Vesper

this is exactly like Serie A in one of their match fixing seasons Jon Moss doesn't deserve to be reffing a pub match in Borneo

at least English football

if this level of corruption continues for another full year or two I am done with football

I think almost every POGMOL twat is on the take on the old payola

unreal!!!!!! I cant take thsi SHITE no more!!!!! fucking outright theft in fucking PLAIN VIEW

STONE COLD PEN ON SPUDS and that CUNT Moss NOTHING

fuckkkkkkkkkkkkkk 1 1 Alli made the pen

Opponents and Chelsea team-mates not holding back as Loftus-Cheek nears return https://theathletic.com/1648480/2020/03/03/ruben-loftus-cheek-chelsea-return-injury/?source=weeklyemail Not for the first time in recent weeks, Ruben Loftus-Cheek was on the receiving end of a bruising tackle and he walked away with a great deal of satisfaction. The Chelsea midfielder played his first full 90 minutes since suffering a serious achilles tendon injury last May, featuring in the development squad’s fixture against Everton on Monday night. One might think Loftus-Cheek would want a nice gentle introduction back into the game he loves after having to spend so long on the sidelines. But this is a young man who wants to put his body on the line, to test what kind of condition it’s in and whether he’s ready for the physicality of the Premier League. Long after the crowd had left non-League Aldershot Town’s EBB Stadium, the 24-year-old emerged from the dressing room to have another look at the pitch he had just played on. The England international has appeared at much bigger venues on much bigger occasions but you got the impression this was as satisfying an experience as many of those. For all the smooth control, nice turns and passes during the contest, the parts of the game he enjoyed most were when he won a 50-50 challenge with Everton’s Ryan Astley, earned a penalty after being tripped by Beni Baningime and climbed up off the turf following a terrible foul just before the end by Matthew Foulds. Talking to The Athletic afterwards, Loftus-Cheek highlighted how these incidents provided the best indication yet that he is getting in shape to play at the highest level again. It is not the only time he has been getting some rough treatment. It is understood he has been kicked in some painful places during training with the senior squad — no-one has been ordered to go easy on him. The same can be said for the friendly played behind closed doors against Brentford B a month ago, when he was given an hour as part of his comeback. Loftus-Cheek knows he still has to work on his match fitness. There were times he drifted out of the contest against Everton’s under-23s as the demands of playing a full game after such a long absence understandably took its toll. Yet it is a measure of the England international’s ability and likeable personality that his return to first-team training last month was greeted so warmly by team-mates. Normally, the threat of increased competition might not be welcomed but everyone connected to the senior squad is aware of the midfielder’s importance for the final matches of the season. Head coach Frank Lampard has already put him on the bench for a couple of first-team games at the end of February against Tottenham and Bournemouth, albeit without using him yet. It is expected he will continue to be named as a substitute for a while yet, which means there could be more games for the development squad in the near future. On March 16, they play at Blackburn and just over a fortnight later Wolves are the visitors to Stamford Bridge. A decision will obviously be taken closer to the time by Lampard depending on how much match action Loftus-Cheek has had with the first team but it’s very much a case of so far so good when it comes to his progress. It is to Lampard’s credit that he is resisting the temptation to rush Loftus-Cheek back too quickly. Chelsea are in desperate need of his goal threat to boost their attack. Lampard said as much during an interview with the Daily Mail recently. “With the ability that he has got, he is one of the most exciting English midfield players. From the conversations we’ve had, he wants it all,” said Lampard. “I remember watching Ruben score a hat-trick in the Europa League against BATE Borisov in October 2018. A couple were my kind of goals — six-yard box, bang. Nothing to shout about but I liked it. Ruben’s never been a rack-up-numbers man but I’ll definitely speak to him. Can he get 15, 20 goals in a season? He’s got that in him.” Lampard’s confident assessment isn’t far fetched. Last season, Loftus-Cheek was the club’s fourth highest goal-scorer with 10 — despite starting in 17 of his 41 appearances. One of Chelsea’s main weaknesses under Lampard has been the dearth of goals from midfield — Jorginho (six of his seven are from penalties), Mason Mount, N’Golo Kante, Mateo Kovacic and Ross Barkley have scored only 19 between them in all competitions. Loftus-Cheek will undoubtedly improve those statistics, however there is an acceptance that the most important thing is to be patient and ease him back slowly in order to avoid any other injuries. There have been a few setbacks to the recovery process over the last 10 months, including having to pull out of a development squad game against Arsenal in February due to picking up a minor problem. But those Chelsea fans who made the trip to Aldershot’s ground to watch him in action against Everton couldn’t have made their delight at seeing him on the pitch again any clearer. When Loftus-Cheek first wandered out for the warm-up, the majority of the crowd had yet to appear, so he was barely noticed. By the time he started some shooting drills with under-23s assistant coach Jon Harley though, people had filled the main stand and were there to roar with approval as he drilled the ball into the top corner. An indication of what mood he was in came when he beat one of the Chelsea youngsters in a sprinting drill toward the tunnel and ran off with a big smile on his face. As the two teams were read out over the speaker system before kick-off, there was a loud cheer when Loftus-Cheek’s name was heard, followed by chants of “Ruben, Ruben”. For the first six minutes, those same people were silenced as the ball and the game passed the man they so admire by. Loftus-Cheek simply couldn’t get a touch of the ball. Playing just off the striker Thierno Ballo, Loftus-Cheek gradually began to impose himself on the action. Not every move he tried came off but there were times his class showed as he spun away from a close marker and threaded a ball to someone else in blue. Where the long lay-off has clearly taken a toll is in the pace department. A few times, he would beat a man with a bit of skill, like when Baningime was nutmegged in the second half, only for another Everton player to get back and tackle him. No-one should be too alarmed — his speed will return the more minutes he gets. The intelligence after the break to drop deeper to get the ball, as Chelsea’s opponents sat further and further back, meant the home side grew more dangerous because Loftus-Cheek ensured they kept possession in the final third. He could have scored too but his header from an Ian Maatsen corner in the 71st minute flashed wide of the near post. Encouragingly it was Loftus-Cheek’s quick reactions to a loose ball in the area which led to the penalty, and only goal of the game, scored by Luke McCormick. There was a quiet hush soon afterwards when he collapsed to the ground in agony following a bad lunge by Foulds. As the physios raced out to treat him, everyone feared the worst but perhaps Loftus-Cheek’s luck is changing as there was no damage and he stayed on until the final whistle. Obviously there are much tougher tests to come but Loftus-Cheek left the venue clearly believing he has taken another significant step closer to getting back to where he belongs.

‘Yes. Yes. Yeah’ – Giroud makes it clear he wants to stay at Chelsea https://theathletic.com/1655690/2020/03/06/olivier-giroud-chelsea-future-transfer/?source=weeklyemail Tottenham, West Ham, Inter Milan, Aston Villa, Lazio and Newcastle. These are just some of the clubs who have tried to sign Olivier Giroud in 2020 but no-one has yet discussed the possibility of the striker playing for Chelsea next season. Giroud was struggling to keep the smile off his face while talking about his future shortly after Chelsea’s 2-0 victory over Liverpool in the FA Cup fifth round. He had just bullied one of the game’s best centre-half pairings in Virgil van Dijk and Joe Gomez, so who can blame him? But there is more to it than that. After spending most of the campaign watching from the sidelines while Tammy Abraham leads Chelsea’s attack, it has been assumed that the Frenchman is desperate to leave Stamford Bridge when his contract runs out in the summer. After all, there is a reason why the clubs listed above felt they could sign him in January. Yet the situation isn’t quite so clear-cut. Giroud has made it pretty clear that of all the options available to him, one stands out. When asked if he would like to stay at Chelsea, he replies emphatically: “Yes. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course. There are a few months to go, games to win and maybe another trophy, and after, you know, I think I have two (or) three nice seasons in front of me. It’s not the time to talk about contracts and everything but I will take a decision when it comes.” Given he turns 34 in September, it would be easy to dismiss the possibility of Giroud getting his wish. Chelsea will be spending significantly in the summer on fresh talent to improve the squad and the centre-forward department has been highlighted as a priority. Chelsea remain admirers of RB Leipzig’s Timo Werner and Lyon’s Moussa Dembele, although they will face competition for those two from Liverpool and Manchester United respectively. Neither will come cheap. However, Chelsea are in a situation where a number of positions need improving and, due to rapidly rising transfer fees in recent years, their budget will struggle to solve all their problems. The club have already spent £33 million bringing in Hakim Ziyech. At the moment, Lampard has Abraham, Michy Batshuayi and Giroud to choose from up front. Abraham is the club’s top scorer, has been in talks over a new contract and is surely not going anywhere. The same can’t be said for Batshuayi. He has just over a year left on his agreement and after struggling to make an impact under Lampard, is being earmarked for sale. The Belgium striker might have left Chelsea already if potential suitors hadn’t been scared off by the asking price, with Chelsea demanding more than the £33.2 million they paid Marseille in 2016. While you can’t rule out the possibility of both Batshuayi and Giroud departing in the summer, there is a very good chance one will remain to provide back-up. The least costly option to keep out of the two will be Giroud because as far as sell-on value goes, Batshuayi can still command a reasonable fee and Chelsea won’t want to miss out on that. Despite question marks over his quality, he has 16 goals in 29 games for Belgium and has room for improvement at 26. After making just seven appearances in the first six months, and being totally ignored by Lampard in December and January, Giroud is in a much better frame of mind as far as Chelsea is concerned. He has started four successive games during Abraham’s absence with an ankle injury and it shows how he has jumped above Batshuayi in the pecking order. Significantly, his relationship with Lampard is perhaps better than it has ever been following a heartfelt conversation during January, when it looked certain he was heading for the exit. “It was a tough month for me,” he adds. “I just spoke with the manager and I believed what he said, that I would get my chance and he has given me my chance. I have basically tried to give his confidence back on the pitch. “I do my job the best that I can and I’m very happy to be back in the team. Of course, my confidence is better. The transfer window is behind me. I’m a Chelsea player, I’m happy here again and that’s the most important thing. Even if I don’t score, I try to help the team.” Chelsea left it late to give Giroud a 12-month extension last year and are in no rush to talk about fresh terms now. But the scenario hasn’t been dismissed. It is very likely the European Championship this summer will be Giroud’s last major tournament at international level, so the pressure to play regularly at club level to keep his place with France will be reduced. Lampard is bound to lean on the former Arsenal forward’s experience for the visit of Everton on Sunday as Abraham continues to recover from an ankle injury. There has been no date set for the England international’s return but Giroud feels he is performing well enough to perhaps remain in the side regardless. “My confidence is getting higher and higher because I am playing more games,” he says. “I don’t know how long Tammy will be out for, to be honest. When he comes back, I will need him to be ready and then we can have a good competition again, which will be good for the team. “Everybody needs to be ready, to be good psychologically, to give everything for the team. I think that’s what we did against Liverpool. We know that we need more consistency, basically. That’s our weakness if I can say because we know we are capable of doing very nice stuff when we play with freedom and confidence. “Sometimes in a season, you have to face difficulties. When you don’t play the way you like to, you have to be strong mentally and to have a good answer in the next game, to bounce back. It means you can show a great character. We know we have to improve this consistency.” Whatever happens with Giroud over the next months, he has certainly been a good signing for Chelsea. A return of 20 goals in 75 appearances following his arrival from Arsenal for £18 million in January 2018 may not look that impressive on paper but his popularity among team-mates and the club’s fans tells a different story. Giroud has won an FA Cup and Europa League with Chelsea and now he has a third medal in his sights. Their FA Cup quarter-final at Leicester City later this month won’t be easy, yet Giroud knows there is a level of expectation which has to be met at Stamford Bridge. Owner Roman Abramovich is used to success. Since buying Chelsea in 2003, the team have ended a season without lifting any silverware only five times: in 2003-4, 2007-8, 2010-11, 2013-14, 2015-16. The FA Cup is their last realistic hope of avoiding making it six. They trail Liverpool by 34 points in the Premier League, were knocked out of the Carabao Cup by Manchester United and trail Bayern Munich 3-0 after the home leg of their Champions League last-16 tie. Giroud concludes: “When you can’t fight for the (Premier League) title at Chelsea, you have to fight for the other trophies. The FA Cup is still a big trophy, especially in England. Obviously, I will be more than happy to help the team win another one.” You can’t rule out Giroud trying to do exactly the same thing next year either.

CHELSEA FOOTBALL CLUB CHELSEA vs EVERTON | Midfield Injury CRISIS! | Hudson-Odoi RE-INJURED!

The 10 games that give Everton hope and ensure Carlo Ancelotti will be welcomed back at Chelsea A look back at the highlights from Everton manager Carlo Ancelotti's double-winning season at Chelsea https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/10-games-give-everton-hope-17877433

Mourinho's stumbled into an era where his old methods don't work - Jenas https://www.goal.com/en/news/mourinhos-stumbled-into-an-era-where-his-old-methods-dont/1ke6aev59thmi1280z72ltya1t

wooooooooooot 1 nil Burnley Wood

KING CARLO Carlo Ancelotti reveals Ashley Cole convinced him to go on ‘unforgettable’ night out with the Chelsea squad after he was sacked https://talksport.com/football/679449/carlo-ancelotti-ashley-cole-night-out-chelsea-sacking/ Carlo Ancelotti is set to receive a hero’s welcome at Stamford Bridge when Everton face Chelsea on Sunday. The veteran Italian manager is adored by Blues fans for his successful stint in charge of the club between 2009 and 2011. Ancelotti won the double in his first season before Roman Abramovich unjustly wielded the axe to end his tenure within an hour of the end of the final match of the Italian’s second campaign in charge. And Chelsea boss Frank Lampard expressed his admiration for his former manager in his pre-match press conference on Friday. In fact, Ancelotti was so popular that he was even treated to a night out by Ashley Cole days after he was sacked. Speaking to The Telegraph, the Toffees boss revealed how Cole instigated a huge farewell night out. Ancelotti said: “All the squad was there. “I knew it was going to be the last game and I had friends from Italy over. “On the bus home, the players knew I was sacked and Ashley Cole said we must go out. I said no because I had ten friends visiting. We are having dinner at my house. “But Ashley was, ‘No, no, they must all come. I will send you a bus’. So he sent a minibus to get us. It was unforgettable.” snip

Billy Gilmour: Real Madrid and Barcelona ‘eye transfer’ of Chelsea wonderkid after stunning performance vs Liverpool https://talksport.com/football/679354/billy-gilmour-real-madrid-barcelona-transfer-chelsea-liverpool/ fuck off

Burnley basically sealed their fate title-wise at Turf Moor last year

that new short short haircut looks like dogshit on him

Spuds players are gassed they just played 120 minutes several days ago and they have that huge CL game Tuesday Mou was a prick in the pre match interview btw

Burnley v Spuds HD Streams http://www.sportnews.to/sports/2020/premier-league-burnley-vs-tottenham-hotspur-s1/ https://www.totalsportek.com/tottenham-hotspurs/

damn Wolves have them under the cosh so hard already

come on Brighton! Wolves win we go out of the top 4, even if only for a day

Wolves v Brighton & Hove Albion HD Streams http://hdstreams.club/total/ch15.php http://enjoyhd.live/hd/hd7.php http://www.dubsstreamz.com/ten.php https://www.totalsportek.com/wolverhampton/

Pulisic turns 22 at the end of this coming summer, and next season is his 6th season at topflight level, and his 5th full one.

Inside Chelsea: Why Carlo Ancelotti will always be welcome at Stamford Bridge https://theathletic.com/1653892/2020/03/05/carlo-ancelotti-chelsea-roman-abramovich/ Carlo Ancelotti has a back-up plan ready if he is prevented from standing on the Stamford Bridge touchline when his Everton side face Chelsea on Sunday. “If I am banned (by the Football Association), I will be disappointed but the stand at Stamford Bridge is near the dugout, so I will be close,” he said this week, after being shown a red card by referee Chris Kavanagh for his protestations after Everton’s 1-1 draw with Manchester United. The Italian’s enduring popularity with just about everyone at Chelsea is such that he could probably have his pick of any seat in the stadium he called home for two rollercoaster years from 2009 to 2011. Remarkably, this will be the first time Ancelotti has returned to Stamford Bridge as an opponent but it is not the first time he has been back. He has watched Chelsea games from the directors’ box as a guest of the club and visited their Cobham training base. Ancelotti remains on better terms with the Chelsea hierarchy than any former manager other than Guus Hiddink, a long-time friend of Roman Abramovich, and the genuine warmth towards him from the club’s board indicates a desire to live up to the one conciliatory line in an otherwise cold statement that confirmed his sacking in May 2011: “Carlo will always be welcome at Stamford Bridge, where he will be given the reception and respect his position in our history deserves.” No other manager in Chelsea’s 115-year history has matched Ancelotti’s achievement of winning the league title and FA Cup in the same season, though Antonio Conte came close in 2016-17. Time has only enhanced his success and the struggles of many of his successors have heightened the sense inside and outside the club that his dismissal — confirmed in the bowels of Goodison Park minutes after his last press conference on the final day of the 2010-11 Premier League season — was harsh. The landscape of English football has shifted drastically over the past decade, and so too has Chelsea’s place within it. Frank Lampard is expected to qualify for the Champions League; Ancelotti’s brief in the summer of 2009 was to find a way to win the whole thing. But that wasn’t all. “I want a manager who gives my team an identity because when I watch Chelsea, I’m not able to find an identity,” he recalls Abramovich telling him in his 2016 book, “Quiet Leadership”. Chelsea’s director of football operations at the time, Mike Forde, had 10 meetings with Ancelotti before his appointment was finalised, covering all aspects of his vision for the job. But ultimately what enabled Ancelotti to succeed — and then survive as long as was reasonably possible — was his willingness to compromise on his methods and embrace new ideas as they were presented to him. Ancelotti wanted to bring several AC Milan assistants to Chelsea but accepted Abramovich’s request to see how he worked with the existing staff first. In the end, only Italian psychologist Bruno Demichelis came with him to England, while Ray Wilkins and Paul Clement, promoted from the reserves, were quickly adopted into his “football family”. “My experience at Chelsea taught me that you don’t necessarily need what you think you want,” he later wrote. In one of his early meetings with Abramovich, Ancelotti suggested Chelsea sign Franck Ribery from Bayern Munich and Xabi Alonso from Liverpool. Chelsea then tried in vain to buy Andrea Pirlo from Milan in the summer of 2009. Ancelotti’s response to not getting a new midfield conductor or superstar winger was practical rather than political: he simply tweaked the formation and moved Michael Essien into a deeper role. This calm, pragmatic attitude earned Ancelotti less credit than it should have within Chelsea at the time but subsequent public confrontations with Jose Mourinho and Conte over transfer strategy have cast his actions in a much more favourable light. Abramovich has learned the hard way the value of a low-maintenance leader. Ancelotti’s plan on the pitch was to make Chelsea a dominant possession team with the 4-4-2 diamond he had deployed at Milan but, after discussions with his senior players, he switched to a 4-3-2-1 system. “The smart thing he did was look at it and realise it didn’t suit some of our big players, myself included,” Lampard said of his former manager in 2017. “I remember being uncomfortable at the top of the diamond and not so comfortable on the left. “He changed the formation and that’s the brilliance of Carlo Ancelotti the manager. He is a players’ manager. He listens to his players and he wants to get the best from his best players because he knows that’s how you win the league.” “Carlo was the main figure in that moment; he completely turned everything that was going on at Chelsea after Mourinho and (Luiz Felipe) Scolari,” Branislav Ivanovic tells The Athletic. “He was exactly what Chelsea needed in that moment. It was a golden time for us. “He is an amazing person. He is a coach who can bring the best out of players. He knows how to work with the big players, he knows how to get the best out of them. He gave us some freedom in the game but also gave us some tactics, which helped a lot.” The result was the closest any manager has come to giving Chelsea the kind of proactive identity Abramovich craves. Manchester United’s three-year hold on the Premier League trophy was broken in style with a then-record 103 goals scored, while both Lampard and Didier Drogba enjoyed the most prolific scoring seasons of their careers. Victory over Portsmouth in the FA Cup final added a further layer of gloss to a historic campaign. “Carlo just clicked with everyone,” Clement tells The Athletic. “We scored 103 goals, only bettered once, and had an incredible attacking side, a team with a lot of maturity in every position. We had top players, competition for places, and personnel at the peak of their powers. They were late 20s, they’d won big trophies, and knew how to achieve success. “We just tapped into that and Carlo developed a style that suited them. That played to their strengths: pace and power going forward, aggression and solidity at the back. We were unstoppable at times. Opponents didn’t know what had hit them. It was a special year.” But on the road to the champagne were plenty of reminders of the Chelsea dysfunction that eventually engulfed Ancelotti. John Terry played through being stripped of the England captaincy in February 2010 amid media allegations of an affair with the ex-partner of former team-mate Wayne Bridge. The breakdown of Ashley Cole’s marriage to pop star Cheryl Tweedy also dominated the UK newspapers. Both men confided in their manager about the problems in their personal lives. One week before the first leg of Chelsea’s clash with Inter Milan in the Champions League round of 16, Abramovich called a squad meeting at Cobham, in which chief executive Ron Gourlay warned the players that any further embarrassing misdemeanours would be met with severe disciplinary measures. The undercurrent of the owner’s response was the perception that Ancelotti was too much a friend to the players, and that his relaxed attitude created as many problems as it solved. Abramovich was, at the time, in the habit of reinforcing discipline himself, turning up at Cobham to question his squad and manager after unexpected defeats. Ancelotti would receive text messages from the Chelsea owner consisting of nothing more than a question mark, to which he replied with an exclamation mark. “I chose not to meet aggression with aggression. It is not my way,” he later wrote. “I like to think through the difficult times, address the problems coolly and with reason.” Ancelotti is flexible on many things but he maintains an unshakeable belief in the philosophy that underpins his management style. “He (Abramovich) would try to convince me, with all my experience to the contrary, to be stronger, tougher and more rigorous with the players,” he later wrote. “I’d heard it all before and I’ve heard it since but he was wrong — they are all wrong. “They hire me to be kind and calm with the players, and then at the first sign of trouble along the way, that’s the very characteristic they point to as the problem. I know that if I am winning then, it is because I am calm. Equally, if I am losing, it is because I am calm. How can it be both? It’s a paradox but I was trapped by it at Chelsea.” Two defeats in the space of three days in February 2010, away at Inter and at home to Manchester City, were what Ancelotti later called the “thunderbolts” that marked the beginning of the end of his relationship with Abramovich. Chelsea’s owner demanded answers after both results and criticised the tactics deployed against Inter in front of the players. Elimination at the hands of Mourinho, en route to his second Champions League triumph, only heightened the humiliation. The loyalty Ancelotti commanded in the Chelsea dressing room averted disaster, secured a historic double and earned him a second season. But the players could not protect him forever. Lampard, Terry and Essien all missed significant chunks of the 2010-11 campaign through injury, while Drogba contracted malaria. January spending only complicated matters. Years earlier at that meeting in Paris, a frustrated Abramovich had asked Ancelotti how to get the best out of a struggling Andriy Shevchenko and Fernando Torres, diminished by injury and weighed down by a £50 million price tag from Liverpool, presented a similar headache. Chelsea’s dysfunctional off-field structure also wore Ancelotti down. He had generally communicated with Abramovich and the board through sporting director Frank Arnesen but when the Dane left for Hamburg in February 2010, the hierarchy lost coherence. “It wasn’t that there was nobody trying to do that job — it was that everybody was trying to do it,” Ancelotti wrote. By the time Wilkins was sacked and replaced by Michael Emenalo later that year, his fate was sealed. Ancelotti faced a higher bar for success than any other manager hired by Abramovich. It was Champions League or bust and, when United eliminated Chelsea at the quarter-final stage with a 2-1 win at Old Trafford, it was left to Sir Alex Ferguson to console the Italian after another dressing room dressing down from the owner. “Carlo was really upset, so I said, ‘Just forget it’,” Ferguson recalled in a chapter written for “Quiet Leadership”. “He can’t get rid of you in the middle of the season.” Looking back on the unvarnished picture painted of Abramovich in the book, it’s remarkable that relations between Ancelotti and Chelsea remain so warm. It helps that both parties have enjoyed considerable success since that inevitable parting of the ways: Ancelotti winning league titles with Paris Saint-Germain and Bayern Munich either side of a Champions League triumph with Real Madrid, while Abramovich got his hands on Europe’s biggest prize in 2012. Chelsea’s hierarchy has changed drastically since 2011. Gourlay, the man tasked with delivering the bad news at Goodison Park, left in 2014 and Marina Granovskaia has assumed his duties and more as chief football executive. Emenalo is gone and the technical structure above Lampard is considerably streamlined, with Cech — another stalwart of Ancelotti’s double-winners — growing into an advisory role this season. Abramovich is also a different kind of owner: no less financially committed but more patient and less prone to harmful interference. Even if he had not delegated day-to-day responsibilities for the football operation to Granovskaia, his standoff with the UK government would still ensure that awkward semi-regular inquests in front of the players are a thing of the past. Within this context, the enduring affection and respect for Ancelotti at Chelsea can be seen as a tacit admission of past mistakes. He may now be in the business of creating happier memories at Goodison Park but he will always find a warm welcome at Stamford Bridge — in the board room as well as in the stands.

Chelsea are raw and inconsistent but needed this reboot years ago https://theathletic.com/1648878/2020/03/05/oliver-kay-frank-lampard-chelsea-managers/ It was eight years on Wednesday since Andre Villas-Boas became the sixth managerial casualty of the Roman Abramovich regime at Chelsea. He had slept in a pod at the club’s training ground the night before, underlining his commitment to putting things right after an abject defeat at West Bromwich Albion. He still oversaw that morning’s recovery session but the moment a grim-faced Abramovich turned up at Cobham with director Eugene Tenenbaum, chief executive Ron Gourlay and a couple of bodyguards, Villas-Boas knew the game was up. The whole football world had seen it coming. Villas-Boas had won admiration for his tactical knowledge and progressive approach at Porto but at 34, only two and a half years into his life as a manager, he lacked the authority, the experience, the common touch and the survival instincts required at a club like Chelsea with so many big beasts in the dressing room and a much bigger beast in the boardroom. He was, in many ways, a lamb to the slaughter. Roberto Di Matteo stepped up as caretaker manager, went back to basics and, within three months, Chelsea had won the FA Cup and the Champions League. Even that was not enough to spare him from the sack when results took a downward turn early in the following season but the AVB/RDM experience, followed by the Rafa Benitez, Jose Mourinho, Antonio Conte and Maurizio Sarri eras, seemed to underline something about the modern Chelsea: a club where managers were so concerned about their job security that long-term planning never happened. Frank Lampard was one of many Chelsea players who struggled with Villas-Boas. He had been accustomed to intimate working relationships with Mourinho, Guus Hiddink and Carlo Ancelotti but Villas-Boas had a different approach — more detached, more aloof — and was, by his own admission, too “radical” in his attempts to impose his own style on a group of players who were used to another way of playing and working. “His plan was long-term but somewhere in the middle of that, the present didn’t go well — and that’s where the problems came,” Lampard said a few weeks later. “To be fair to AVB, that was part of the remit and I get that we need to move on and change but you can’t lose sight of the present.” It’s funny how things change. Eight years on, Lampard is managing Chelsea and trying to implement the kind of cultural change that the club has spent years putting off since the short-lived Villas-Boas experiment. The plan is long-term — to rejuvenate an ageing squad by integrating homegrown talents such as Reece James, Fikayo Tomori, Billy Gilmour, Mason Mount, Callum Hudson-Odoi and Tammy Abraham — but, just as Lampard said of Villas-Boas in 2012, you can’t lose sight of the present. Everyone can see where Lampard is trying to take Chelsea, perhaps not always in terms of the system or line-up from one match to the next but certainly in terms of an overriding philosophy. It is about youth, energy, high tempo, winning the ball back quickly, moving it quickly, taking risks. It is not dissimilar to what Villas-Boas and Sarri tried and struggled to achieve with a group of players who were used to a different way of working. At one stage between late September and early November, they won six consecutive Premier League games, with Mount and Abraham scoring goals at a rate that spoke of a new sense of freedom around Stamford Bridge. After 12 games, they were third, one point clear of fourth-placed Manchester City and nine points clear of fifth-placed Sheffield United. Since then, though, they have won five, drawn four and lost seven of their 16 Premier League games. They are now fourth, with Manchester United leading a pack of rivals who, despite their own inconsistencies, have been given hope in pursuit of beating Chelsea to a top-four finish. In terms of results, it is just the type of run that led Abramovich to sack Luiz Felipe Scolari in February 2009 and Villas-Boas in March 2012, and to decide that Ancelotti, Conte and Sarri would have to be replaced in the summer. Lampard has now outlasted Villas-Boas. Tuesday night’s FA Cup fifth-round victory over Liverpool was his 41st game in charge of Chelsea in all competitions, taking him one past Villas-Boas and five beyond the even-shorter-lived Scolari. On Sunday, he will move level with Di Matteo on 42 matches. And then there are the interims — Guus Hiddink 22 matches in his first spell and 27 in his second, Rafa Benitez 48, Avram Grant 54 — although, to some extent, every Chelsea manager feels like an interim. Of Abramovich’s 12 previous appointments, only four have got beyond the 12-month mark. Ancelotti (109 games) and (Conte (106) both left after the second season. Mourinho’s two spells (184 and 136 games) felt turbulent and short-lived but by Abramovich standards, they were times of great stability. Things are different now. Abramovich is now operating from a distance and, rather than spending millions in trying to establish Chelsea as a dominant force in the game, he is happy to comply with UEFA’s Financial Fair Play regulations. He wants Chelsea to be sustainable and, amid a FIFA transfer embargo and the continuing agonies over whether to redevelop Stamford Bridge or relocate, which have left the club in limbo, Lampard was hired last summer in an attempt to find a different, more sustainable way forward. There are obvious parallels with Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s appointment at Manchester United and indeed, with Mikel Arteta’s at Arsenal — former players brought back in the hope of restoring an identity, a sense of direction and, importantly, unity. Solskjaer was hired by United on the back of two stints at Molde and a relegation with Cardiff City; Arteta had spent three and a half seasons as assistant to Pep Guardiola at Manchester City but had never managed in his own right; Lampard’s experience was limited to a season in charge of Derby County, whom he led to the Championship play-off final last season. It is stating the obvious to suggest that the Lampard and Solskjaer appointments in particular would not have happened without their previous connections to the club. Both men know that. The Championship and the Norwegian Eliteserien are not the waters in which Chelsea and United usually fish for coaching talent. Those connections bring no guarantees but they do bring an understanding and they also mean that, at a club planning to take a step back in the hope of taking two steps forward, there will be patience and goodwill from the crowd. If you are going to look to develop younger players, better to do it in a supportive environment rather than one that, at times under Chelsea’s, United’s and Arsenal’s previous few managers, has felt corrosive. As Lampard observed last week after a humbling 3-0 home defeat by Bayern Munich, Chelsea have not been a major force in the Champions League for a long time. Since that somewhat freakish 2012 success under Di Matteo, they have only progressed beyond the first knockout stage on one occasion (reaching the semi-finals under Mourinho in 2014). Yes, they won the Europa League under Benitez and Sarri and of course, they won the Premier League under Mourinho in 2015 and Conte in 2017, but there has been a recognition within the club that they have been papering over the cracks for too long. There was a need to strip things back and start rebuilding for the longer term, embracing homegrown talent and a youth academy whose excellent work over the past decade has too often gone to waste. So far this season, Mount (21), Abraham (22), Tomori (22) and James (20) have started 24, 23, 15 and 11 Premier League games respectively. All four spent last season on loan to Championship clubs. There have also been regular outings for Callum Hudson-Odoi (19) and Christian Pulisic (21), who was signed from Borussia Dortmund for £58 million in January last year and then immediately loaned back. The victory over Liverpool on Tuesday brought a man-of-the-match performance from Billy Gilmour, an 18-year-old Scot whose composure and swagger on the ball at the base of midfield belied his lack of experience. Not many managers would have been comfortable going about the job this way, particularly at a club like Chelsea, where young players have often not been deemed ready for first-team football until they have built up an extensive catalogue of experience on loan. On the opening weekend of the Premier League season, after a chastening but rather harsh 4-0 defeat at Manchester United, Mourinho ventured in the Sky Sports studio that Lampard had been wrong to select Andreas Christensen, Mount and Abraham when he had more experienced, more battle-hardened players to call upon. In particular Mourinho felt it was a mistake to pick Abraham over Giroud. Giroud has demonstrated since his recall to the team over recent weeks that he still has much to offer — he gave Joe Gomez and Virgil van Dijk a hard time all evening on Tuesday — but surely Lampard’s call, in building his forward line around Abraham this season, goes down as the right one. The forward has scored 15 goals in all competitions for Chelsea this season. He cannot match Giroud’s hold-up play but Lampard wants to go in a different direction anyway, a game that revolves around speed and incisiveness. To go with Mount, Hudson-Odoi, Abraham and the rest makes sense. As with United under Solskjaer, there have been some wild inconsistencies, which is why successes in certain big games have been so important. There have been times this season when both managers have appeared out of their depth, struggling to stay afloat, but United, as well as beating Chelsea three times, have won twice away to Manchester City and until Saturday, were the only team to have taken points off Liverpool in the Premier League. Lampard must be sick of the sight of United and there have been desperate defeats at home to West Ham, Bournemouth and Southampton. Yet his Chelsea team have beaten Mourinho’s Tottenham twice (impressively) and have performed well in three games against Liverpool, beating them on Tuesday at the third attempt. They were comprehensively outwitted and outplayed by Bayern in the Champions League last week but their progression through the group stage, in a group containing Valencia, Ajax and Lille, was encouraging. Lampard feels that a lack of composure in both penalty areas have been Chelsea’s undoing this season. That does not tell the whole story but, just like Jurgen Klopp a couple of seasons ago when Liverpool were frittering away points in games they dominated, he has a point. Chelsea’s inconsistency is a concern — specifically their struggles against unfancied but spirited, well-organised opponents at Stamford Bridge — but then think of the previous two seasons, when they were so heavily reliant on Eden Hazard, so often their match-winner or their lone source of creative inspiration. Barring a dramatic improvement over the final months of the campaign, they are unlikely to get close to totals of 72 points under Sarri last term and 70 under Conte the previous year but, Hazard’s sporadic brilliance apart, there was something joyless about those two seasons. Even N’Golo Kante looked jaded at times. This season under Lampard has been about trying to do something different, something more positive. That has proved easier said than done without Hazard, who contributed 16 goals and 15 assists in the Premier League alone last season before departing for Real Madrid. He was the one who frequently turned defeats into draws and turned draws into victories. Hakim Zyech’s arrival from Ajax this summer should help to ease the creative burden but to expect the Hazard void to be filled this season by Christian Pulisic (21) and Hudson-Odoi (19) was not realistic, particularly since both have struggled with injury this term. Injuries to Antonio Rudiger and Kante have not helped. Neither has Kepa Arrizabalaga’s unconvincing form in goal until an improved performance against Liverpool. As the season has gone on and young players have fallen victim to injury, fatigue or an inevitable drop in form, Lampard has begun to lean more heavily on the experience of campaigners such as Marcos Alonso, Pedro, Willian and Giroud. It is not dissimilar to Solskjaer’s reintegration of the former Chelsea pair of Nemanja Matic and Juan Mata over recent weeks. It is that thing Lampard spoke about with regard to Villas-Boas: “We need to move on and change but you can’t lose sight of the present.” The FA Cup tie against Liverpool was an example of that. Mount, James, Tomori and Tino Anjorin were all among the substitutes and, with Hudson-Odoi and Abraham injured, Lampard turned to experience. Not only was Gilmour the youngest player in the starting line-up but he was the only one under the age of 25. A front three of Willian, Pedro and Giroud had a combined age of 96. It was not a line-up that screamed of a brave new world but, unlike the worst periods under Villas-Boas, Mourinho, Conte and Sarri, even the potentially disenchanted players looked full of vigour. And there, at the heart of it, was Gilmour, chasing down the opposition, always demanding the ball and recycling it quickly and intelligently. It carried echoes of the early months of 2010-11 when a teenager named Josh McEachran emerged from the Chelsea academy and showed similar touches of composure whenever he was given a run-out at the base of midfield by Ancelotti. But then, as results took a downward turn over the course of that season and Ancelotti sensed that he was in a battle (one that proved ultimately unsuccessful) to save his job, the experiment was abandoned. McEachran lost his way and, after a series of unfulfilling loans, tried for a fresh start at Brentford before moving on to Birmingham City. He has had a decent career at Championship level but perhaps he was one of those at the front of Lampard’s mind when the Chelsea manager spoke about academy players whose progression stalled due to a short-term outlook. Lampard is determined to ensure that Chelsea, seven times FA Youth Cup winners and twice UEFA Youth League winners over the past decade — even while sending many of their most promising players out on loan — have something more than transfer fees to show for the excellent work done at their academy. “I knew the fans wanted to see young players,” he told his cousin Jamie Redknapp in a recent Daily Mail interview. “I knew how much the academy put into these players — the sweat, the tears, the hours that go into those prospects. Neil Bath and Jim Fraser, who have run the academy for years, put so much into it. The day we beat Wolves 5-2, Tomori got the first, Tammy scores three, then Mason scores.” That, he says, was one of the highlights of his tenure so far. Lampard admits there has been a pragmatic element to this, that he might have sent Mount and Tomori out on loan had it not been for the transfer ban, but still here was a certain boldness in the way he made room for the pair, having had them at Derby last season. The conventional Chelsea way would have been to keep David Luiz and Gary Cahill while sending Tomori and either Christensen and Kurt Zouma on loan. Lampard moved Luiz and Cahill, two of his former team-mates, on to Arsenal and Crystal Palace respectively. Where possible, he wants to go with youth. Like any young team, they can be wildly inconsistent. They can even be inconsistent from one passage of play to the next. They have won five of their last 16 Premier League matches and nine of the past 22 games in all competitions. There is plenty to leave you scratching your head, plenty, as at United and Arsenal, to leave you wondering whether this is really the time and the place for a young manager who is having to learn on the job. But Chelsea is a club that has been in desperate need of this kind of reboot. Of course, winning trophies is the name of the game but the past decade’s successes have often come at the expense of long-term progress. The need to go in a different direction is obvious. Lampard still has a great deal to learn and prove as a manager. As with Solskjaer, as with Arteta, there cannot just be an assumption that, because he is a former player who understands the club, he is the right man for the job. A club cannot blindly give a manager three years to get things right. There has to be progress to show for it. Progress comes in different forms, though. Progress can be rebuilding a squad, developing young players, bringing a sense of unity, cohesion and some semblance of vision to a club that has been dysfunctional for years. What matters most, ultimately, is turning this type of progress into the type that will take a team to a higher level, challenging for the trophies they have won in the recent past. None of that is possible without first winning hearts and minds, changing the focus, giving fans, the players and the whole club something to buy into. Even to get to this point with a sense of unity intact, towards the end of his first season in charge, feels encouraging for Lampard. Not every manager at Chelsea makes it that far, as well he knows.