Itt is a bit like root canal surgery. You`ve known it was coming. You`ve had toothache for months. It started off as a tingle, then grew and grew into a painful cacophony of jangling, rotting nerves. The pain culminates in what you know will be an expensive and agonizing trip to the dentist`s to get it sorted out. You know it`s coming. You know it has to be done. You know that leaving it as it is and hoping it sorts itself out on its own is not an option, no matter how much you wish it would. So the day comes, you cannot take it any longer and you get it drilled and pulled. It hurts. A lot. When you walk out of the dentist your mouth feels different; profoundly so.
I imagine that is much how Roman Abramovich is feeling this morning. Sad, disappointed and not a little bit let down. He obviously had a genuine fondness for AVB, and sacking him was not the ruthless act that the papers are portraying it as. I actually think it was a mercy. Euthanasia. The papers were in all-out war mode on him in classic, classy, British media “kicking a defenceless man to death” style, and the players were in open revolt, and sad to say, I think, playing to get him sacked. Perhaps not as a group choice, but there are surely some members of our squad who knew that their woefully under-par performances would eventually mean the end for the likeable young man from Porto. The fans had turned on him and the supportive voices in the wilderness were becoming quieter and quieter as the grim spectre continued. I`d supported AVB right until the point of West Brom away, where it became clear that the team was broken and that AVB was not able to fix it. With the fans, media and players all 100% out to ruin him, affording him no time or indulgence and hammering him for every mistake, the decision was not a decision in the end. Roman knows a hopeless situation when he sees one and clearly this was hopeless.
Some commentators have suggested AVB was right man, wrong time for Chelsea, and I agree with that. I think he is a gifted manager. I think he could and should have been great for us but that his mistakes eventually cost him. I`ve outlined his mistakes before. Chief amongst these is his inability to get the media onside with him. They hounded him out and the more he struggled the more they bit. It is completely impossible to be successful in this country unless you have the media on your side, working with you. Jose`s success was partly due to the fact that the media could not destroy him because he was too good copy. When they got bored of our success and his occasionally tiresome gamesmanship, they turned on him too and what happened? It went sour. I honestly think that is why Roman got rid of him and why he was happy to go. Many Chelsea fans forget how dark things got in the latter days of Jose`s reign. An inconvenient truth if ever there was one. Under Carlo we were liked by the media to some extent and they did not attack him in our double-winning season. As soon as the knives came out, he floundered and was eventually shown the door because he couldn`t cope with the media hysteria and governing a team in transition from within it. AVB never understood that the media will decide whether you are successful. Not getting them on his side, working with him and for him was his downfall.
So Roman must be sitting there in his house wondering how it could all have gone so wrong?
I’ve tweeted at length about this over the weekend but if I take any shred of comfort from this whole bitter – and bitterly inevitable – affair, it is that Roman will be deconstructing the process as all good businessmen would, and appraising fully the decisionmaking structure at the club. Assessing the suitability of those in charge. With the greatest of respect to Bruce Buck, he may be a Chelsea fan and a lawyer but that qualifies him very poorly to run the club. I have no time for Ron Gourlay who, ludicrous though this may sound, makes us miss Peter Kenyon. At least Kenyon was a football man, even if he was a United fan. Gourlay is a charlatan and you could fit what he and Buck know about football and managing a football club on the back of a postage stamp. It is easy to put the blame at a lack of footballing knowledge and this was a serious weakness, but worse than this was just barefaced lack of business savvy. Where is the planning? Where are the contingencies? Where is the leadership? How can mistake after crippling, catastrophic mistake be allowed to happen over and over again? Is there any accountability? Roman doesn`t make the decisions. I`ve studied him and his management style, and (very simplistically) his strategy seems to be to employ a series of trusted lieutenants to run his sectors. Over these he watches, offers advice and seeks council from. Eugene Tenenbaum is his “fixer”. Eugene Shvidler in charge of his legal affairs. Buck and Gourlay are the guys in charge at Chelsea. The decisions are made through all four men. Roman has an input if he has an input, otherwise things are left to run by the four. The Eugenes probably only get involved in the really big stuff, and to some extent Gourlay and Buck handle the day to day stuff. So who is to blame?
I think it is safe to say at this point that Roman is paying the price for not recognizing that he himself, as James Lawton pointed out this morning, echoing sentiments from Ray Wilkins in the middle of last season, does not have a natural, instinctive knowledge of the game. Being a business colossus does not mean success at football. Roman`s folly is not in his own lack of knowledge, but in not appointing a management team to run Chelsea that does have a footballing knowledge. They appear to know a good deal less than Mr A about football. I mean that with all respect and gratitude to Roman and all he has accomplished. It takes more than knowing the difference between 4-4-2 and 4-3-3, or being able to go out and buy top class players. There is knowledge and there is Knowledge. Roman is no more or less knowledgable about football, I am guessing, than any of the rest of the fans, as that`s essentially what he is, first and foremost. That he is a proper fan is one of the reasons I love him. And hand on heart, if any of us had his money, how many of us would act any different? Would we make the same choices? Probably yes.
I think part of the reason for Michael Emenalo`s puzzlingly meteoric rise to the heights he has within Chelsea is that Roman, deep down, recognizes that what I`ve said above is true, and that he sees Emenalo as his football man within the football club. What now for Emenalo? If you want the current Chelsea crisis encapsulated in one point it is here – Emenalo, Gourlay and Buck are the ones making the decisions. A case of “Emperor`s New Clothes” surely. Roman must, we hope at least, be reviewing their positions. The catalogue of failures has been systemic. It has been gross error after gross error, and they have to be accountable.
Being left needing in very short order a new team, a new manager, a new plan, a new strategy, a new stadium, new revenue streams and a new board, in wholesale changes absolutely unheard of in the history of modern football, just starkly illustrates how far reaching and disastrously costly the club`s mistakes have been.
Blaming poor AVB for the club`s wider failings is both unfair and myopic. I think we now see just how deep and far the rot has spread. It is a cancer and it is in the club`s bones. Cutting off limbs won`t help. It infects the core of the players – who I believe in several cases have betrayed the club in the worst way possible. I think Roman agrees with me on this as well. There will be a reckoning for them in due course. There can and will be a mass exodus of players who have come up heartbreakingly short when the real loyalty questions have been asked. Emenalo, Gourlay and Buck will be required to answer for their hapless errors. Roman would absolutely not stand for mistakes of this magnitude and regularity in his other businesses and will not do so here. Their time will come as well, soon I suspect. We have not seen the last of the blood, I can tell you that much.
The Director of Football has been a much-maligned and rarely successful thing in England, but if ever there was a club that absolutely needs one, it is us. We lack a footballing brain, a savvy, ruthless game player. A hardnosed, cynical football lifer whose whole existence comes down to football first and Chelsea second. Dare I say it, but a Daniel Levy sort of person. Someone who plans, plans and plans some more. Someone who combines top class business acumen and some serious commercial intellect with a passion and an obsession with football. An encyclopaedic knowledge. Someone who doesn`t get mugged in the transfer market, and who knows how to play the game. Most importantly someone who supports and allies with the manager instead of isolating him and leaving him to the media`s meager mercies. AVB was not backed, and his successor will fail dismally unless this changes. This is no country for young men.
That is why I fully expect Txixi Begiristain to be installed in the Chelsea boardroom very quickly. Not just as a pre-cursor to the (slightly unbelievable at this juncture) Summer appointment of Pep Guardiola, but as someone who is all of the above, and who knows how to handle the media.
That would be a start. Someone of his ilk would give AVB`s successor and his new project a fighting chance. Nothing more than that, but it is a lot more than AVB ever had.
Carefree.
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