It looks like Jose Mourinho is on the brink at Chelsea, but there
must be some reasons why he hasn't been sacked yet. We look at five
reasons that might be given for Mourinho keeping his job.
1. There's the opportunity to create a dynasty
One
of the reasons Manchester United shied away from Mourinho when their
managerial position has been available in recent years is that they
viewed him as too short-term. He has a history of short spells at his
clubs, and even though the famed third-season theory in which his teams
suddenly fall apart three years in doesn't actually hold up to much
scrutiny, United wanted someone to stay for a long time (although after
the failure of David Moyes, they required three years of stabilisation
under Louis van Gaal), and didn't think Mourinho was that man. Chelsea
owner Roman Abramovich and Chelsea had a different opinion, and viewed
Mourinho as their own dynasty-builder, the man to stick around for years
and create something more permanent.
Mourinho agreed, saying when
he returned to the club in 2013: "With Financial Fair Play, and Chelsea
wants to go in that direction, you also need stability. You cannot
change manager and philosophy every few years."
And again, in
January last year: "The club knows what it really wants. The basic thing
is the club wants to win, but it also knows the direction it wants to
go in. That's why I came back. Not just because I love Chelsea and want
to be back -- I came because I believe in the project. I'm here to do my
best and to beat the record. I have a four-year contract, so hopefully
I'll beat the record."
This, after all, is the team and manager
who won the Premier League only a few months ago and should earn
Mourinho more patience than most. It's not an especially revolutionary
statement to say that basically any other manager in charge of Chelsea,
on this run and under these circumstances, would have been dismissed
some time ago, but Mourinho is different. Abramovich wanted Mourinho to
be his dynasty-maker, so to sack him now would mean starting from
scratch. Patience might be a virtue that Abramovich could try out, for a
change.
2. Is it more the players' fault?
There is a school of
thought that suggests the role of the manager in football is overrated,
that their influence is relatively limited and it's the players who win
or lose games. Thus, you could make the argument that Chelsea's
struggles this season are more to do with the men on the pitch than the
man in the dugout.
Thibaut Courtois has been injured, Branislav
Ivanovic's form has disappeared off a cliff, John Terry is showing the
ravages of age quite emphatically, Nemanja Matic seems to be undergoing a
crisis of confidence, Cesc Fabregas' influence has been on the wane for
the better part of a year, Eden Hazard has been subdued, Diego Costa
looks unfit.
Virtually none of Mourinho's key players are
performing as they should be, and while it is the manager's job to
motivate and organise these players, he cannot do everything.
Publicly,
the players are behind Mourinho, but any public proclamations should be
at least treated with suspicion, if not discounted completely. After
all, no Chelsea player, when a microphone is placed in front of them and
asked if Mourinho is still the man for the job, is going to say 'No,
he's useless and we all hate him.' If the Chelsea squad are no longer
playing for their manager it doesn't speak particularly well of
Mourinho, but at the same time they don't speak particularly well of the
players' professionalism either.
Of course Mourinho bears some responsibility for Chelsea's calamitous form this term, but not all of it.
3. The fans are still with him
Or
at least some of them are. This might seem like a relatively
insignificant thing, but it's not. Even during the surrender to
Liverpool at the weekend, Mourinho's name was being sung from the
stands, and a recent poll on fan site "We Ain't Got No History" ended with 75 percent of almost 6,000 respondents voting in their manager's favour.
Some
Chelsea fans, usually with a heavy heart, have called for him to go,
which is to be expected, but it seems that the majority are on his side
for now. There is certainly something to be said for the will of the
people to be taken into account.
The ESPN FC crew discuss the rumours surrounding an unnamed Chelsea player that would rather 'lose than win for Mourinho'.
4. Is there a suitable replacement available?
"Who's
next?" is not a question that has troubled Abramovich greatly in the
past, as he tended to sack a manager and then consider the consequences,
but there is definitely a sense that he is running Chelsea a little
more carefully these days. Therefore, the question of who would replace
Mourinho is one to consider, and must be one of the factors in the
Portuguese still being in his position. Few long-term replacements are
available. The ideal scenario would be to appoint a safe pair of hands
until this summer, when Pep Guardiola could be available, Antonio Conte
might be willing to leave the Italy job after Euro 2016 or Diego Simeone
may be tempted away from Atletico Madrid.
But who would take an
interim position? In theory Carlo Ancelotti would be the safest pair of
hands, but reports differ as to whether he would be willing to take a
temporary role. Guus Hiddink is well-liked at Chelsea and has taken
exactly this role before in 2009, but he did such a calamitous job with
the Dutch national team over the past year that there must be doubts
about his candidature, at least.
Beyond those two, who is free and
available to drop everything -- and, crucially, be an improvement on
Mourinho? Fabio Capello? Brendan Rodgers? Avram Grant again? Without
Ancelotti, the pool of potential short-term replacements looks shallow.
5. The cost
There's
a relatively pragmatic reason not to be too quick with the ax:
Mourinho's contract. He signed a new four-year deal only in August,
something that didn't look particularly like a risk at the time, but now
would appear to be the major factor in dissuading Abramovich from
pulling the trigger. Miguel Delaney reported last week
that Mourinho would demand the deal be paid up in full should he be
dismissed, meaning it would cost the club around £30 million to sack
him, and that's not even factoring in his backroom staff, many of whom
would surely leave too.
Chelsea aren't unfamiliar with paying off
underperforming managers; Mourinho agreed a significant settlement on
the three years remaining on his £6 million salary the first time
around, Luiz Felipe Scolari got around £12 million when he went in 2009,
a similar fee made its way to Andre Villas-Boas, Roberto Di Matteo was
reportedly paid around £9 million after being dismissed. But even though
Abramovich has shown little compunction in shelling out cash before,
£30 million (and other reports put it even higher than that) is
something else for a club still keen on their own self-sufficiency.
Even
for someone like Abramovich, the figures involved mean he has to be
absolutely certain his decision is correct before pulling the trigger.
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