Great blog from Martin Wickham on why muddled thinking by the Chelsea Board could lead to the appointment of a second rate manager in the summer…
With Chelsea due to resume their seat on the managerial merry-go-round in the next few months, thoughts naturally turn to who we will see in the Stamford Bridge dugout next August. Let’s face it, as far as many of us are concerned, this season can’t finish up soon enough.
My impression of Guus Hiddink’s return so far is that his appointment is as much about PR as anything he offers from the dugout. His post-match interviews are less rancorous and spiteful than what we had sadly become accustomed to from Jose Mourinho since August, despite the results being broadly similar (at the time of writing Chelsea still haven’t won two consecutive league games this season).
While somewhat refreshing in the short-term, it concerns me that the Chelsea hierarchy may be looking for similar qualities in their next permanent managerial appointment. Quite simply, if the new gaffer as a pre-requisite has to accept the club infrastructure as it stands, and present a happy face in public, then it immediately disqualifies the two best candidates.
Of the so-called ‘big name managers’, Pep Guardiola and Diego Simeone are the two I would most like to see holding up a replica shirt and smiling for the cameras at Stamford Bridge this summer. As it stands, I can’t see either of them coming in purely because they will, quite rightly in my view, want to do things 
their way and not be bound by a top-down, pre-ordained culture and philosophy.
It’s no secret Roman Abramovich covets Pep, to the point he jettisoned our powerful style that won three league titles between 2005-2010 in favour of
implementing an imitation of ‘tiki-taka’, with players brought in for their ability to play that way over any other considerations (like size, stamina and strength in the most physically demanding league in Europe for instance). If he was hoping this would convince Guardiola to leave Barcelona, it could have had the opposite
effect. His Bayern Munich tenure has seen him work in the present rather than hark back to his past, using a more muscular and imposing style in line with a more physically demanding Bundesliga, and keep the key players that were already there when he came in, adding to the squad when it fitted the demands of the job at hand.
When he does come to England he will want a similarly acclimatised squad of players, something Chelsea once had but certainly do not have now. His thoughts on the current squad and its messy composition would probably be along the lines of “why didn’t you just leave it alone?” Something many Chelsea fans will whole-heartedly agree with! I’d also imagine that someone of Pep Guardiola’s stature would not take kindly to being told what players to buy and what style to play by anyone, never mind the brains trust that have been assembled in the Stamford Bridge boardroom.
Diego Simeone may not even want to leave Atletico Madrid, but if he does come he will also want to do things his way, and has a temper to boot. If Chelsea want to cancel the monthly direct debit to the FA paying off various misconduct fines, then they may baulk at appointing someone who ran on the pitch to confront Real Madrid players in the dying minutes of the Champions League final! Much as I and most Chelsea fans I know would love him for being that
confrontational if he was Chelsea manager, the club are so precious about negative PR that it makes such an appointment a marriage made in hell, even if the honeymoon was joyful. Now who or what does that remind you of?
With the two best qualified candidates being rugged individuals where the club want conformity, and other managers in the same bracket either recently sacked by Chelsea or about to take on a new job elsewhere, the worry is we end up looking at the level below for our next manager. Anyone appointed from this group of managers certainly will not be allowed to grab the club by the throat and tell them where they have got it wrong recently. Names like Manuel Pellegrini, Roberto Mancini and Juande Ramos are being bandied about and all inspire similar levels of apathy in this writer.
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that according to reports Michael Emenalo, a man stealing a living at Chelsea Football Club, wants Pellegrini in charge. A pliant yes-man who doesn’t gob off in public and ticks all the boxes for someone seeking to secure his own favour with the owner. That Pellegrini is a somewhat decent manager is a secondary issue in such calculations as far as he is concerned.
After a summer where mucking other teams about led to sub-par players being bought in a panic in the last knockings of the transfer window, similar incompetence, hubris and self-interest in the club hierarchy risks leaving Chelsea this summer with a sub-par manager who doesn’t fit the glittering profile they like to aggressively promote to the world. This is only a worst case scenario, and I could easily be proven wrong come June or July, but if it isn’t, the people running Chelsea will only have themselves to blame if the on-pitch performance continues to falter, and hits the club in the pocket as a result (through loss of Champions League prize money for example). Whether the likes of Emenalo, Bruce Buck and others see it the same way is, of course, another question entirely.
