Recent results will do little to placate frustrated Chelsea fans
It goes without saying that Chelsea’s decision to sack Roberto Di Matteo and replace him with Rafael Benitez has been unpopular.
And now it surely cannot be disputed that the move has spectacularly backfired.
Unpopular decisions can be proved right in the end.
Replacing the dignified but limited Claudio Ranieri with Jose Mourinho, or swapping William Gallas for Ashley Cole, to name but two, turned out to be great moves by Chelsea.
And Roman Abramovich has been forgiven for his previous unpopular managerial changes because someone else has come along to paper over the cracks.
When Mourinho was replaced with Avram Grant it eventually led to the trophy-winning reigns of Guus Hiddink and Carlo Ancelotti, while jettisoning double-winner Ancelotti in favour of Andre Villas-Boas inadvertently led to AVB’s assistant Di Matteo winning the Champions League.
But where is the consolation this time? At the moment it seems there is no remedy.
Yes, Chelsea had gone off the boil under Di Matteo in November – but that partly because we had started the season so well.
Until a very unfortunate defeat to Manchester United on 28 October we had only dropped two points and were four points clear at the top of the league.
We even recovered from that United defeat to knock the same opposition out of the League Cup just three days later.
And yet three weeks later – admittedly after a handful of bad results and immediately after a poor showing at Juventus left us on the verge of elimination from the toughest group any defending Champions League winner has ever had – Di Matteo was gone.
Fans made their opposition to Benitez – for reasons already much-discussed – clear immediately but the club told us he was an experienced manager who would take the club forward.
And it has not been all bad, despite what some opponents of Benitez would have you believe.
Chelsea beat Aston Villa 8-0 two days before Christmas. The away wins at difficult venues such as Everton and Stoke were also very impressive.
But the bad has far outweighed the good.
At the end of October we were top of the league. We were still in contention for the title when Benitez took control.
And yet by Christmas – just a month later – we already knew we had no chance of being champions.
We were in the World Club Cup – for the first time ever, and perhaps the only time. And yet our challenge for it was feeble, with a sterile performance in the final against Brazilian opposition who wanted it so much more.
Benitez inherited from Di Matteo, courtesy of the latter’s 5-4 win over Manchester United, a route to the League Cup which saw the Blues only needing to beat Leeds, Swansea and Bradford to lift a trophy.
No disrespect to those teams but it is hard to picture a smoother route to silverware. And yet Benitez’s Chelsea got nowhere near it.
The matches against Swansea, a home defeat to rock bottom QPR, the surrendering of a two-goal lead against Southampton – all four were poor performances as well as poor results.
Looking at the Swansea games, it was not Benitez’s fault Branislav Ivanovic made two howling errors that led to the only goals, nor his fault that Eden Hazard kicked out at a ball boy and was sent off.
But it was entirely Benitez’s fault that when goals were needed his substitutions were woefully late and confusing in both legs.
At Swansea, Chelsea needed two goals and yet two of the changes Benitez made were in defence.
It was the 80th minute by the time he brought on an attacking player – simply too late. And why on earth, when late goals were essential, swap left-backs?
Benitez is also responsible for the fact Chelsea’s gifted and expensive attacking players looked bereft of ideas against Swansea’s defence.
In three hours of football we had loads of possession but few shots and so rarely looked likely to score.
This is a manager who, we were told, was tactically astute. I am yet to see much evidence. He also seems unable to inspire his players.
Chelsea often come out for the second half looking a shadow of the team they were before the break – the games against West Ham, Southampton and Arsenal are examples. I am not the only fan to wonder what on earth Benitez says to them at half-time.
In the match programme for the QPR game on 2 January, chief executive Ron Gourlay wrote a column summing up 2012, accompanied by a picture of him holding the Champions League trophy in Munich but in which he attempted to justify sacking the manager who won it.
Gourlay wrote: “The owner and the board felt that a change was necessary to keep the club moving in the right direction ahead of a vitally important part of the season.
“Rafael Benitez subsequently joined us as interim manager. He has significant experience at the highest level of football and has come in to immediately help deliver our objectives.”
What Gourlay would write now, three weeks later, I do not know.
But I wonder if he still thinks Rafael Benitez – the man seen off by QPR, Southampton and Swansea – is “keeping the club moving in the right direction” or “immediately helping deliver our objectives”.
Because if he does, he must be in the minority.
Nine months ago Chelsea, led by Di Matteo, out-fought and out-thought in a two-legged semi-final a Barcelona side regarded by some as the best club team of all time.
Now Chelsea under Benitez have been swatted aside in a two-legged semi-final by Swansea City.
If that doesn’t prove Chelsea have gone backwards because of the change of manager, I don’t know what does.
James Clarke is the author of Moody Blues: Following the second-best team in Europe
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