The Andre Villas-Boas era at Chelsea is over after he sacked today. Chelsea also announced assistant manager Roberto Di Matteo would take charge of the team until the end of the season.
Chelsea said in a statement on their official website, www.chelseafc.com:
“Andre Villas-Boas has parted company with Chelsea Football Club today.
“The board would like to record our gratitude for his work and express our disappointment that the relationship has ended so early.
“Unfortunately the results and performances of the team have not been good enough and were showing no signs of improving at a key time in the season.
“The club is still competing in the latter stages of the UEFA Champions League and the FA Cup, as well as challenging for a top-four spot in the Premier League, and we aim to remain as competitive as possible on all fronts.
“With that in mind, we felt our only option was to make a change at this time.
“With immediate effect, Roberto Di Matteo has been appointed first-team coach on an interim basis until the end of the season.”
This is such a bad decision by Roman Abramovich and the Chelsea board on so many levels.
First it cost Chelsea £28m to sack Ancelotti & sign AVB from Porto. Why spend that kind of money on a manager, sign off on his three-year plan to transform an aging squad and then fire him nine months into the job?
With a reputation for firing managers who don’t win trophies do you seriously think that any of the top managers in the world (ie Guardiola or Mourinho) would be attracted to the Chelsea job? Who would want to inherit an aging squad, little money (Uefa Financial Fair Play) and the demand to win a trophy every year?
When AVB was hired, he made it clear that Chelsea’s aging squad needed refreshed. That the best days of Terry, Lampard, Essien, Malouda, Drogba, Anelka and Alex were behind them. This was going to take time, especially with very few Chelsea academy players ready to step up into the first team squad.
It didn’t help AVB that the Chelsea players (Terry, Lampard, Drogba) run the Chelsea dressing room and if they are unhappy with the way things are going, they can make life extremely difficult for any manager.
The problem for whoever replaces AVB in the summer, is that the same challenges that AVB faced are still there. Chelsea needs to get younger. As we saw on Saturday, Essien and Lampard cannot control a game like they did two or three years ago.
Up-front Drogba is on his last legs while Torres will have to be sold, after being a major bust. It is hard to win games when your two center-forwards have a combined 6 goals between them this season.
What do you think of the Chelsea decision to fire AVB today? Do you agree with the decision or do you think it is a huge mistake?
This post originally appeared on our Chelsea Blog.
