Feeling the blues

Nov 25, 2011 - Abhishek Parameswaran

26ANDRE-VILLAS-BOAS[1].jpg.crop_display.jpg

"We have to beat the money." The Bayer Leverkusen manager Robin Dutt spoke for 99% of the footballing world when he said these words on the eve of his teams match against Chelsea. However, for an unusually long period, at least for Chelsea, the club seems set to find ways to defeat themselves.

Club legend John Terry has spent a lot of time this term looking despairingly at a bulging net whilst on his backside. Too many mistakes from the normally reliable Ashley Cole, coupled with David Luiz’s shocking decisions and Ivanovic’s forlorn attempts, have led to a shaky backline, an almost unheard of thought just 4 years ago. Frank Lampard has been ineffectual, at best. Nicolas Anelka looks set to say his goodbyes come January. The tribulations of Fernando Torres have been well highlighted, and his virus seems to have transferred to Drogba.

With Andre Villas-Boas becoming the first manager to lose two successive games at home since Claudio Ranieri in 2002, it might be presumed that this Chelsea side have now turned a Rouble-lit corner into darkness and gloomy mediocrity. Crushing losses to QPR, Arsenal, Liverpool and now Leverkusen have seen Chelsea looking despondently up at silver spooned pretenders Manchester City, who are now building a team in a similar fashion to Chelsea a la 2005.

Villas-Boas was hailed as the ‘new Jose Mourinho’, both being Portugese, relatively young, and former Porto managers; and he would have known all about Roman Abramovich’s notorious impatience with his managers, 7 in the 8 years since he acquired the club. All is not lost yet for The Blues, for there is far too much talent in the squad for them to fold so easily. It remains to be seen if a new financial push in January will help.

Jose Mourinho
Jun 2004- Sept 07
Total matches: 185
totalwon:124
trophies: 2005 - Football League Cup, Premier League, FA Community Shield
2006 - Premier League
2007 - Football League Cup, FA Cup
players bought: Michael Essien, Didier Drogba, Mateja Kezman, Ricardo Carvalho, Paulo Ferreria, Andriy Shevchenko, Michael Ballack, Florent Malouda, Salomon Kalou
money spent: £210m

Avram Grant
Sept 2007-May 08
Total matches: 54
totalwon: 36
players bought: Nicolas Anelka, Franco Di Santo, Branislav Ivanovic money spent: £27m

Luiz Felipe Scolari
July 2008-Feb 09
total matches: 36
totalwon: 20
players bought: Deco, Jose Bosingwa
money spent: £24m

Ray Wilkins
Feb 2009
total matches: 1
totalwon: 1

Guus Hiddink
Feb 2009 - May 09
total matches: 22
totalwon:16
trophies: 2009 - FA Cup

Carlo Ancellotti
June 2009-May 11
total matches: 109
totalwon:67
trophies: 2009 - FA Cup
2009 - Community Shield
2010 - Premier League, FA Cup
players bought:
Fernando Torres, David Luiz, Ramires, Yossi Benayoun, Daniel Sturridge, Yuri Zhirkov
money spent: £122m

Andre Villas Boas
June 2011-present
total matches: 17
totalwon:10
players bought: Oriol Romeu, Romelu Lukaku, Raul Mereiles, Juan Mata, Thibaut Cortois
money spent: £67m

Post new comment

<form action="/comment/reply/109432" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="comment-form"> <div><div class="form-item" id="edit-name-wrapper"> <label for="edit-name">Your name: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="60" name="name" id="edit-name" size="30" value="Reader" class="form-text required" /> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-mail-wrapper"> <label for="edit-mail">E-Mail Address: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="64" name="mail" id="edit-mail" size="30" value="" class="form-text required" /> <div class="description">The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.</div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-comment-wrapper"> <label for="edit-comment">Comment: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <textarea cols="60" rows="15" name="comment" id="edit-comment" class="form-textarea resizable required"></textarea> </div> <fieldset class=" collapsible collapsed"><legend>Input format</legend><div class="form-item" id="edit-format-1-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-1"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-1" name="format" value="1" class="form-radio" /> Filtered HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd></li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-format-2-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-2"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-2" name="format" value="2" checked="checked" class="form-radio" /> Full HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> </fieldset> <input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" id="form-daa33d8a4b3728e654b2d9ac0e10abef" value="form-daa33d8a4b3728e654b2d9ac0e10abef" /> <input type="hidden" name="form_id" id="edit-comment-form" value="comment_form" /> <fieldset class="captcha"><legend>CAPTCHA</legend><div class="description">This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.</div><input type="hidden" name="captcha_sid" id="edit-captcha-sid" value="86306001" /> <input type="hidden" name="captcha_response" id="edit-captcha-response" value="NLPCaptcha" /> <div class="form-item"> <div id="nlpcaptcha_ajax_api_container"><script type="text/javascript"> var NLPOptions = {key:'c4823cf77a2526b0fba265e2af75c1b5'};</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://call.nlpcaptcha.in/js/captcha.js" ></script></div> </div> </fieldset> <span class="btn-left"><span class="btn-right"><input type="submit" name="op" id="edit-submit" value="Save" class="form-submit" /></span></span> </div></form>