madrid and Inter Milan, Wesley Sneijder has averaged a goal every six league games. At Chelsea, Lampard averages one every 2.8 starts in the Premier League and one in every 2.7 in all competitions. Anyone who thinks he no longer has a contribution to make is mad, and VillasBoas is clearly quite sane. He started Lampard against Bolton on Saturday, as captain. Yet, overshadowed by Abramovich and the short tenure of most Chelsea managers, so precarious is his authority that he almost has to pick fights with players to assert his authority.
The process of change at Stamford Bridge did not have to turn into an episode of The Borgias. Owner power, not player power, is the problem at Chelsea.