In my opinion, I will say Yes!.
Be warned, this is more of a personal rant than an impersonal or proper article.
Recently, after a run of lacklustre performances and results, the British papers have been delighted to find another media whipping boy in Andrea Villas Boas. Day in day out, I read articles which gleefully countdown to the time when Roman Abramovich will give the Chelsea coach the boot. Now with the match against Napoli looming, media consensus seems to be “Lose this match, don’t bother flying back to England”.
Based on the way Roman has fired managers in the past, I understand how this might seem the likely result of a loss in Italy. However, for the first time since “The Special One” left, I feel we actually have the right manager in place. Sure, sometimes his selections can be slightly bewildering, like why he continually selects Bosingwa, or Malouda? I remember the match against Manchester United at Old Trafford last year, it was one of the few matches I had watched as a Chelsea fan where even though we lost, I still had a smile on my face. Our play was positive, fluid and attacking, sure we had some defensive frailties, but watching that game left me with a lot of optimism for the future of Chelsea and the system of play AVB was trying to implement.
Fast foward to a few months later, everything seemed to have changed. Our play has become pedestrian and laboured and it seems like the team as a whole are feeling uninspired. I personally believe this is a culmination of a lot of factors and not the manager “not having a clue”, which seems to be a popular belief.
I feel Andre, as he said in his interview, is trying to change the culture in Chelsea. The popular conception seems to be that involves integrating youth into the team and not just going out to buy players; I believe it goes deeper than that.
It is well known and documented that a core of players at Chelsea, have a huge say in what goes on behind the scenes. we have seen circumstances where players are dictating what should be happening at the club (Scolari anyone?). AVB is apparently trying to break that and I believe the decline in performances is due to the friction between him and a few of the players.
The fact that ESPN, during the FA Cup match between Chelsea at Birmingham, hinted that Drogba was giving the team talk in the tunnel, just goes to show that the public believe the players are the ones in charge at Chelsea. The same scenario at Manchester United or Liverpool and the consensus would be that the player was trying to motivate the team and not that he was giving the team talk.
If Chelsea is going to progress as a club, then we need to get to the point where every player knows and believes the mantra “No player is bigger than the club” and we do not have any player trying to undermine the Manager’s authority, regardless of how they might feel about, his tactics, he not playing them or whatever decision he takes. It did not happen when Mourinho was here and it should not happen now.
No change comes easy, but I do sincerely believe that AVB is the man to lead Chelsea through this period of transition regardless of the bumps in the road at the moment.