Scolari paid for Blues sinking but captains of ship are the culprits

David Mellor
10.02.09

Roman Abramovich hasn't been seen at Chelsea very much lately. He's had other problems like losing billions of quid, so that's not surprising. And it might have been better if he'd kept on staying away. But he didn't. Yesterday, he went down to the training ground at Cobham and sacked Luiz Felipe Scolari. No weasel words about resignation, or parting by mutual consent; for once a Chelsea press release, normally as reliable as Pravda, told it how it is. Scolari was “dismissed”.

Accompanied by his pet pygmies, chairman Bruce Buck, and Eugene Tenenbaum, and with the third little piggy, chief executive Peter Kenyon, bizarrely on holiday, Abramovich executed Scolari with all the ruthlessness of an old style Tsar.

And with the same foolishness that characterised the last Romanovs blockheaded, learn nothing, forget nothing, regime. Because this was a circular firing squad. By executing Big Phil, Abramovich has effectively shot everything else, including any dreams the fans have of a trophy this season.

Ray Wilkins is a lovely bloke, but has never made a success of running a team. Indeed you can date Chelsea's recent failures to almost the moment he replaced Steve Clarke as coach. Ray's not a Horatio who can hold the Bridge. Ray's the Mr Nice Guy who'll put a charming gloss on yet more defeats.

The usual suspects are being rounded up for the job — Carlo Ancelotti, Guus Hiddink even and, God help us, Avram Grant.

But who will want to come, or be freed up to come, immediately, to put their weight on the fragile ice at Stamford Bridge, with an erratic, absentee landlord in Abramovich, and a tuppenny ha'penny bunch of yes men in Buck, Kenyon, and Tenenbaum, men whose approach to the great task of running Chelsea football club is best characterised by when the owner says “jump”, they reply “how high?”

The French revolutionary writer Denis Diderot used to dream of seeing the last aristocrat strangled with the entrails of the last priest. I feel the same about this lot. The idea Scolari is the only problem at Chelsea is a nonsense. It's nearer the truth to say the club, like a dead fish, rots from the head down.

Think for a moment about some overpaid, pampered players either past their sell-by date, like Michael Ballack and Deco, or out to lunch and most of the main meals of the day, like Didier Drogba.

The coach cannot take all the responsibility for recent disappointments that have to be down to the inability of the players to justify through their skill and commitment their massive, and in some cases obscene, salaries.

Every sane person knows the only way for Chelsea to achieve the success Abramovich dreams of is to combine a massive clear-out of underachieving players, with an equally big buy-in, something that can only happen at the end of the season, and then only if there's the money to do it which Kenyon assures us, and on this occasion he may be telling the truth, there isn't. Actually, the death of Abramovich's dreams has been a long and lingering one, because the fatal blow was actually struck on 20 September 2007. That was when Abramovich, accompanied of course by the pygmies, who were left to put the best gloss on it they could, executed Jose Mourinho for cheek.

Mourinho had got too big for his boots, and in the erratic way absolute monarchs always conduct themselves, because power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, Abramovich struck, apparently without any coherent thought for the future. Mourinho, predictably enough, has gone from strength to strength, looking ever more likely to get his hands on his first Scudetto in his first Italian season, while things at Chelsea have gone from bad to worse.

And now, we're in a situation best summed up by the poet Robert Browning, “Never glad confident morning again”.

It's not that Big Phil turned out to be much good. It's merely that he was the best manager we had and now the whole ship is rudderless.

Abramovich will go back to his girlfriend and his money worries, and I doubt we'll see much more of him this season. We, the fans, will return to the prospect of a few short, sharp shocks at the hands of Aston Villa and Juventus.

What a muddle. What a mess