Court of King Roman needs a revolution

David Mellor
11 Feb 2009

Now that the dust has settled, do I feel any better about the removal of Big Phil Scolari than I did yesterday? No I do not.

Phil was always a risk and turned out to be a disappointment. He was a gamble because, as I wrote last summer, he had no previous managerial experience at club level in Europe.

The pressures of management in the Premier League are totally different from being an international manager, which is, frankly, pretty much a job for the semi-retired.

Phil's like-for-like substitutions were the first sign fans got that he lacked flair and imagination, a fault apparently even more obvious on the training ground.

But the idea this can be reversed in the twinkling of an eye by Guus Hiddink, who is equally unfamiliar with England and the challenges of the Premier League, is crassly naive.

Or, in Roman Abramovich's case, just terminally arrogant.

He doesn't have to think about the consequences of his actions like ordinary mortals. He can just go out and buy somebody and then blow him away when it all goes Pete Tong.

How long before Hiddink - a friend and long-time associate of Abramovich, just like Avram Grant - suffers the same fate? Which is why, for me, the best of Abramovich, the exhilarating Jose Mourinho months, is over.

Think about it. He won't tell us what's in his mind.

As the late, great Tony Banks always said, "Abramovich has bought a team, not a club", before adding, for good measure, that he thought the Russian would play the games behind closed doors for him and a few mates if he thought he could get away with it.

With Abramovich erratic, uncommunicative and increasingly absent, he needs someone on permanent watch at the Bridge, someone wise enough to get the key decisions right and strong enough to force them through. Instead, he ends up with Peter Kenyon. On Friday, Chelsea will publish their financial results. They will show once again how much the club are in hock to Abramovich, through loans of course, not gifts, and Kenyon will bluster his way through, as he always does, repeating the mantra that Chelsea will break even in a couple of years' time.

In your dreams, Peter.

How can they, when Scolari's departure adds another £7million to the deficit? Which shockingly means over £30m has been paid out in compensation to dismissed managers alone since 2004.

What Abramovich should bring, apart from his money, is the more acceptable skills he displayed building up his business to the running of Chelsea. But he doesn't. 

The top of the club is a shambles, with no one big enough to say boo to this increasingly absent goose. Instead of being run like a modern business, Chelsea is more akin to the ramshackle court of an 18th century king.

I wrote yesterday, what a muddle, what a mess, and it is. The only way forward is for Abramovich to level with the fans, to ask our patience for some dire weeks ahead and to promise some expensive rebuilding of the squad in the summer under a manager worthy of the task.  And to appoint a board and chief executive we can all respect and who are capable of independent thought.

But it won't happen and, on present form, it's hard to see the future of Chelsea being anything other than disappointing. 

The only people who should feel happy about all this are those who were dismayed at the thought of Chelsea winning everything with Abramovich's billions.

Instead, Abramovich's Chelsea prove that money in football is just the beginning and guarantees nothing without the right people spending it.

Young pros should lay off the booze and copy vintage Giggs

Since I often have a go at footballers who fail to live up to expectations on and off the pitch, it's only fair to offer a word of praise to Ryan Giggs. On Sunday, Giggs netted his first goal of the campaign to become the only player to have scored in every Premier League season since its foundation in 1992. At 35, Giggs looks fit as a flea and there seems no reason why he shouldn't go on for a couple more years yet.

When he was young, some tried to nail him as a playboy but the cap never fitted. The Manchester United winger is a serious professional, whose body is a temple, and he's still got the legs to prove it.

In short, he's a terrific role model. But how many young pros will follow him down the path of abstinence in order to extend their careers into their late 30s? I hope I'm wrong but the brutal truth is likely to be, to quote once again the magic words of Paul Daniels, not a lot. The bright lights of the nightclubs are far more alluring than Giggs's comparatively monastic existence.

What were they thinking of?

Was it a coincidence that England's humiliation at the hands of one of the worst West Indies sides in history coincided with negotiations over fat contracts for the Indian Premier League?
I don't think so. The reality is, mentally if not physically, a lot of our players had moved on.

Longing for day when elite turn their backs on Platini

Michel Platini is threatening to ban Premier League clubs from the Champions League for running up too big deficits, thereby showing both his hypocrisy and his naivety.

Hypocrisy because outfits like Real Madrid have lived high on the hog of borrowed money for years and Platini has never said a word against them.
Naivety because all UEFA do for the Champions League is cream off the profit and insist on a lot of no-hopers competing.

If Platini pushes his luck, the big clubs will one day wake up to the fact they can do it all without him. A day that can't dawn fast enough for me.

* Niall Quinn's on to something offering a kids' season ticket for £20 to adults who buy a full-priced one. As the Jesuits were wont to say, give me a boy before he's 10, and he's ours forever. So why don't the Football Association adopt the principle at Wembley, when it's obvious they aren't going to sell all 90,000 tickets for some of the dire England games. Shame on them if they don't.