Football these days is without doubt a game with a short memory, the previous season's success can actually be the undoing of a manager as expectations are set and fans and the management see failure as unacceptable. The merry go round is often counter intuitive and managers must be allowed to establish themselves at a club and bring in their own backroom staff. AVB was by all reports brought in to reshape the team and create a team for the next generation, which he has begun by bringing in players like Mata. The issue at Chelsea is that the dressing room is more powerful than the manager which is completely wrong and a recipe for disaster. When Roy Keane was adjuged to have stepped out of line at Man Utd he was removed as was Paul Ince.
The end of the season will see a further clear out at Chelsea but what would have been more sensible would have been to let AVB do this and to select his team. The Chelsea team is in need of a significant overhaul and if you were being honest how many players would get in the Man City team at the moment?
People will compare the possibility of Chelsea not making the Champions League to the possibility of teams such as Wolves being relegated but change is only good where the replacement is a better alternative than the present manager. A great example of this is with Sunderland who replaced Bruce with O'Neil but too often teams do not hold faith with a manager who has the ability and is given time. At respective times there has been calls for David Moyes to be sacked by Everton and the Stoke fans were up in arms when Tony Pulis was appointed neither set of fans is likely to feel the same now!!
I agree that long term planning is great but sport is ultimately driven by short term success, but if you have a plan then why not see it through? One of the most difficult things for a manager to do is to dismantle a previously successful team and to rebuild it but all that is likely to happen is that another manager will do what AVB was brought in to do and that with the FFPRs coming into place the money spent on sacking AVB (£8m) plus hiring someone new could well have been spent more effectively elsewhere.
