Chelsea FC: Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely

Chelsea and their Russian billionaire owner Roman Abromovich have parted ways with yet another manager, Andre Villas-Boas paid the ultimate price for Chelsea’s poor run of form and after only 9 months in the job he was unceremoniously relieved of his duties.

This current incarnation of Chelsea FC represents everything that is wrong with modern day football:

A Chairman that uses the club like a game of Monopoly

Overpaid, overpriced, over rated players that have contaminated the dressing room

A Chief Executive that knows zero about football or how to build a football club for the future

Real fans priced out of season tickets

A stadium full of successful business men on match days

Match day atmosphere all but gone

Fifty million pounds spent on one player

Millions going out of the game on agents fee’s and compensation for termination of contracts.

Chelsea back in the 80’s and 90’s were a club that had spent a long time in the dark ages, away days to Shrewsbury and Cambridge are a distant memory but even back then there was always a sense of tradition and style that surrounded them, the fans were the heartbeat and life blood of the club a real supporters team, a team that grew it’s following through respect and admiration for what they did on the pitch not the size of the owners cheque book, glory hunters need not apply here just real fans please!

Fast forward twenty years and Chelsea have experienced the most successful spell in the clubs history, league titles, FA cups, Champions league semi finals and finals have elevated them to the top table of Europe’s elite. This success however has come at a price and that price is a football club that is rotten to the core!

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely! Roman Abromovich has all the power at Chelsea, the billionaire answers to no one, certainly not the growing number of managers he’s hired and dispatched during his reign and this is the root of Chelsea problems. This powerful, rich man surrounds himself with yes men, men that tell him how great and how cleaver he is and in the world of business the former is generally true however this is football and Abromovich should stick to what he knows best, which is providing the cash! Bring in people to make the footballing decisions, people who know the game, that sort of combination would make an extremely promising foundation for many years to come. If Abromovich has been getting advise on the game from inside his exclusive inner circle then its been bad advise, parting ways with Jose Mourinho who brought the blues their first league title in 50 years, sacking Carlo Ancelotti after making Chelsea history by wining the League and FA cup double and now sacking AVB a young talented manager who had the unenviable task of trying to gel and invigorate an aging, ponderous and lack lustre first team who’s combined attitude stinks. The holy trinity of Lampard, Terry and Drogba have destroyed any manager that doesn’t pick them or play to their strengths and if any manager is to be successful in the future at the club this trio has to be disbanded.

So as the sunsets on AVB’s time and Chelsea look back on the 13 million spent on acquiring him from Porto and the 10 million he is likely to receive in compensation for termination of his contract, where do they go next? The answer to that question is simple… round in circles! It’s not a change of Manager that’s required at Chelsea it’s a change of attitude, a realisation that instant gratification does not win Champions Leagues and if Chelsea are to re-establish themselves at the top of the Premier League once again, their enigmatic owner is going to have to change!