The Ghost of Managers Past, Present and Future...?

Ladies and gentlemen, it gives us great pleasure to welcome a new member to the SPAOTP writing team. He's Seb Gevers from the wonderful football blog 'Inside Left' and from here on in we know you're going to enjoy the excellent footballing articles he'll be writing just for you. He begins by looking at the aftermath of this week's two high-profile managerial departures...


The Day of the Damned indeed. Actually, 'Day of the Doomed' better describes the situation that both Adams and Scolari, sacked from Portsmouth and Chelsea respectively within hours of each other, had gotten themselves into.

That Tony Adams got the sack is hardly a surprise. Never the most eloquent of commentators - about the only thing he had in common with the man he succeeded - Adams looked more and more confused, dishevelled and lost as the season continued. Unable to string a coherent sentence together, let alone a decent run of form, Adams lost all but two of the sixteen games he's been in charge (Sunderland and Blackburn) and needed two attempts to get past Championship side Bristol City before succumbing to another Championship Side, Swansea, in the FA Cup. A paltry 10 points from 16 games left Pompey fifth from bottom, only a point above the relegation zone.

In Luis Felipe Scolari, Chelsea seemed to have found a perfect candidate to take the club forward following the mostly non-descript Avram Grant. Massively experienced with a CV as long as your arm, he guided Brazil to their World Cup victory in 2000, Portugal to the final of Euro 2004 and the semi-finals of the World Cup in 2006. Unlike Adams, Scolari got off to a good start. A 4-0 win over Portsmouth (of all people), a scoreline they'd repeat in the League Cup a month later paved, the way to a series of impressive displays and score lines.

But the wheels had started to come off the wagon after the League Cup exit to Burnley. The wins suddenly became harder to come by - a series of draws, a come-from-behind win against Southend and a significant defeat at Old Trafford brought reality to bear: fourth place in the league, seven points behind leaders United and one point behind a new arrival at these giddy heights - Aston Villa. Accusations in the press and discontented muttering from the terraces soon followed: Scolari had no plan B, he'd lost the dressing room and even his stature and good name in the game (not to mention nationality) could not convince Robinho to come to Stamford Bridge.

And so, about a week or so ago, Tony Adams got the dreaded vote of confidence from the board. We all know that a vote of confidence is generally anything but. It is a cynical ploy devised by an unhappy board to buy time while they find someone to replace the very man they brought in after given the previous incumbent the same 'vote of confidence'. Poor Felipe Scolari never got a vote of confidence. He got something a lot worse than that. It happened one evening on a football phone in, as a a long line of Chelsea fans, unhappy at the sides less than impressive performances, all uttered more or less the same phrase: "this would not have happened under Mourinho". As soon as the Special One's (tm) name was mentioned and comparisons where drawn, the end for Scolari was inevitable.

As an Aberdeen fan, I know from bitter experience that any manager brought in to succeed a legend is treading on very thin ice. In our case, Alex Ferguson, fresh from getting the sack at St. Mirren, managed to take a provincial side from mediocrity to European and domestic glory in only a few short years. A tough act to follow, once he headed south, it took a series of mediocre managers to lead the club straight back to provincial obscurity. Pretty much every manager that came failed to match up to the legacy and expectation Fergie left behind. With such a weight on the shoulders, it needed a real miracle worker to win the club, the board, the players and the supporters over. Many tried, all failed.

That both Adams and Scolari got the sack because of poor performances is true, but doesn't tell the whole story. That both managers got the sack because they weren't Redknapp or Mourinho plays a small part in this too. Neither 'Arry or Jose would have allowed the slump in form that both teams suffered, neither would the dressing room have been lost, nor I suspect the press or terraces. "This would not have happened under Mourinho" is a phrase Portsmouth fans could have used too, with one minor adjustment: this would not have happened under Redknapp.

The ghost of managers past is very much alive at Pittodrie as it is, I suspect, at Pride Park, The City Ground, Anfield, Parkhead, Elland Road. Should we now add Stamford Bridge and Fratton Park to that list? Any manager brave enough to take on the job at Portsmouth or Chelsea faces an uphill struggle before he even walks through the front door; shaking of the legacy of all that has gone before is the first hurdle that must be overcome before a ball is kicked. As Brian Clough found out when he joined Leeds United, failure to do so, regardless of how good you are will only lead to inevitable disaster.

And anyone thinking of becoming Manchester United's next manager would do well to remember that.

Chelsea sack Scolari

And yay, in years henceforth, they will arrive upon this day and know their fate may fall into the lap of the gods. It shall be known as The Day of the Damned and those who believeth they are immune will be punished verily.

Or something.

Yes, no sooner had we consigned Tony Adams to a future selling hamburgers of dubious meat content from a van outside the Emirates Stadium than another Premier League manager was shown the door this afternoon.

Luis Felipe Scolari was the first and so far only World Cup-winning manager to ply his trade in the Premier League, but he might be the last for a while if other members of that elite band see what a narrow margin for success you have to operate in.

The affable Brazilian was, it's true, going through a sticky patch with Chelsea prior to his expulsion. Quite whether the patch was severe enough to cause his expulsion is open to much debate. In a snap poll on the BBC Sport website, 69% of people said Chelsea were wrong to dismiss Scolari and you can't help but feeling that the other 31% must have been hard-nosed businessmen and women with the phrase 'time is money' tattooed on their foreheads.

Somewhat scanadlously, Scolari's reign as Chelsea coach lasted just 223 days. During that time, he lost Steve Clarke as his coaching assistant, the club's 86-game unbeaten run at home and the opportunity to sign Robinho. Though these three are listed in order of most to least importance, it does highlight some of Scolari's less happier moments at Stamford Bridge.

Much has also been made of the fact that Chelsea's form against the other three members of 'the big four' was not good, but to be fair Scolari's side have just drawn too many games that perhaps they should have won. At any other club outside the top four, that wouldn't have been signalled an all-out crisis, but Chelsea are very much a top four club with ambitions to be the top club. Mr. Abramovich, it seems, wants that to become reality rather more quickly than the manager he appointed last June.

It's a shame really. Some people say he didn't have the ability to guide a club team through its day-to-day existence as opposed to an international team manager who can do a bit of work here and there on the odd day once in a while, but that doesn't hold much water. Some say Scolari didn't have the tactical awareness to adapt the team to cope with all situations. As the former coach of a World Cup winning team, you'd have to discount that theory too.

No, what Scolari lacked was time - pure and simple. As a club bank-rolled by one of the richest men in the world, it's utterly scandalous that the possibility of finishing as low as fourth in this season's Premier League was out of the question. All coaches and managers need time to mould a winning team and even if Chelsea had missed out on next season's Champions League and all the financial benefits it brings, that would have only been a short-term inconvenience.

Luis Felipe Scolari had the potential to set up a truly great Chelsea squad, but the club couldn't be bothered to wait for it to bear fruit. And here endeth the lesson: whoever does come in to replaceth him as their manager must maketh success almost quickly as the special one turned water into wine.

Now there was someone who could turn miracles into reality...