Is Roman just being simply ruthless due to his trophyless performance or he has realised his mistakes? Roman has just disposed off Grant and Ten Cate in the space of a week. Didn’t Roman have a plan when he brought Grant and Ten Cate? Weren’t they supposed to bring something new to Chelsea? What do these dismissals tell me? I think Roman is slowly but surely getting to know the people around him.

The good thing about Grant’s sacking is that Roman may not seek advices from Grant in football matters anymore. Won’t look very nice, right? Especially when Grant has even rejected the football director post? That’s what I realised when I saw some news about Roman consulting Ancelotti. That’s a very good healthy sign from Roman. He is now going to his experts and not to his friends or the set of yes men.

When Ten Cate arrived, I saw it as a good news. That was a few days after Grant was appointed. May be that’s what made Ten Cate appointment look like an oasis in a desert. Steve Clarke was also rumoured to be leaving then. We had known that Ten Cate was the ‘iron man’. His strictness and toughness with the players were very popular and effective. But he had to be complemented with a manager who can keep him under control and ensure that his relationship with the players was cooperative. In Grant he had someone who was already struggling to stay in friendly terms with the players.

Forget about Grant and Ten Cate losing the dressing room, they never seemed to have been part of it. The quarrel between Terry and Ten Cate in the training ground under the watchful eyes of Grant summed up all their roles and relationships. Terry wants to boss around knowing Grant does not help much. Ten Cate continues being his own self at a new club who have a settled bunch of champions. Grant watches these two subordinates of him quarreling with each other but does nothing about the situation. Since JM left, the power struggle is quite evident to see in Chelsea.

The big plus about this nasty quarrel is that Roman was supposed to have seen this too. Roman must have felt utterly disappointed looking at this nonsense. May be that’s when Roman must have thought that the big scheme that was sold to him was simply a scandal. Roman must have felt betrayed. With further events at the club, Roman must have realised at that moment that he was taken for a ride. It was around this period Roman gifted the 2 million pound four-seater Ferrari to JM. May be he felt bad that he sacked JM based on the advices from his close circle, who later on failed, leaving all to the players themselves. I don’t think it was a coincidence that the frequency of interaction between Roman and JM increased in the last few months.

So now, an enlightened Roman is on a rampage. He has started hunting down those who were all involved in that scheme, directly or indirectly. Grant gets a sack despite what was seen as an over-achievement by him. The cold statement by Bruce Buck that ‘being second is not what we want’ said it all. Without Roman’s concurrence, I don’t see Bruce Buck uttering these words to the owner’s pal who surprised himself. Okay now, will the enlightened Roman bring back Jose Mourinho as the Chelsea manager?

I’d love to see that happen. Of course I bought all the media stories about JM returning to Chelsea. But this does not seem realistic now. By all probabilities JM will join Inter. Earlier I had said that JM should not return to Chelsea so soon as it would make Roman’s decision making look ridiculous and he would make himself a joke, despite being a big man to admit his mistakes. But now, by sacking Grant, he has already admitted that he made a mistake with that appointment. So, JM joining Chelsea will be quite good. But that seems very remote now. What do we do?

Well, Chelsea need not rush their decision. Anyway, most of the transfers would happen only after the conclusion of Euro 2008. Of course, we can still look for non-Euro 2008 players which includes English players too. To wait for the Euro to finish might widen the net with coaches like BIlic becoming probables. At present there are about dozen names linked including Rijkaard, Hughes, Lippi, Mancini etc.

I have a feeling that the new Chelsea manager would not be someone you’d call old. Something tells me he would be less than 50, for sure. While I can’t wait for the announcement, I can understand that Chelsea need time to appoint the next one. After sacking the third manager in 5 years, there must be some weightage for the stability factor. We can’t afford another experiment as another sacking would make us look even more ridiculous than we are now. If the board and Roman think that the new manager should be in charge for at least three seasons, they might naturally take their time on the selection. Three seasons might look like a long period when you realise that one of the most successful managers in club football lasted only three seasons at Chelsea.

Chelsea has been in the news for all wrong reasons. It is not due to an outspoken manager or a big headed striker. Much of the bad media publicity that Chelsea has received of late, is due to the club. It is now, more than ever, the ‘billionaire’s plaything’ propaganda by the Press is very strong. Look at this sequence – a successful manager wins trophies, creates history, gets sacked due to his failed relationship with the owner, owner appoints his friend who is little known and qualified, gets a 4 year contract when we think he is a stop gap, a new assistant manager is hired, this buddy surprises everyone this season, the old man still gets sacked within eight months, and now the newly appointed assistant manager also gets sacked with little apparent reasons though we can make our guesses. All this has happened in 8 months. It is this unpredictable roller coaster ride in the management staff that has put us in poor light than the occasional ramblings of an loud mouthed manager, who at least was successful. When I read Grant saying that his objective was to improve the image of Chelsea, I thought it was laughable.

I don’t mind if Roman and the board take another 6 weeks to appoint the new manager but we simply can’t get it wrong one more time. Roman needs to find someone trustworthy and should set out his targets and belief in the manager’s footballing philosophy that could meet his targets sooner or later. We cannot adopt this ‘you lost so you’re fired’ anymore. I don’t mean that our expectations should change. For all the millions invested, it is within Roman’s right to set stiff targets but we should keep at least one side as fixed and keep the others variable. The composition of the team can vary but he should work with the coach, instead of looking for a new coach every time the current ‘fails’, by his standards.

Okay, if I’ve given you any impression like Grant has been rendered injustice by Roman, please erase it. Grant deserved a sack, undoubtedly. Not because he gave us a trophyless season but I don’t see him as our future. He won’t lead us anywhere. I fully support that he was given the boot but the mistake was hiring him in the first place. I hope I’ve made myself clear here.

If this piece looks like one of those ‘News of the World’ reports, I can’t help it. I just grouped my thoughts, not facts, together. Feel free to disagree.