... could have its benefits in that it could be exactly the kind of medicine that Roman + board need to get their act together. Their hire and fire policy and short-termist strategy is bad for the stability and success of the club, but is unfortunately 'validated' in their minds every time we win something despite them having made knee jerk reactions to the managerial situation. They got away with it BIG TIME last season, and as a result failed to learn any lessons. It was the great train robbery and Spurs were the train. Should never have sacked Carlo Ancelotti the season before, and winning the CL just seemed to have justified to them both the Carlo and AVB sackings. Failure to qualify for champions league this time around could be the long-overdue wake up call they need to really take a long hard look at how their decisions have caused us to be in constant fire-fighting mode to the eventual detriment of league position and indeed, Roman's dream.
The way it is going Chelsea may not get into top 4. If Spurs win today, they are right in the mix. Arsenal will join in the battle should they achieve some consistency. Even Liverpool could challenge for a top 4 place if they beat City today. It seems that apart from top 2, nearly the whole top half can challenge for the next 4 places. I am not sure it is Roman's fault that the team is not able to hold on to leads. It is the players and manager's mindset and once the team starts getting doubts, the opposition will get confidence that they will be able to get back into the game. It is a vicious circle. The more it happens (QPR, Sanits, Reading, Newcastle) the more difficult it is to stop.
On the positive side we will soon have Hazard , Mikel and Moses back with us! On the other side we're stuck with Rafa throughout ! Tough one but I think JT will have a lot of input in stirring things up on the pitch! I'm sure if he hadn't gone missing we may well have been tucked in behind MU now!
From European Champions in May 2012 to not qualifying for the CL in May 2013...and you think that may be a positive? I know that being a glass half full type is a good thing but **** me...
every chelsea supporter knows that chelsea are never at their best with JT out of the side and benitez has him sitting on the bench.
Terry was rusty, first game in ages. This is why many were crying out for the FSW to bring him in sooner. I can now finally see why managers were reluctant to start Cahill.
No, no no! Finishing outside the top 4 or more pertinently not being in the CL next season is an unmitigated disaster. With FFP beginning to bite we need all the CL millions that we can get + top players only want to be at top clubs that are in the CL. Apart from Suarez who was demented to go to LFC imo. No CL next season could see us languishing with the Spuds and Gooners - perennial 'almost but not quite' teams that trundle on for years winning naff all. Is that what we really want? Truly, I think one season out of the CL could cause irreversible damage.
For me, restoring some pride back into the club and getting the fans back on side is more important than any win. Although the media make it out to be, top 4 isn't the be all and be all.
Agreed. Agreed. Ooo! And you were doing so well! We would have had CL footy this season, had CFC not had the luckiest CL win in the history of European football. For us to finish top 4 and for you to finish outside top 4 would restore the law of Karma, and appeal to the neutral's sense of justice. Agreed. The other thing that really ought to be bourn in mind, and which has not been addressed at all, is the fact that Mad Dog bought and has financed CFC to the hilt in the arrogant expectation that he could buy himself to glory, year in and year out. It is the only thing that even comes close to explaining his record for hiring and firing top managers, over the seasons that he has been in charge of the club. His ego and vanity demand that he wins, at any cost. He wants glory and to be loved by the fans. Obviously, that has meant that managers such as RDM and The Special One had to go, because it was clear to him that you fans loved them more than the Russian, and that you credited them with the successes that they brought to the club, and not him. He'd much rather foist upon you a manager that will never be accepted by the CFC faithful, and suffer the kinds of humiliation that you are currently suffering, rather than permit a popular manager to remain in charge, and steal his thunder. But, I do agree with your central argument, that even one season away from CL footy will do great damage to the club. Look what it's done to 'Pool.
I admit, it was a sly dig by me, and probably uncalled for. I actually believe you did superbly, winning the CL, playing the English way.
A reality check isn't worth a year out of the CL. We have to get top 4 - there are no positives in failing to do so.
As things now stand, it seems we can no longer attract any really good manager to CFC, certainly not those career and Team building ones which are the only type that will be any good for us. Only the hopeless mercenaries like Rafa will come to us.Being out of the CL will mean that players will take the same attitude. The ones who value their careers will shun us, and why wouldn't they?? For me top 4 means we can climb out of this cess pit, without top 4, we will keep sliding back in.
That's where I disagree. With top 4, no lessons are learned and we're forever an unstable club justifying the knee jerk firing of managers, whimsical signings, and general lack of strategic thinking, with short term results. I'm fairly sick of all this volatility to be honest. Without top 4 we slide back for a while, Roman + board hopefully learn their lessons and chart a more carefully thought out course. We allow an upcoming manager to rebuild the club with astute signings (rather than just blindly go for every miniature player there is), stabilise, and come back stronger. I really believe we'll be better off in the long run if we take a bit of medicine in the short run and cut off the gangrenous policies that manifested themselves at the top and are now threatening to destroy the very dreams that started the Abramovich-era off. If Everton can be there or thereabouts on a shoestring so can we. Given our global revenues are now much higher than them and the current quality of our squad, we should be able to get back into the top 4 without blowing the bank - we don't need CL revenue to do this, just a relatively undiscovered manager who we have the balls to stick with long term. Balls is what it will require.
Not sure what you mean by lessons needing to be learn't? Not exactly done much wrong the last 10 years have we. Personally I like my team to be competing with the big clubs of Europe, that's what brings us huge global revenue. Milling around sub-Top 4 in an Everton-esque fashion will not keep us right at the top. It's not just lack of CL millions that we lose but the world-wide fanbase will dip too - sad fact of life I'm afraid. Do you really think our fans in Japan and Africa etc will be buying our shirts when instead of scrapping with Barca', Inter, Bayern etc we are embroiled in a mid-table battle with Stoke?
We've won a lot in the last 10 years yes, but at the same time we're also complaining that RDM, Ancelotti, Mourinho, Ranieri should never have been fired, and Scolari, AVB and FSW should never have been hired. YOU CAN'T HAVE YOUR CAKE AND EAT IT. It's just part of the hire and fire philosophy and sometimes it works other times it doesn't. The risk however is that when it doesn't you lose a bit more credibility and find it harder to get other talented prospective managers in. When it does work, you're happy for short while, until the manager that won things for you is fired again, losing you even more credibility. Basically, credibility and the number of managers willing to take the job, only decreases with this policy. Not to mention it also leads to erratic results on the pitch as we are seeing now. No Stability -> Too Many Managers -> Erratic Performances -> Lack of consistency -> Volatile League Position -> Inevitable Finish 5th or Lower. So, inevitably, we'll be out of the top four anyway, and out of the top four a lot more often than we would like, purely on a variance (statistical) basis. Like I alluded to in the original post, don't let the fact we qualified for the CL in 2012/13 blind you to the fact we chanced it big time. We should have learned our lesson last season, but through miraculously (and joyously) winning Big Ears, we also unfortunately reinforced the bad habit of firing managers on knee reactions as a side effect. This cannot be anymore evident than in the firing of RDM and replacing with FSW this season. Even if RDM was somewhat tactically naive, his firing has not improved matters as an alternative thread shows, only now we find that we are an extra firing down the line of losing credibility and reducing the pool of managers that would take the job. The key thing in all this, is that it really doesn't have to like this. Many, many other clubs, none more so than ManU and Barcelona in recent years, have shown that you can have stability and still be highly successful at the same time. I would gladly be willing to sacrifice a few years out of the CL and come back stable and successful, than see us degenerate further into the circus we're fast becoming, akin to Real Madrid in the galacticos era magnified twice over, except without the global standing or success.
