This latest Grant farce justifies the fans' fears of a clown

David Mellor
16 Apr 2008

At the end of the great Leoncavallo opera, Pagliacci, after many minutes of mayhem, one of the clowns stumbles to the front of the stage and exclaims: "The comedy is over!" Why didn't Avram Grant do that at Stamford Bridge on Monday after Chelsea all but chucked away their title hopes with a dismal draw against lowly Wigan? Now it's over for Grant, and for us. Chelsea could have drawn level with Manchester United with wins over Wigan and Everton this week, but typically Grant blew it at the first opportunity, by resting crucial players for the Goodison Park game that now no longer matters and then plumbing new depths of ludicrousness by bringing on Andriy Shevchenko for about 30 seconds at the end.

Chelsea could yet win the Champions League but even if, by some miracle, they did, Grant is still a liability; incapable of managing a top team with appropriate professional expertise.

He must go, and really go, not be pushed upstairs to a couple of million quid per year sinecure as director of football - a licence to meddle.

That would be an insult to fans who have to exist on a mere fraction of what Grant would get for being a failure. It's one thing to pay outstanding talent that kind of money; to give it to a third-rate mediocrity like Grant would be just another PR disaster.

Grant isn't Chelsea's only problem. The squad's inability to put moves together that match Manchester United and Arsenal at their best reflects this season's other idiocy; the panic appointment of Henk ten Cate as first-team coach. He, too, should be removed.

A sure sign of how rotten things really are in the state of Chelsea came last week with comments from chairman Bruce Buck.

Having been complicit in the appointment of Grant, Buck proceeded to cut him off at the knees by refusing to confirm that a man with a four-year contract would in fact be around next season.

Unabashed, Buck then turned on long suffering fans who had been singing "you don't know what you're doing," at Grant, and accused them of disloyalty! You couldn't make it up, and you wouldn't want to.

The only people who will be enjoying this nonsense are those who predicted that with Abramovich's billions, Chelsea would buy the Premier League for years to come. They reckoned without Grant!

But what now? The appointment of the current boss was flawed, as is the absence of anyone prepared to say boo to Abramovich's goose. Chief executive Peter Kenyon wouldn't and nor would Buck.

Chelsea need a proper chairman and chief executive who will tell Abramovich what's in the club's best interests, without fear or favour, rather than bending the knee to his every whim.

Unless such people are brought in - some hope - the sacking of Grant won't be the end of Chelsea's problems, merely the beginning of a whole lot more.

Ten million reasons to embrace Stanford's Twenty20 proposal

Which is why I hope England Cricket Board chairman Giles Clarke kept his ears open and his mouth shut when meeting billionaire Allen Stanford yesterday.

Stanford is willing to pay England £10million to play his All-Stars in a Twenty20 series, and the ECB should bite his hand off.

After the last Twenty20 World Cup he offered the winners, India, £5m but they turned him down on the basis they were not prepared to play in a private series not arranged or sanctioned by the International Cricket Council.

The danger for Clarke and his colleagues is that behaving like King Canute won't help English cricket. The history of other sports makes clear commercialism must be embraced, and cannot be rejected out of hand.

With some players apparently getting up to £600,000 for six weeks' work in the Indian Premier League, who can wonder that several centrally contracted England stars are getting increasingly restless that the ECB won't let them sign up. And here's a nightmare scenario; there's no shortage of Indian businessmen with an entrepreneurial streak in the UK, who are looking to see if the IPL is a success. If it is, they will be only too willing to bring it over here and an English IPL tour could do very well, particularly in cities with large communities of Indian and Pakistani origin.

Doing a deal with Stanford offers the ECB the chance to formulate their own Twenty20 strategy free of domination by the Indian sub continent. They could look much further and fare much worse than embracing Stanford, who has shown admirable strength of purpose in pursuing his goal.

Blame yourself, Arsene, not the refs

It wasn't the referees that did for you this season, Arsene, but your own misjudgment in thinking kids playing pretty football would be enough to win things.

So swallow your pride, and buy a few established stars this summer. Just because you didn't develop them yourself doesn't mean they can't do a job for you. And a decent captain might help instead of the ever-petulant William Gallas.

At the end of the game Alex Ferguson came over and gave his old enemy several consolatory pats on the back. If I was a Gunners fan that would have been the bit I hated most. Because it means Ferguson no longer fears Wenger, and can afford to be kind, or should I say patronising, towards him.

King Ronaldo

What an ace Cristiano Ronaldo is. After scoring a perfect penalty on Sunday, he had to retake it. And the second one was even better. How many English players could do that?

Which proves two things. First of all, a properly struck penalty will always beat the goalkeeper, however agile he is. Secondly, Ronaldo is a consummate professional, and a lot of our lads aren't. That, rather than the arrival of terrific foreigners like Ronaldo in the Premier League, is the prime reason for England's failure as a national team.