Please come and prove me wrong once again, Jose!

Double Vision with Charlie Adley

You might think that after winning eleven trophies in the ten years since Roman Abramovich bought Chelsea FC, I’d be a happy fan. There are football teams all over the world who play each week with passion and fury in their quest for glory, who never win anything.

Since 2003, we have won (yes I use that pronoun, because in a primal, personal and faintly pathetic way, I am Chelsea and they are me) three Premierships, four FA Cups, two League Cups, the Champions League and the Europa League.

Enough silverware to sate the dreams of any football fan. Any, except this Chelsea fan.

Yes of course I’m happy, but I’m frustrated too. You see, within those ten years Roman Abramovich has hired and fired nine managers, and here’s where my madness lies.

Being a lifetime follower of English football, I – along with most other Chelsea fans – like to think I know more about what works in the Premiership than the owner of the club.

The Russian oligarch fell in love with the game years ago, watching Manchester United playing AC Milan, and ever since he has degenerated into a latter day Captain Ahab, desperately casting his fortune into the deep blue sea, hoping to catch that whale which he saw at Old Trafford. Never mind if the team win loads of cups and leagues, the man’s only going to be happy when we win it in style.

It’s an admirable aspiration, shared by any true Chelsea fan. Before Roman took over we were an inconsistent team capable of great performances when the players felt like it. His first manager was Claudio ‘The Tinkerman’ Ranieri, a bespectacled Italian who, as the Snapper quite brilliantly observed, had a facial expression akin to someone who had just had his bicycle stolen.

Claudio built a great team that came second only to Arsenal’s ‘Invincibles’, who won the league unbeaten. Yet on a night of high dudgeon, at the very same time that the players were running their hearts out in a Champion’s League semi-final, Roman was meeting with Ranieri’s successor.

Needless to say we lost the match and gained a new manager, in the shape of Jose ‘The Special One’ Mourinho. When the charismatic Portugeezer announced soon after his arrival that Chelsea were going to win the league, I shouted at the TV.

I yelled at this handsome bigmouth to shut up, because he didn’t know what he was talking about. He didn’t know how hard the Premier League was compared to all the other leagues in Europe. He didn’t understand that in the English game, a mid-table clash of no apparent consequence between, say, Swansea and Fulham, would be played with pride, sweat and not a little skill, in front of a packed crowd who really cared about the result.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.