Chelsea and Roman's managerial merry-go-round

A lot has been said over the past few years on Roman Abramovic’s erratic nature when it comes to appointing managers for his beloved club. People have named it his “Hire and Fire Policy” or even “Sack races”, the catchiest of which is the one in the title – “Roman’s Managerial Merry-go-round”. Here is an insight into why Chelsea never seem to run out of good managers to hire despite all the chopping and changing that seems to be the norm at the club recently.

Chelsea is a top club. You can’t deny the fact that Chelsea, in the Roman Abramovic era, have managed to lift their reputation in Europe at an almost alarming rate. The truth is that Chelsea is a top club with world class facilities and a big team mentality. Knowing that your best player is unlikely to just get up and leave one day for greener pastures is always a bonus from any manager’s perspective when aiming for a successful season. The mere fact that Chelsea is strongly contesting every competition they participate in has been going in their favour. No matter how good a manager is with a small team, it’s not good enough if his team is not winning a lot of plaudits. He will want the opportunity to challenge for every trophy as genuine title contenders. But then again, no manager ever lasts too long at Chelsea; why then would the manager come to them? I believe the answer to that lies in the managers’ self belief. Every great coach, even good coaches have one thing in common, they are all high on self belief. Right from Sir Alex Ferguson and Jose Mourinho to Manuel Pellegrini and David Moyes, they all believe that they are good and that they can sort out any problems that they might have to face.

Every manager who comes to Chelsea believes that he can probably do better than his predecessor and finish the season on a high. If he manages to do so, he more often than not has a trophy to his credit, for example Carlo Ancelotti. Any trophy added to a manager’s CV will always be an asset. At this point, Chelsea have made a reputation of sacking managers, although getting sacked cannot be too hard on the managers as they have always been paid handsomely. Think about it, 18 months in charge, one or possibly 2 trophies, and millions of pounds. It’s a pretty decent bargain coming at one of the best footballing facilities in England.

Everything said and done though, the most important reason that managers seem to jump at opportunities to work with Chelsea is probably talent. Critics will always have negative opinion about everything, but there can be no disputing the fact that Chelsea possesses an astounding amount of talent in their squad. Most managers would love to manage a squad which boasts of players like Eden Hazard, David Luiz, Oscar and Juan Mata. The fact that Chelsea are always hunting for potential superstars and adding quality to their academy as well as first team consistently can only help. At this point of time Chelsea have got on their books the most sought after winger in European football last season, a 21 year old kid who wears the no. 10 for Brazil, and a player who is probably the best playmaker in the EPL as of today. Add to that a fantastic goalkeeping prospect on loan in Thibaut Courtois, who is already one of the best keepers in the La Liga, the managers have a lot of potential to play around and experiment with. This could be a major reason as to why Chelsea never seem to run out of willing candidates to take over at the helm of the club. As new managers are continually arriving on the scene and making a name for themselves, they are always going to be interested if a bigger job comes calling.

I don’t say that do not support managerial stability. You just have to look to Manchester to see how much of an impact one Scotsman has had there. But maybe, that’s not the only route to success. Maybe Roman has found another way that looks unpredictable and unstable, but isn’t. Because Chelsea have been able to sustain their success even with a ridiculous number of managers thrown into the mix. This is just a theory, but it seems to be a mighty decent chain of thought to explaining Chelsea’s lack of problems in finding themselves a manager.