The short term remit bestowed upon a caretaker manager is, for a third time, proving an ideal solution to the problem of Chelsea’s ageing and bolshie playing squad.

Overview

Despite many fancying Chelsea to lose over two legs against the attacking flair of Napoli, and then nobody really giving them a prayer in the semi final against Barcelona , it should come as no surprise to see the Blues making the Champions League final for a second time. After all, they're currently under the guidance of a caretaker manager.

The last time they got to the final match of the competition which owner Roman Abramovic values above all others was in 2008 when Avram Grant was the boss – ostensibly on a permanent contract but only in the same way that Mick Harford was on a permanent contract second time around at QPR. Grant was replaced that summer by Luis Felipe Scolari and when that started badly he was sacked and another temporary boss, Guus Hiddink, installed until the end of the season. The Dutchman won the FA Cup and would have reached the Champions League final had the semi with Barcelona been competently refereed. This year it's Roberto Di Matteo, caretaker until the end of the season, achieving results that never looked possible in the first half of the season under the permanent boss.

The fact is, the caretaker manager situation suits Chelsea down to the ground because it is a squad and club beset by short termism. Juan Mata and Daniel Sturridge apart, every player that Chelsea rely on for big games is much closer to the end of their career than the beginning of it – John Terry, Peter Cech, Frank Lampard, Didier Drogba, Ashley Cole and so on. When you're a caretaker manager this doesn't matter, you're only here for a few more weeks or, maybe, months so who cares if the players you pick aren't the long term future of the club? You don't have a long term future yourself so why should you give a toss?

The problem Chelsea keep coming up against is when they appoint a manager on a long term contract. Admittedly their choices have not been good: Scolari forged his reputation with Brazil and Portugal using players he'd had little to do with training and maturing at a time when both countries were blessed with exceptional talents while Andre Villas Boas came from the lower profile and less competitive Portuguese division into the goldfish tank of the Premiership lacking age, wisdom and experience for the situation. But whether Chelsea had appointed Villas Boas, Alex Ferguson or Mr Bun the Baker last summer all three would have reached the same conclusion: this is an ageing squad capable of its current performance level for only another 18 months or so and it must be overhauled.

The ageing old pros won't go quietly though. You cannot simply take Terry, Cech, Lampard, Drogba and Cole out of the team overnight and replace them with younger versions, unless Roman Abramovic fancies spunking £300m in transfer money up the wall in one fell swoop, but even a small attempt to reduce the team's reliance on them immediately results in a dressing room revolt and a collapse in performance level.

It is not unreasonable, given his age and declining ability to produce the goods three times a week every week of the season, to start phasing out Frank Lampard in favour of Juan Mata and Ramires for example. But when Villas Boas tried this earlier in the season you'd have thought he confessed to shooting Bambi; every interview included questions about Lampard, the coverage of every Chelsea match was constantly interrupted by cut away shots of Lampard looking sullen on the bench, newspapers carried photographs of Lampard doing that pathetic look to the heavens he does whenever he feels he's been terribly hard done to. Poor Frank, they're not picking Frank any more, Frank's got a lot to offer, why won't the pick Frank? Poor Frank.

Frank then made Villas Boas look like a pillock by playing exceptionally well when he was picked – but then he would, because he was well rested and was being used in the correct way.

Villas Boas looks like an idiot again now his assistant has come in and taken a team he couldn't even beat QPR with to a Champions League and FA Cup final, but the ability of the team was never in doubt to Villas Boas or anybody else. The issue was Villas Boas knew that if he stayed for the length of his contract he would need to find an alternative to Lampard and others sooner rather than later whereas Di Matteo knows that his contract only runs until the summer so it doesn't matter. I'm yet to hear anybody ask the Chelsea players whether they feel a pang of guilt that they're outside the top four in the league because they performed so woefully in the first half of the season now they're showing how good they actually can be when they're not sulking and trying to get a man the sack. I saw enough of Di Matteo at West Brom to know he's a good manager, but he's no miracle worker and Villas Boas isn't as incompetent as is being made out.

Villas Boas clearly went about things the wrong way. He was heavy handed with senior players, ostracising Alex and Anelka immediately before setting sail on Lampard. He tried to do too much too quickly. When Arsene Wenger arrived at Arsenal he knew his entire back five needed replacing but he worked to get the best out of them for as long as he could and then slowly phased them out with dignity. Arsenal haven't won a trophy for five years now and don't look like ending that any time soon which shows that whether you go hardline or softly softly good players don't grow on trees.

My solution for Chelsea is the same one Newcastle hit upon with Alan Shearer. For years Graeme Souness, Sam Allardyce and Glenn Roeder laboured on the touchline at St James' Park while 50,000 locals sat behind them muttering about how Shearer would do a better job. So, eventually, Newcastle made Shearer the manager and, wouldn't you just know it, he was just as bad as and arguably a lot worse than what had gone before. Free of the long shadow of Shearer, Chris Hughton and now Alan Pardew have brought in a prolonged period of success on the field.

At Chelsea I'd make John Terry and Frank Lampard joint managers. They don't like it when somebody comes in and identifies their advancing years as a problem so let them have a crack at the job themselves and find their own solutions. Perhaps only then - when they've tried, failed and been replaced – will Chelsea become a club with a slightly longer term view of its squad building, and a place where a manager will be allowed to get on with managing the team. Or, rather, managing the team as much as you can under a chairman who craves a Champions League win more than the air he breathes and tries to "help" achieve that by parachuting liabilities like Fernando Torres into the picture.

Interview

Now children, we have a Chelsea fan who has come to speak to us today. Chelsea Daft kindly offered us very fulsome, honest and excellent answers to one or two searching questions at very short notice and without a word of complaint so I want you all to play nicely. Maybe even visit his blog, which is one of the better ones in the Premier League, by clicking the banner above. His cousin is a QPR fan if that helps.

What do you put the turnaround in Chelsea's season down to? Was AVB really that bad?

I don't think AVB was that bad to begin with. He is a good manager with a fresh approach to the game. He has studied the game since he was 17 and will be successful again without question. The problem he had was how he approached the job here. He was given three years to regenerate our side and to take us forward. He knew that we had players coming to the end of their time at Chelsea and he had to begin the process of changing things around. It's the way he decided to do it by freezing out the likes of Anelka and Alex and then dropping our big name players. Rather than sit them down and explain what he was trying to do, he just went ahead and did his own thing, distanced himself from the players and they turned on him.

What has turned it around? It sounds ridiculous to say so but it seems that Di Matteo's arm around the shoulder approach has done it. He took time out to speak to every single player on a one to one basis in his first week in charge, got them on side with him and then as a collective unit in team meetings and we haven't looked back. I say it's ridiculous really to say the arm around the shoulder approach but I personally believe that the game is as much about man managing your players as a team and as individuals as it has become tactically.

Should Di Matteo be given the job permanently? Who else is in the frame that you like?

Di Matteo has done everything asked of him and more. Yes he should be given the job without question. If it's not Di Matteo then there is one of two others I would like here. The obvious is for Jose Mourinho to come back and finish what he started (if Di Matteo doesn't win the CL and isn't given the job) as I think deep down it's the one moment of his career that he would love to put right.

If not then I would like someone like David Moyes to be given a chance. He has done an incredible job at Everton season in, season out with limited resources and has proven just how good a man manager he is. Just imagine if someone gave him loads of money to spend there or at Chelsea and what he could do with a football team.

Will the new manager, whoever it is, be able to control the dressing room? The older players need replacing but whenever anybody tries to do it they're faced with a massive rebellion.

I think a lot is made of the older players controlling the dressing room but I disagree to a point. You have to remember the basis of our side has been there for eight years now and have won everything domestically. They have reached (before this season) five Champions League semi finals in seven seasons and one final. They have been there and done it and know exactly what it takes to put trophies in that cabinet at the end of a season.

When new managers have come in and de-stabilised the team or our chances of being successful, of course they are going to say something because they have the winning mentality and can see things changing for worse. Look at what I am saying about Di Matteo and it's similar to when Guus Hiddink took over. They both got the players on side and played to their strengths and look at the run Hiddink and his side finished on and look at the run Di Matteo's on now.

There is no doubt the players need changing at Chelsea but slowly over time. You can't just freeze out the likes of Lampard, Drogba and Cole at the moment because look at their performances since Di Matteo has come in. This summer will be interesting because the likes of Drogba, Malouda and Kalou's contracts expire.

Who have been the stand out players this year? Who are the weak links?

Stand out players this year for me have been:

Ramires (will run and run all game), Romeu (when he's played), Luiz (improving the defensive side of his game) and Cahill since he has come in. I do have to say that in recent weeks Mikel has been outstanding.

Weak links will always be Bosingwa when he plays at right back as his defending at times is awful apart from when he played CB against Barcelona the other night and Florent Malouda who seems to get slower and slower these days.

Do fans see the lack of young players progressing through the ranks into the first team at Chelsea as a problem?

The situation with young players progressing is always going to be there and talked about. The difference at Chelsea is the levels of expectation each season. If things are going great and we are sitting ten points clear at the top of the league you will see some come through to be involved at different stages. However, if you look at Ancelotti's second season, big name players left the club and youngsters came into the squad. When our form dipped and the side was hit with injuries and suspensions we had no real depth to call upon and we struggled.

What happens when Chelsea struggle in the league? The manager’s future is then called into question or like AVB you are sacked. Looking back to the second season of Ancelotti, the youngsters never got a look in from that moment on because he had to pick our strongest players week in, week out as soon as they were available to climb back up the table.

It's a balancing act here at Chelsea, like it is everywhere else, but with the addition of expectation. It's been good to see that Di Matteo has introduced Ryan Bertrand into the fold and he has played regularly now as Cole's deputy at left back. I think you will see maybe one or two a season at Chelsea come into the squad and if good enough, they will play.

The problem you have with that is they will be up against world class players being brought into the squad and it's hard. We will see more of them leave the club than break through unfortunately but the ones who do make it, will have that something special.

Is John Terry's behaviour on and off the field (the Wayne Bridge thing, the Anton Ferdinand thing, the sending off in Barcelona, the stories about both his parents, the stories about his dressing room influence, the disabled parking bay thing, the taking cash to give tours of the training ground and Wembley thing and so on and on) excused in the eye of Chelsea fans by his performances? Is he unanimously backed by Chelsea supporters, or is there an element uncomfortable having somebody who behaves like this not only in the team but also captaining it?

It's an obvious question to ask I guess bearing in mind what you have mentioned. I'll spin it to you this way. If England get to the European Championship Finals this summer, would you want our best players playing to give us the best possible chance? Or, Would you choose to not include someone because of things that happen away from the football pitch? It's as simple as that for me. I don't agree with incidents away from the pitch but everyone has a life beyond football whether we like it or not.

I am a Chelsea and England fan and I want our best players playing because I want us to be successful. It's what comes down to what happens on the pitch and in and around the training ground and in the dressing room that counts.

I personally don't believe that JT said what he has been charged with saying in the way it has been said that he did at your place that day, purely and simply because of the non-reaction from players from both sides at the time. If Chelsea's black players thought he said anything like that in a way it has been made out, they would have put the fact that they play in the same team as him to one side and reacted to it. Also the same with QPR players but that's just my opinion.

Manager

I much prefer the spoof Sam Allardyce Twitter account and its various hideous fantasies about Karen Brady than the real thing who is all bluster and self importance, but when I see Roberto Di Matteo I am always reminded of Allardyce’s quip about getting a lot further in the game had he been called Sam Allardici. He’s deluded, of course, because anybody can see the reason Allardyce gets the jobs he does and not others is because the football he has his teams play is the sporting equivalent of a beer shit – effective but not pleasant to look at – but his point may be valid in Di Matteo’s case.

A former Chelsea midfielder who scored the fastest goal in FA Cup history at the time (since beaten by Louis Saha) in 1997 against Middlesbrough and won 34 caps for Italy despite being born in Switzerland – Di Matteo was certainly no mug as a player. He was given a chance to cut his managerial teeth in this country at MK Dons in League One which was a creditable place to start, and is proving something of a nursery for promising young managers.

He stayed in charge there for just one season, losing out in the 2009 League One play off semi finals to a Scunthorpe team with worse players on paper and a budget about half what the Italian had to work with at Stadium MK. I’m not criticising him here, a play off semi final in a first senior managerial position was a very reasonable achievement, but I do wonder whether that was quite enough for Championship side West Brom to come cheque book in hand to take him straight to The Hawthorns.

They were rewarded for their faith initially, Di Matteo promoted them back to the Premiership at the first time of asking, but as discussed previously in this column West Brom are structured to bounce back immediately from any Premiership relegations that befall them. It’s not quite at a level where a trained chimp or Bryan Robson could get them back up but it’s not far off. Chairman Jeremy Peace then broke with his previous form and sacked Di Matteo midway through the first season back in the big time – a decision universally said to be harsh but one which has paid off for them.

Di Matteo pitched up at Chelsea last summer as assistant to Andre Villas Boas and couldn’t really have done more since succeeding him to land the job full time. But, as discussed, the short term view only works because he’s the caretaker and if he has to replace the arm around the shoulder treatment he’s currently dolling out with some harsh realities about who needs replacing and how soon, he may find rather less fulsome praise from a notoriously difficult squad splashed across the Evening Standard like we’ve seen this week.

Still, Chelsea could do a lot worse than just let him carry on – they certainly have done before.

Scout Report

As hard as it was, parked in the Three Horseshoes in Whetstone on Tuesday night surrounded by chavs who’ve never heard of Robert Fleck bouncing around and hailing Chelsea as demi-Gods, you couldn’t begrudge them the victory. I’ve heard it said that winning through such a negative style is somehow bad for football – any worse than playing 37 passes around the edge of the box without having a proper shot on the goal? I don’t think so. You play with what you have and Chelsea did that perfectly across two legs against Barcelona.

What we have here on Sunday is a match between two sides who have achieved their best results this season through soaking up large amounts of pressure and striking on the counter attack. QPR have struggled badly in games they have been expected to win, and then gone out and beaten Liverpool, Arsenal, Spurs and of course Chelsea once already. Chelsea have done more bus parking just lately than a National Express coach driver but the results speak for themselves.

Chelsea certainly won’t see any need to put men behind the ball on Sunday against the sixteenth placed team in the league, but unless they score early then piling forward may play right into QPR’s hands. The key issues for Chelsea are finding four fit bodies to field in defence, and recovering from the exhaustion and emotion of Tuesday night.

On the first point, it seems that Gary Cahill and David Luiz will both be out while Branislav Ivanovic, their best defender in my opinion, is suspended. That’s likely to mean a role somewhere, either right back or centre back, for Jose Bosingwa who has had a poor season and was even found wanting by our own terminally out for form waster Shaun Wright-Phillips in the first league meeting.

At the start of the season Villas Boas liked to use John Obi Mikel as a holding midfield player, picking up possession from the defence and redistributing it. The problem with this idea was the giant midfielder was so incredibly slow you could probably have done a reasonable oil painting of him completing the action before he’d finished it. His form, like everybody else’s at Stamford Bridge, has improved under Di Matteo. I liked Neil’s idea in the tactics column this week of detailing Bobby Zamora to restrict Mikel’s ability to receive the ball, forcing a makeshift defence that isn’t all that comfortable at the best of times to pass the ball and distribute it.

On the second point about the tiredness and emotion, if you’d like to clutch at those straws then this article from the Guardian about the mood on the plane back from Barcelona may be just the ticket. Not only do Chelsea have two cup finals coming up, and a more crucial league game with Newcastle, but they also have to cope with the emotional and physical investment they have put into three gruelling games just lately.

Despite the needle in this fixture I highly suspect we may see a similar sort of Chelsea team to the one I watched at Arsenal last week – Bertrand, Romeu, Kalou, Torres and Malouda all started and I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see them all again this Sunday.

The one thing that troubles them, and as I glance through my notes on Chelsea from throughout the season it’s a theme that occurs time and again, is pace. In the first leg of the semi final even Barcelona took to knocking the occasional diagonal ball into the right Chelsea channel knowing that they were easily turned and panicked in that situation. Bosingwa in the first meeting between Rangers and Chelsea this season, and then again in a thumping win over Spurs in the FA Cup last week, looks susceptible to even moderately quick players against him. Jamie Mackie and Djbril Cisse would start if I was in charge, and they’d play either side of Zamora with strict instructions to get the ball and run directly and quickly whenever possible.

Apart from the Spurs semi final where Drogba was at his unplayable best, I struggle to recall many Chelsea games I’ve seen this season in the Premier League where Juan Mata has not been the outstanding player. QPR must pay special attention to him.

Links >>> Official Website >>> Chelsea Blog >>> Chelsea Daft >>> Chelsea Forums >>> The Shed End Message Board >>> CFCNet Message Board

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Kaos_Agent added 06:03 - Apr 27 Great preview Clive. QPR just have to view this as a real opportunity and finally come up with that elusive away form. Chelsea are due for a let-down game amidst all their current glory, and this could be it.
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GroveR added 10:48 - Apr 27 (the Wayne Bridge thing, the Anton Ferdinand thing, the sending off in Barcelona, the stories about both his parents, the stories about his dressing room influence, the disabled parking bay thing, the taking cash to give tours of the training ground and Wembley thing and so on and on) + bottling a boucer outside the Wellington thing.
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QPunkR added 11:15 - Apr 27 That Villas-Boas, though. He was rather young, wasn't he.
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TacticalR added 17:36 - Apr 27 Thanks to Clive and Chelsea Daft. I have to confess that I thought the AVB appointment would be good for Chelsea (which it might have been in the long term). However, it does sound like AVB was a detached and soulless bureaucrat. Apparently the players called him 'DVD' because he used to walk around with a DVD of whatever match he was studying under his arm. In retrospect it seems he made a mistake not gaining more experience before undertaking such a major job. Perhaps his word (and techocratic approach) was law at Porto, and he never had to encounter the kind of obstacles that exist at Chelsea. As for Terry managing at Chelsea, according to Duncan Castles, during his salary negotiations in 2007 he tried to get a clause inserted in his contract stating that he would automatically become manager at the end of his career: "Terry is England's best-paid footballer after agreeing a five-year, £131,000-a-week contract this summer. In initial negotiations he had requested a 'limitless parity' clause to ensure he was the club's biggest earner for the duration of a proposed nine-year term. According to a Chelsea insider Terry also wanted - and was refused - a contractual option for him to manage the club at the end of his playing career." http://ramblefishing.blogspot.co.uk/2007/09/turncoat-terry.html The whole article is worth reading because it explains the forces behind Mourinho's downfall at Chelsea. This section about Mourinho's final moments also suggests why Chelsea did OK without Terry against Barcelona: "For Didier Drogba and Frank Lampard the emotions were so strong that both men were reduced to tears, Lampard retreating to the shower room in an attempt to hide his. For Shevchenko and Terry there was nothing but a handshake that, in the words of one observer, could have 'frozen a mug of tea'. No one was in any doubt about who he considered the true captains of his team."

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