Forget the 'undertaker chic', Grant deserves to bury Mourinho’s ghost

It has been branded "undertaker chic", and those with a better eye for fashion have suggested he opt for the more elegant blue club suit.

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They, too, are made by Armani but Grant is said to be having none of it. He is happy to resemble an overweight James Bond and has declared that he has no interest in what others might think.

Which, it has to be said, is a sign of strength rather than weakness in this image-conscious world of European football. The kind of strength that Steve McClaren never quite possessed during a brief but difficult spell as England coach that ended with the ultimate act of vanity.

Thanks to his obsession with his thinning hair, McClaren will forever be remembered as Wembley's wally with the brolly.

Grant displays no such signs of insecurity and instead seems to display confidence in himself as much as his ability to guide Chelsea through what could have been a very difficult few months.

That it has actually been anything but a difficult few months is to Grant's considerable credit. Chelsea's players, indeed the whole club, were in shock after Jose Mourinho made his sudden and unexpected departure. But the results do not reflect the upheaval.

After four months in charge, Grant has an identical record to his predecessor. In 28 games he has enjoyed 21 victories, five draws and lost only twice. Not only that. Like Mourinho, he has also guided Chelsea to the Carling Cup Final.

Even those who appointed him as Mourinho's replacement would struggle to claim now they shared Grant's belief in his talents as a coach and manager. You could see as much in their faces on the day the Israeli was unveiled. You could see it in the way they squirmed under an avalanche of questions. The mood at Stamford Bridge that day was one of incredulity.

How, those of us in the audience quite rightly asked, could they replace the Special One with a bloke, however pleasant, who had never won a Champions League match never mind the final. He said he was "the normal one" and while we laughed no one was terribly impressed.

Now, however, we have to concede that there is more to Grant than perhaps meets the eye.

Talking to people yesterday, it seems Grant took a very sensible and, perhaps more significantly, sensitive approach to managing a team unsettled by the loss of their creator.

"Some managers might have gone in there and tried to stamp their authority, their own brand of football, on things," said one observer. "But Avram gave the players space and allowed them to come to terms with the changes in their own time.

"All he did say was that he wanted the players to express themselves more on the pitch, which was obviously something they all welcomed."

For Grant, it was a case of evolution rather than revolution. The training didn't really change. Just the way it was taken.

Mourinho was very hands on, so much so that his coaching staff rarely got the opportunity to coach.

Grant adopts an approach favoured by managers like Sven Goran Eriksson. He prefers to sit back and let Henk Ten Cate and Steve Clarke lead the sessions while he observes. He might take an individual player aside for one-to-one advice but more often than not simply tells his coaches what he wants and then lets them do the rest.

"If Jose was a movie star, Avram is more like a professor," said another Chelsea source. "He's a student not just of football but of sport and he studies the psychology of sport. I think in steadying the ship after Jose that has been important."

The players do, of course, deserve praise, too, not least when they have had to overcome so many injuries and the absence of players who have gone to the Africa Cup of Nations.

Didier Drogba might have expressed a desire to leave but even he responded to the speech John Terry delivered within 24 hours of Mourinho's departure. Terry reminded everyone that the club is bigger than any one individual and said they should not write off the season but instead maintain their ambition for trophies.

Grant is nothing like as charismatic as Mourinho and has not yet proved that he can build a team in his own image. It is Mourinho's team, even if he has spent some money in the January transfer market, and the idea of him stepping aside in the summer for someone of Frank Rijkaard's considerable stature is not inconceivable.

Especially when it would see the Dutchman reunited with Ten Cate, who was his assistant at Barcelona.

Grant, for all his qualities and a dry sense of humour, is not the box office manager Peter Kenyon needs when the chief executive is so determined to develop the Chelsea brand.

But he can only be judged on the results he has achieved and his results, and indeed many of Chelsea's performances, suggest he is a much better manager than we, perhaps, gave him credit for. And a much better manager than he is a dresser.