Carlo Ancelotti – Should He Stay Or Leave?
That’s pretty much the question. Should Carlo Ancelotti stay or leave? Carlo himself wants to stay. He likes it here in London. He’s got a great challenge on a fantastic remuneration. He’s a nice man who doesn’t plan to challenge his employers. He’s fine. Why would he not want to stay? He has another one year left on his Chelsea contract. I don’t certainly see his contract being renewed. If Roman renews Carlo’s contract after a trophyless season, pigs will fly. Actually, just one year left in his contract means Roman parting with a smaller sum as compensation, if Carlo were to be sacked.
As supporters of the Chelsea Football Club, what do we think? Should Carlo Ancelotti stay or leave? The house is divided on this topic. There are people that say he deserves another chance and then there are people that think he’s not the one to take us forward and hence should leave.
When Ancelotti became Chelsea manager, I was a bit skeptical. His league record was poor. He had his fans in Milan but majority of fans were also getting impatient with him there. He had won just one league title in his 10 seasons of managing Juventus and Milan. I thought Chelsea was his escape-route. His only saving grace was that he was a two-time champions league winner. A big one that. During his first season at Chelsea, I’ve grown to like this man. He’s certainly not my kind of football manager. I admire the brash, arrogant, outspoken, successful and very demanding types such as Clough, Shankly, Jose, Fergie, Klinsmann etc. But I do like managers like Moyes, Hiddink, Martinez, Zola as well. Carlo was added to this list.
But then, I’ve also been a staunch critic of Ancelotti myself. If I make a list of reasons why we didn’t win the title or a trophy this
season, Carlo would top that list. In my humble opinion, he made several blunders and he was neither inspirational nor dynamic, just like the Chelsea of this season. My biggest gripe about him was that he wasn’t adaptive. Despite all this, I’d still like him to see out his contract. Why? I believe he can change and adapt.
Now, I know this is a massive expectation. If Carlo repeats his own performance of 2010/11 in the 2011/12 season, I’d be disappointed becaue that’s exactly the opposite of what I’m signing up for. I believe he would look back at this season and learn from our mistakes and kick on. Some tend to think that he would not change. That he’s too stubborn to change his ways now. That it was the same story at Milan. For some crazy reason though, I think he would re-invent himself in the next season. In my books, this is a gamble, but a gamble worth the punt.
Well, that’s my view and let’s see how’s the house divided on this. On one side, there’s support for Carlo, which primarily derived from sympathy more than anything else. On another side, you have people waiting to see the back of him. For the sake of this discussion, let’s look at both sides of the coin.
He’s a double winning manager. He won the premier league title in his debut season – a feat not many managers can boast of. His Chelsea created a premier league record of scoring 103 goals – a feat that no one would have put their money on. And that’s a feat not even Sir Alex can match in all his years in England and Arsene Wenger for all his ‘philosophy of attacking football’ still didn’t get 100 plus goals, ever. Carlo’s still working with Jose Mourinho’s squad. He should be allowed time to build his own squad. He should be allowed to set up his team of support staff.
He’s a calm and composed guy that doesn’t get himself or his club in the tabloids. You can even say that he has a great relationship with the media. Anyone else in his situation might have got pounded by the media. He also has good relationships with the big players. The players, media, officials and rivals all have a lot of respect for the man. He fine, happy and settled here.
On the other hand, Carlo has just delivered Roman his only second trophyless season since he bought Chelsea. The last time Chelsea went through a trophyless season, the manager was sacked immediately after the season ended. In fact, even in that season, we were a spot kick away from being European champions and lost in the league cup final. Roman’s champions league dream with Carlo is also fading. Ended up losing both legs to Inter last season and again lost both legs to Man Utd this season, in the champions league.
Also many have observed that Carlo is not a master tactician after all. If anything, his tactics have been unimaginative and
uninspiring. He’s hardly worked his magic in the big matches. He’s not been very decisive. He doesn’t take enough risks and appears unwilling to change or experiment. During adversity, he didn’t do enough to pull our team back. He started the season by saying this squad is perfect and ended the season saying the opposite. Didn’t develop the young players and didn’t use his squad to its potential. Failure was not a disaster for him. He is not the future of Chelsea FC. He doesn’t represent the what the club is or what it wants to be.
He’s obviously a nice guy and a classy guy but so was Claudio Ranieri. In the world of football, it doesn’t count for much. Would we ever want a player for Chelsea because he’s a nice man? Why would that be any different for a manager? I think his being nice has no place in the equation.
Anyway, the question is, would Carlo Ancelotti be sacked this summer? Most of the media seems to think that he would be sacked. Bookmakers’ odds signal that it is indeed a real possibility.
By his own admission, back in January, he was lucky not to have been sacked. Probably, he was not sacked because Roman had planned to buy Torres in January and hoped that Carlo could land the champions league, probably. When Roman is not happy, it shows.
When the relationship between Roman and Jose worsened in 06-07, Roman refused spend even one penny on transfers in January. In that season, the team was bleeding. Cech was out on a long lay off and so was Cudicini. John Terry was missing for months. Robben was out for months. Essien and Ferreira had to play as centre backs. Hilario was on goal. But still, not one penny was spent in January. Still won two trophies that season though. This time around, he has sanctioned big money signings of Torres and David Luiz. Earlier, Ramires and Benayoun. I think it’s a sign that he’s fully supporting Carlo to succeed.
Still, Carlo doesn’t seem to be very sure about his Chelsea future. If I’ve to read between the lines, I’d conclude that he’s getting sacked and he knows it. In fact, I heard on BBC yesterday that a ‘senior club official’ said that Carlo was informed of his sacking as soon as Man Utd dumped us out of the champions league. Anyway, this is what Carlo says about his Chelsea future.
I don’t know. I understand that people are interested. Me too. We have to wait two weeks and after that we wait on the decision of the club. I said a lot of times I would like to stay here at this club but if it is not possible, we will find a different way.
Sacking Carlo would also mean that we would have our sixth manager in as many seasons. Stability is quite important for the club but there are expectations and they have to be met. I don’t think Roman would compromise on his expectations or the manager’s performance for the stability in management. The question for Roman and his board to answer. It all depends on the strategic vision for Chelsea FC, say in the next 5 years. And then, which manager would take the club forward and help the club achieve its strategic vision?
If you were Roman, what would you do? Would you keep Ancelotti and give him another chance or would you sack him in the summer?
Chelsea & Man Utd get what they deserve . . .
There it is. Most of us knew it would happen. Some of us didn’t want to believe until it happened. I was expecting this though I had hoped otherwise. Is it now fair to say that this league is finally over? We are not out mathematically but then it will be unfair to Man Utd to even talk about it. They were deserved winners and they would be deserved champions too, just like we were last season.
We had to win this match today. Honestly, we weren’t even good value for a draw. That’s the truth. Man Utd were out to prove a point right from the kick off, literally. We didn’t know what hit us and we were two goals down, only lucky not to have been four goals down.
Once we went behind by two goals, we were never going to get back into the match. Though I was hoping for some luck to score and to equalise, I didn’t see us coming back from 0-2 down to beat Man Utd at Old Trafford today. We just did not have the fight in us as much as I had wanted.
I didn’t quite agree with the playing eleven. Kalou should not have started. Torres should have. Essien should not have started. Ramires should have. After half time, Mikel was gone while Essien was still on the pitch. David Luiz was gone too. While we were chasing a two-goal difference, we wasted a substitution on a central defender. Big mistake. The problem was with Lampard and Essien and both of them played all 90 minutes.
Credit to Man Utd but I’d say both those goals were conceded cheaply. Right after the kick off, Essien failed to block a pass from Giggs to Park, Ivanovic was in Man Utd’s half (in just 30 seconds into the match) and no one could put enough pressure on Park. Next thing we see is Park, with no pressure on the ball-side, sends a through pass to unleash the little pea. JT’s poor run made it easy and David Luiz had only one option and that was to bring the man down. Quite reasonably, he didn’t do it. It was the first minute of the match. Luiz tried to intercept but his effort just wasn’t enough. Little pea beat Cech at his near post.
The second goal was the saddest goal I’ve seen in a match of this significance in recent times. A short corner from Man Utd, followed by a cross into the box. Not one Chelsea player jumped as the cross came in. No one attacked the ball that came into the box. Ivanovic was on Vidic who headed it with his feet on the ground. Poor poor defending. High school stuff, really.
After the two goals Man Utd started to consolidate as that’s all they had to do. The angry response from Chelsea just didn’t arrive.
Half time. I was expecting Chelsea to come out in the second half with all their guns blazing and dazzle Man Utd with a blitzkrieg just as they did to us in the first half. Didn’t happen.
We did get a goal in the second half but even that didn’t look to change the fortunes for us. Man Utd could still have increased their lead by a couple more goals. There was nothing to complain. 2-1 is a very kind score. In reality, this was a rout. And yes, Howard Webb was brilliant today. Best refereeing in a high profile match in recent times.
After the match, Ryan Giggs said:
It was a great start and it would have been easy for us to take our foot off the pedal but we didn’t.
Wish we had done the same for this premier league season.
Carlo said this after the match:
We started so badly. It was very difficult after that to come back and try to win. The second half was better but United played better and deserved to win. We have to accept the defeat. Today, United were better and, in general this season, they were better than us. They deserve to win the title. They will win and we have to try to maintain second place.
As always, gracious in defeat. Also, he is not the ‘wounded animal’ type. Always, the football teams reflect their manager. I’m not referring to the results here. I’m talking about how teams play. They reflect their manager. As soon as we conceded in the first minute, we were a bit deflated immediately and that’s where some killer instinct and siege mentality would have helped.
May be I wasn’t really expecting us to beat them or to even draw the match. All I was looking for was probably a good fight. I just probably wanted them to know what we’re made of. We weren’t quite mentally strong today. We gave up a little too early. We were a bit afraid to play our game. We were always worried about the Man Utd counterattack.
What’s surprising is, Chelsea should have been up for this more than Man Utd. It was Man Utd that had to play Schalke, home and away and had to play a tough away game at Emirates but still they seemed to be totally sharp. We had no champions league commitments. All that we had was premier league. We were the form team. We had a fully fit squad. Still we could have lost this game quite badly. The scoreline could have been really nasty.
There are two views of looking at this Chelsea season: (a) We were many points behind Man Utd in February and we could have levelled them today. We were fighting for champions league spot and we’re second in the table now. Great recovery! (b) We were running away with the league after the first three months. We should have won this league in April. We lost the initiative, we lost the lead and ultimately the title. Sad collapse!
It’s very well documented in this very blog which camp I belong to. Even if we had won the title, I’d have still said that we made a meal of this season. True, it’s all about relative performance when it comes to winning the league. And that’s what can paper the cracks too. While the relative performance can show you on top of the table, you do need to look at what should the table have shown, if we had done our job. We should have not only won this title this time, but also with 80+ points and with a handsome margin.
Bravo Fergie! He’s done it. He’s knocked Liverpool of their ‘fucking perch’. This is a brilliant season for him. He had a squad that was weaker and lacked depth when compared to Chelsea. He missed Rooney early in the season and had to go through the transfer drama involving him. He missed his captain Rio Ferdinand for most part of the season. He missed Nemanja Vidic, his stand-in captain and his best defender, too. And then he missed Valencia, for most of the season, who was starting to shine well for them. He went through the whole season without an established right back. His use of Giggs and Scholes was pure genius. Used Chicharito wisely despite Berbatov’s fine form. More than anything, he continues to be passionate and hungry for success and somehow magically, he passes this on to his team, no matter who the team comprises of. Hats off!
Carlo Ancelotti, meanwhile, has already started talking about his future. In his own words, he’s been told that his future will be discussed in a couple of weeks. He was brilliant last season. I think he lost on two counts – (a) he couldn’t quite change/adapt when necessary (b) he didn’t use/develop his squad well enough. There are rumours that he would get the sack. That would be terribly sad if it happens. I don’t want to change our manager. I want our manager to change.
Trophyless season then. Expect several changes in Chelsea FC between now and the beginning of the next season. What’s now for us at BlueChampions? Too many questions. Lots of debates. Painfully deep analysis. Stay tuned.
Man Utd vs Chelsea | The Final Of This Premier League!
Kick off. Match evenly poised. David Luiz gets sent off at ’10 for a two-footed lunge on Rooney. Chelsea dominate the game despite being man down. Man Utd playing like they are more than happy with a draw. 0-0 at half time. Second half is more open. Man Utd finally keen to make their advantage count. Cech has a blinder of a game. Several quarrels and stoppages. At 80’, Mikel gets sent off for a second yellow. 90’. Didier Drogba scores a 35-yard screamer. Man Utd 0-1 Chelsea. The Blue Army and their fans go crazy. Fergie time: 6 minutes. Chelsea running down the clock. Howard Webb keeps looking at his watch and Sir Alex. Finally, at 103’, Nani dives when he felt Ramires’ breath on him. Giggs takes the pen and scores it. As soon as the ball hit the back of the net, Howard Webb blows the final whistle. 1-1. Quite possible, if you ask me.
The biggest game of the season tomorrow. For a brilliant Chelsea performance we have all the pre-requisites and ingredients. Players availability: Check. Motivation: Check. Momentum: Check. Belief: Check. All that we might need to do is to pick the right playing eleven and then the talking will be on the pitch.
The playing eleven for the Man Utd match tomorrow have been selected by YOU!
Actually, my choice of first eleven was: Cech, Terry, David Luiz, Ivanovic, Ashley Cole, Mikel, Ramires, Lampard, Malouda, Torres & Drogba. The opinion poll results were exactly what I had picked except for one change. While I picked Torres, we have chosen Kalou. As we all know, Kalou does better business when he comes off the bench. Plus, Torres has just scored and has been playing well and hence he deserves more time on the pitch. That’s why I chose Torres over Kalou.
I’ve been saying that Essien should be dropped. Looks like most of us do share that view. Essien didn’t get even half the votes of Malouda or Ivanovic or Mikel. That does say something. David Luiz is everyone’s favourite to start this match. About 96% of the voters thought he should start. There’s a reason why we call him the ‘Manchester-Killer’.
Look, we’ve learnt quite a lot in the last few months about our strengths and weaknesses and what works and what doesn’t. We need to put them to good use. What I’ve done is to list down the key messages and instructions that I would give to my first choice playing eleven, if we need to win the match against Man Utd tomorrow. Here we go:
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Petr Cech: Continue your fine form. Beware of crosses coming in. When it comes to crosses, take control rather than expecting your centre backs to deal with the danger. Beware of the Rooney long shot. Just can’t afford to let that shot beat your near post.
John Terry: Captain. Leader. Legend. This is a big match. Old Trafford is no easy place and playing a match of this significance means we might go through patches of confidence-rocking moments during the match. You must keep us going. You ensure that we give our best fight ever.
David Luiz: Keep an eye on the little pea. He’s one clever bastard. They’d target you to provoke a mistake from you. You should know that when teams go to Old Trafford, football becomes a non-contact sport, for the visiting teams. Do those marauding runs. Infuse that energy. When possible, shoot.
Ivanovic: Attack is not your primary duty. We can’t afford to concede. Keep Evra on check. When David Luiz goes on a raid, keep guard at the back. If you get an opportunity to cross, don’t cross unless you’re very confident. Keep the ball on the ground.
Ashley Cole: Attack and defend in equal measures. You’d be on John Terry’s side of the pitch. Trust Terry and Mikel, attack when you can. Don’t look to cross, keep the ball on the ground. When possible, shoot.
Mikel: Don’t get booked in the first half. Distribute the ball as quickly as you can. Look for those defence-splitting passes that we know you can make. Stay on the heels of Man Utd midfielders. Wouldn’t mind if you didn’t step into the final third once all match.
Ramires: Run. Run. Run. Commit Evra to make tackles, force him to make errors. Keep him held back in fear of providing space to you. Make those incisive runs through the centre. Support Mikel.
Lampard: Shoot when you can. Ensure that we don’t try to walk the ball into the net. Make sure that we play direct where required. Find Fernando Torres. Don’t take corners or free kicks.
Malouda: Just do not look for glory. You’re in fine form. See how best you can set up goals and go for goal yourself only when that’s the one and only option. Just in case you’re not looking around, we have a new striker in the team by name Fernando Torres. Find him, feed him. And, track back and help the team. Take the corners.
Fernando Torres: Stay alert. You’ll get your opportunities. Make your chances count. Vidic is never comfortable in your presence. Keep bothering him.
Didier Drogba: You’re the main man. Don’t need to play the winger. You’re the wide centre forward. Earn free kicks at the right areas and take all the free kicks, from whatever distance. Attack in tandem with Ramires. Shoot, whenever possible.
Carlo Ancelotti: Make aggressive subs both in terms of choices and timing. Don’t sub Torres unless he’s totally hopeless. Make aggressive tactical changes where required. Practically (not mathematically), a 1-0 defeat is the same as a 3-0 defeat. Take your risks. This is the final of the premier league.
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Tomorrow, Chelsea might have to come up with their best away performance of the season to come out winners. I think we would win this one. Even if we don’t win, we’d get at least a draw but I don’t see us losing tomorrow. If we do get a draw, it’s not shock horror as we would still be in the hunt for the title but certainly we’d have handed back the initiative to Man Utd.
Here’s my prediction: Man Utd 1-2 Chelsea. And yes, a little bit of ‘history’!
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Who Should Start Against Man Utd This Super-Duper Sunday?
Very simple question. Who should start for Chelsea in the big match on Sunday? No constraints. Full squad. One big match. I think Carlo has taken too much time and is yet to settle down on his first choice squad. He does seem to have a few dilemmas – especially in midfield and in attack.
Who should play in defence? I think this is made straight forward by the clarity around Ivanovic. Captain John Terry and aggressive David Luiz as centre backs. Ever-dependable Ivanovic and all-but-dead Ashley Cole as full backs. This is all quite simple unless we have our doubts about David Luiz having an incident-free match. I personally think that we should stick with him in central defence. There could be options of (a) swapping David Luiz and Ivanovic and (b) Alex playing and David Luiz in the bench. I think we need the pace and adventure of David Luiz. Remember, a draw is not of any use. We gotta win.
My choices: John Terry, David Luiz, Ashley Cole & Ivanovic.
Who should play in midfield? I’m looking at a 4-3-3, the formation that we’re most comfortable with. The options available are: Lampard, Essien, Ramires, Mikel, Josh, Zhirkov and Malouda. We continue to be lucky with injuries, for a team that’s mostly in late 20s and early 30s. Right now, all are available for selection.
Essien has been terrible most season. This is a season for him to forget. Not being effective is one but being detrimental is another. I’d drop Essien. I wrote in Jan 2011 that Essien should be dropped. Nothing’s changed the way I see it. Mikel has a fantastic job in defensive midfield. Most of us have observed that we play better football when Mikel plays. He does a better job of holding the ball and distributing for attack. Mikel doesn’t lose possession and initiative like the Essien of today. If Mikel gets a yellow, I’d bring in Josh. Call me whatever, I’d bring on Josh.
I’d pick Ramires and Lampard. Ramires over Essien because we need some pace. We’re playing away from home. We need some pace to quickly turn Man Utd attacks into Chelsea attacks. Essien doesn’t have that pace and in his current form, loses possession more often than not. When a midfielder does that against Man Utd, you’d expect Nani and Rooney to run riot. Lampard is in for me. Proven goalscorer is back among goals. He plays much better with Mikel behind him.
My choices: Ramires, Mikel & Lampard
Who should play in attack? The biggie! Carlo has a sweet problem here too. He has some really good attacking players most of them in good form. The options are, Didier Drogba, Nicolas Anelka, Florent Malouda, Zhirkov, Fernando Torres and Salomon Kalou.
I’d keep Malouda as he seems to have found his form. He’s played especially well against Man Utd before. His presence would stifle the Man Utd right back. I’d play Drogba on the right flank. He can give a nightmare to Evra but I don’t expect Drogba to run as well as an attacking Evra but that’s where Ramires the right midfielder comes in.
Leading the attack will be Fernando Torres. He’s playing very well. He’s scored his debut goal. Even though he didn’t score a goal in the last match, he was very bright and intelligent. He’s played hundreds of matches as a lone striker and he knows what it takes to be one. I only hope that as a team we play to Fernando Torres’ strengths. I can’t believe that even after 3 months since he joined we haven’t quite figured out how to play with him. Anyway, for me, he starts. Kalou comes on as a sub for Torres or Malouda depending on how things go. Drogba stays for all 90 minutes. Benayoun should definitely come in if we are trailing by half time. In any case, Yossi should play about 30 mins when Torres is also on the field.
My choices: Drogba, Malouda & Torres.
So, there’s my team:
(One and only) Petr Cech, Terry, Ivanovic, David Luiz, Ashley Cole, Mikel, Ramires, Lampard, Malouda, Drogba and Torres.
I’m 100% sure that this is not the team that Carlo would pick to start. If I can guess Carlo right, this could be the team: Cech, Alex, Terry, Ivanovic, Ashley Cole, Essien, Lampard, Mikel, Malouda, Drogba and Kalou.
Will David Luiz Play Right Back Against Manchester United?
**This blog entry was written under the assumption that when Branislav Ivanovic earned his 10th yellow card of the season on Sunday, he would be suspended for the next match. But as reader Rara has observed, no suspensions are given if the 10th card comes after the second Sunday in April. Thank you Rara! Read on, it’s still a good column!**
Sunday is the biggest match in Chelsea’s season.
Winning the European Cup was always a long shot. The two powerhouses in Spain seem likely to overpower anyone in the final.
But as I presciently noted back in January, the current weakness in the Premier League means that a record-low points total might win the title this season. Chelsea always had a chance as long as they stayed within sniffing distance. In this case, sniffing distance was a whopping 15 points!
Sunday at Old Trafford is Ground Zero. Goal differential is currently identical. With a win Chelsea will draw on even points and pull ahead on goal difference. Then a win at Everton (not easy) and a win home to Newcastle (doable) and the title could be theirs, as long as United don’t go on a mad scoring spree.
But there’s a problem. A massive problem.
On this winning streak, David Luiz has played at center-back and Branislav Ivanovic at right back. It’s been a great combination. Ivanovic has brought desperately needed stability at right back. He’s a staunch defender and a capable winger.
But Ivanovic has 10 yellow cards and is out.
So Carlo Ancelotti has a choice. And, frankly, a test of his courage.
He could take the safe path and play either Paulo Ferreira or Jose Bosingwa. They were the regulars for much of the season. So Carlo’s comfort level would be high. But neither man is the answer at right back. Ferreira often looks lost on defense. And Bosingwa’s speed is negated by his awful crossing and sometimes shaky defense. 
There is another path open to Ancelotti. A risky path. A path un-taken. Ever.
He could play David Luiz at right back and move Alex into the middle. Alex is a known quantity and feels like a safe selection. 
However, to our knowledge Luiz has never played right back as a professional. At Benfica he was a left back. But he has a strong right foot. He knows how to tackle. He’s quick. He’s willing.
And Chelsea have a full week of practice to get him used to a new role.
There’s a philosophical question involved here. In the biggest match of your season, do you take a chance? Do you put a player in an unfamiliar role and risk a disastrous mistake because it’s all so new to him? Might he make positional errors and let a man or a ball through?
In the chaos of a road game, with your season on the line, with intensity dialed-up to 11, do you really take this kind of a chance?
As fans, we have nothing to lose. I suspect we all want to see Luiz at right back. But as the manager, Carlo has a lot to lose. If he selects Luiz and it backfires, Ancelotti will get no credit and a world of blame.
To me, Ancelotti has a big decision. But you know what? It’s entirely possible that he doesn’t think he has a decision at all. He’ll select one of his normal right backs and sleep easy.
Would you?
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