The fire's started for Chelsea prodigy Andre Villas-Boas

But reality is always more complicated than we would wish it. No manager so far, not even the great Jose Mourinho - who used Abramovich's riches to transform Chelsea into a hyper-efficient, if often dour, title-winning machine - has been able to bring home the Champions League.

Carlo Ancelotti won the Double in his first season but was gone by the end of his second as seemingly baffled as the rest of us as to how it had gone so wrong for him so quickly. His successor, the absurdly youthful Andre Villas-Boas, is already beginning to struggle, if not quite in the manner of 'Big Phil' Scolari, who was sent on his way with a reported £7.5million in his back pocket after a matter of months.

Like his mentor Mourinho, Villas-Boas has polyglot intelligence, flair, excellent coaching and motivational skills, and he knows how to wear designer stubble and a well-cut suit. His former players at Porto speak fondly of his empathy and ability to inspire. Unlike Mourinho, the arch exponent of anti-football, he does not perceive the game to be a form of perpetual conflict, always provoking, always at war.

The trouble is everything seems to be happening too quickly for him. As an adolescent he was befriended and encouraged by Sir Bobby Robson during his period as manager of Porto, and it's as if ever since Villas-Boas, who never played professionally and learned the game in the classroom, as it were, has been on a fast-track to his present pre-eminence, like one of those child maths prodigies who is hurried through school and on to Oxbridge while his peers are still playing hide and seek.

At present, there's a frenetic, jittery quality to Chelsea's play as witnessed in the recent defeat at Old Trafford; last week against QPR, when they had two players sent off and captain John Terry is alleged to have racially abused Anton Ferdinand; and again on Saturday when they conceded five at home for the first time in the Premier League.

Under Villas-Boas, Chelsea are playing a high-risk, open game that is exposing their defensive inadequacies. It's almost as if the young manager is operating against his own better judgement and instincts.

His Porto team, which won the title last season as well as the Europa League, resembled a Mourinho side: defensively resilient, hard to break down, disciplined yet also capable of scoring freely.

Last season in the league, Porto conceded only 16 goals and did not lose one of their 30 games. It's little wonder that, in his impatience and restlessness to find another Mourinho, Abramovich came a-wooing.

So far, as one of Mourinho's supporting staff at Porto, Chelsea and Inter Milan, and then as manager in his own right at Porto, Villas-Boas has experienced only success. A measure of his resilience will be how he now responds to what has been a terrible week for Chelsea, on and off the pitch.

Even before the racism allegations, in recent games, Terry has looked suddenly old and cumbersome. He passed the ball well early on against Arsenal, when time allowed, but increasingly he looks like a player whose legs are going - he has lost that yard of pace he never had.

It's always poignant to witness a great player in sudden decline, and Terry's struggles are exacerbated by the failings of those around him, especially right-back Jose Bosingwa, who attacks with pace and verve but is too often caught out of position. Perhaps only Ashley Cole, of Chelsea's defenders, would be a first pick at Manchester City, who, alone among the title challengers this season, seem able to defend as competently as they attack.

A few weeks ago, Chelsea chairman Bruce Buck declared that Villas-Boas was "here to stay" and suggested that the Portuguese could be manager for as long as he wished. "We do envy Arsene Wenger at Arsenal and Sir Alex Ferguson at Manchester United in terms of longevity, but it shouldn't be longevity for longevity's sake," he said. "It has to be the right guy in the job for 10 or 15 years and, in light of Andre's age, he may well be that guy."

No one would accuse Abramovich, who has had seven different managers in his eight years at Chelsea, of believing in longevity for longevity's sake. It may be that what he understands by "longevity" is different from the rest of us. What's obvious is that he will not tolerate for too long being entertained by 5-3 home defeats.

Expect Villas-Boas to spend heavily on defensive players in the transfer window and to switch to a less open, more pragmatic style of play. If he doesn't, his stay may be no longer than Ancelotti's.

Wenger must strike while Van's in overdrive
A couple of years ago the Arsenal website published a fans' poll of the club's greatest ever players. You couldn't argue with the top six: Thierry Henry, Dennis Bergkamp, Tony Adams, Patrick Vieira, Liam Brady and Robert Pires.

If the same poll was conducted today one of those players might have to make way for Robin van Persie, who, on present form and now that he is free of injury, is surely the best player in the Premier League. He has always been a player of extraordinary technique, with a left-foot, as Hugh Mcllvanney once wrote of Brady, "delicate enough to remove a speck of dust from a baby's eye".

Will he stay or go when his contract runs out in 18 months? It's a non-question. Arsenal should do whatever it takes to keep him. The joy RVP showed while celebrating with team-mates at the end of the astonishing win at Chelsea suggests that he might just be in the mood to be persuaded to stay on in London.

Jason Cowley is editor of the New Statesman