A moment during Chelsea’s desultory home draw with Burnley, a few months back, told you the club was drowning in incompetence, delusion and affectation and required a new manager capable of speaking truth to those woeful individuals who had installed themselves as owners.
The team were on the back foot against one of the Premier League’s worst clubs, when captain Reece James arrived at Liam Rosenior’s technical area during a second-half pause in play, looking for a conversation. Rosenior was so busy writing something down on a pad that by the time he looked up, Reece had gone. Rosenior returned to his pad. Chelsea ended the match with six defenders on the field, four of whom were usually centre-halves. Burnley scored a late equaliser.
The geniuses at BlueCo, Chelsea’s ownership group, were so obsessed with finding themselves a ‘collaborator’ – or a ‘yes man’ in the old parlance – that a nodding dog like Rosenior seemed the ideal fit when Enzo Maresca left, regardless of capability or requisite experience for the task in hand.
‘His reign in the white heat of Chelsea is doomed,’ stated the headline of the piece I wrote when Rosenior was recruited to Stamford Bridge, in January.
I made the observation that the winners in football are never the nice guys, like Rosenior, and that Chelsea had equipped themselves with one of the most challenging individuals to have crossed the threshold of English football when, under Jose Mourinho, they won those Premier League titles in 2005, 2006 and 2015.
Once again, Chelsea require someone with ego, bite and intolerance of the interferers – an individual with the faculty to tell BlueCo the way things must be – if they are to find deliverance from their bleak current predicament.
Liam Rosenior took lots of notes at Chelsea but didn’t win many points. Nice guys like Rosenior seldom do win in the cut-throat world of elite football
We must hope that Xabi Alonso is not attracted by the Chelsea job, which looks like career suicide for him so soon after his torrid time with Real Madrid
It is why we must hope that Xabi Alonso is not attracted by the prospect of a vacant Stamford Bridge managerial position which looks like career suicide for him, coming so soon on the back of his torrid time in Madrid.
Because by all available evidence, Alonso does not possess the force of personality required to prise the soul of Chelsea back from the Americans in suits who seem to consider the club some kind of social experiment.
The Bundesliga title Alonso won two summers back with Bayer Leverkusen tells us that he could be a man for a great European club, if that club is a sane one. Liverpool, post-Slot, still looks a distinct possibility.
But since the egos of the Real Madrid dressing room seemed a little too much for him at times, don’t let him walk into this west London madhouse of which he knows nothing.
Other names being touted as candidates for the poisoned chalice include Andoni Iraola – an individual who has never coached a team in European competition, would bring a personal haul of silverware of one Cypriot Super Cup and who has indicated that he wants to coach in Spain when he leaves Bournemouth this summer.
There is also Marco Silva, for whom things ended badly at Everton. And Oliver Glasner, who fell out with Crystal Palace.
None of these contenders holds a torch to the outstanding candidate. An individual who understands Chelsea emotionally, understands elite football intellectually and who, most significantly, has demonstrated in his brief and extraordinary period of success at Como, in Serie A, that he is nobody’s patsy.
There was a reason why Arsene Wenger entrusted Cesc Fabregas with the Arsenal captaincy at just 21 and why Mourinho later described him as ‘a coach on the pitch’ during Chelsea’s 2014-15 title-winning season.
The egos of the Real Madrid dressing room seemed a little too much for Alonso at times – don’t let him walk into this west London madhouse of which he knows nothing
Cesc Fabregas has demonstrated in his brief and extraordinary period of success at Como that he is nobody’s patsy
It was his football brain and that appreciation of space and opportunity on the field which have been as vivid as ever from him in the technical area.
Since we are given reason to believe that BlueCo are looking for a ‘dominant and entertaining’ playing style from their next boss, the manner of Como’s points accumulation also speaks for Fabregas.
But it his cussedness and conviction that he is in charge which is most significant, when it comes to speaking truth to the deluded powerbase at Chelsea.
The 39-year-old has been very clear about which players Como will and will not sign. ’We bring in hungry, humble players.’ He will not compromise tactically, insisting his own ideas are a cross he is prepared to die on. He challenges his own players publicly – Alvaro Morata, after his dismissal against Fiorentina – when the moment demands it.
Yet he also has the broader intelligence to cohere with those running Como, of which he is a shareholder. In Italy, we have seen from him a shaping of culture, standards, and squad dynamics without rows, ultimatums or disputes with the board.
Chelsea, possessing a squad which is one of the youngest and most technically gifted in Europe, blessed with the likes of Cole Palmer, Enzo Fernandez, Moises Caicedo and Malo Gusto, require a coach who can organise possession, improve decision-making, develop chemistry and deal with those mighty egos. Fabregas’ pedigree would command instant respect.
Granted, appointing him would constitute a risk. Yet no more than Mikel Arteta was for Arsenal or Alonso for Leverkusen. For a Chelsea fanbase which seems to have been forgotten amid BlueCo’s football experimentations, he would be adored, too.
Fabregas (left, with N’Golo Kante and Nemanja Matic in 2017) understands Chelsea having won two Premier League titles with the club
This is an individual who, despite his Arsenal history, became a hugely significant figure at Stamford Bridge, winning two Premier League titles and becoming pivotal to one of its most intelligent midfields of the contemporary era.
The job would, of course, carry immense risks for him, too. Just like all those who have gone before him, he could find himself ablaze on the bonfire of BlueCo’s vanities. But this moment seems to call for something and someone exceptional – a tide, taken at the flood, which for an individual of the Spaniard’s confidence, just might lead on to fortune.
Rosenior told us in January that he wanted to use his Chelsea press conferences to explain the reasoning behind tactics. He let it be known that he had a 450-page PowerPoint document detailing all his management ‘learnings’.
Fabregas would be having none of that guff. He would occupy a different stratosphere to those who have recently been and gone at Chelsea. And he wouldn’t be making notes when his captain arrived to talk.
