The Men of Abramovich

Hiddink might be a more "correct" answer, still voted Mourinho

Mourinho > Ancelotti > Hiddink > Di Matteo > Scolari > AVB > Grant.

Ranieri is Ken Bate's man and doesn't count, but probably fits between Di Matteo and Big Phil.

It'd be nice to vote for Carlo, but still voted Mourinho.

in some nonsense universe did scolari or avb a better job do than grant.

But he did that job with Mourinho's world-beating team, his subsequent jobs have revealed him to be useless.

he did those jobs with dreadful teams, circumstances, you are attempting the consumption and subsequent retention of sweet baked dessert

Player for player those teams weren't THAT bad, certainly not bad enough to keep him at the foot of the Prem for an entire year. Admittedly Pompey had other problems.

oh did they now?

Chelsea themselves had, have their problems for any manager, not least the one that comes in the wake of mourinho, as caretaker.

Is anyone going to vote for anyone but Mourinho?

agree about grant, there's no way he can be rated worst, he was incredibly close to glory. what he did after doesn't matter.

feel like AVB, tragicomic hero as he is/was, might've laid foundations for the next gen Chelsea team that absolves him from accusations of total failure

i think scolari is the worst, ranieri didn't deserve any more time (maybe retrospective knowledge of the mourinho era colours this view though) and the rest were probably sacked too easily.

Grant, Hiddink obv less clear cases plucked from that last bunch, caretaker's a strange position and Hiddink was clearly a great success but didn't stay of his own accord.

JOSE

mourinho casts such a shadow over the rest that the question's more like which of the others achieved anything off their own bat - grant, hiddink and rdm either kept jose's ball rolling (grant did nothing to even be rated) or reverted back to his template in times of stroppy upheaval

ancelotti is the only one that can be said to have successfully made his own mark on the cliff face, even then owing that to an almost imperceptibly light touch

you could argue ranieri deserves this solely for winning the cl qualification that got roman through the door

was the signing of Cech and Robben done by Ranieri or people above him?

I read a piece somewhere, earlier - during the frenzy, the bloodletting, the interlude where the wolves satiate their hunger, the time where law no longer applies, where acts abhorrent to civilisation take place, acts which are never spoken of again, acts which make otherwise respectable grow silent and pass afternoons in darkened rooms, a gap between them and their wives unacknowledged but always present - about the backroom movers at Chelsea. Roman's best pal, his formidable PA, and such. There'd be an interesting poll, if we knew anything about them.

Jack Nicholson as caretaker manager

but he's always been the caretaker manager

Just need to swap the warm up bicycle JT was riding vs Shahktar for a tricycle and he'll be making circuits of the pitch chanting "NAMOR, NAMOR" in no time.

grant as barman, ranieri as wife

was the signing of Cech and Robben done by Ranieri or people above him?

― pandemic, Wednesday, 21 November 2012 16:46 (1 hour ago) Bookmark

i always wondered about this a bit, bar the odd exception chelsea's transfers thru gullit-vialli-ranieri were usually pretty good and moreover pretty consistent. none of the three went on to display that kind of aptitude in later jobs

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ok ok i'll run it without him ffs

As a Chelsea fan I'm not excited about Rafa, but then again I wasn't excited about Grant either (in fact I don't think I'd heard of him when he took over), and he ended up doing a damn fine job

We want rage and entitlement, dammit, not this measured tone

Well at least we kept a clean sheet :(

if fans keep booin him i'll start supportin rafa

Are you saying boo or boonitez?

keep it up, we need a chelsea fan round these parts imo

Even more so if this poll was the first time you'd heard of Ranieri

In February, when Chelsea approached Benitez previously, there was a James Bond element to a meeting with two of Abramovich's inner-circle. He was instructed to drive to a motorway service station then tail a car to a clandestine country location.

(tidbit transcribed from sunday times)

must have been 50/50 to just shoot the fucker

One win in seven games this month I believe :(

It's quite enjoyable that Roman's tinkering in pursuit of his platonic ideal should have produced back-to-back 0-0s.

Chelsea gave me the title of interim manager, which is a massive mistake

Can't argue with that

No, tbf.