Andre Villas-Boas, who’s quite young apparently, has made a promising start to life as Chelsea manager but will need to maintain that to avoid a similar fate to the one suffered by his predecessors.

Overview

Ok, let’s get the lazy, bitter, small-team-poking-fun-at-the-big-team stereotype out of the way right at the top. In this week in 1993 Chelsea lost a home Premiership match to Norwich City in front of 16,923 fans. Two weeks later they hosted Oldham at Stamford Bridge, a match that attracted 15,372, three weeks after that they played Man City at home on the Monday night football and pulled 10,128.

Anecdotally, when the LFW travelling party stumbled off the train at Paddington after our away match at Cardiff last season we counted three separate tables in the Aberdeen Angus Steak Restaurant opposite the station that had grown men sitting and eating in Chelsea shirts. We went in the pub next door, and watched the second half of Chelsea v West Ham on the television – clearly that game was not of much concern to those next door enjoying their dinner.

This means two things; firstly as you’ll never meet a Chelsea fan who will tell you anything other than “been at the Bridge every other Saturday all my life” quite a few of them are liars, and secondly there’s not a lot of loyalty in that support base. If the going gets slightly tough or the importance of the game dips a little bit then they disappear in their droves. Against Genk on Wednesday night Chelsea won 5-0 in a match that supporters organised a boycott of because of ticket prices, but even without organised action Champions League group matches at Stamford Bridge are regularly being played out in front of banks of empty seats.

Chelsea are the worst for declining Champions League attendances, but they’re by no means alone. Football fans, both of the clubs involved and neutrals, seem to be growing increasingly bored with UEFA’s premier club competition prior to its serious stage in February/March. An extensive group stage which always yields 14 of the same 16 teams for the knockout is starting to bore the pants off people because even when you get a big upset like Basel’s performance and result at Old Trafford it all seems rather hollow and pointless because everybody knows Man Utd will qualify anyway.

It’s not just the attendances that are starting to niggle Chelsea in that competition – it’s the fact that they cannot seem to win it. We’ve all heard the story often enough of Roman Abramovic falling in love with football after watching Ronaldo (the fat one, not the sexually rampant diving and cheating one) destroy Man Utd at Old Trafford while playing for Real Madrid. We’ve heard countless times that it is the Champions League that he values above all other competitions and we’ve laughed like drains as year after year after year Chelsea have come up with increasingly bizarre and convoluted methods of crashing out of it.

For most QPR fans it’s a tough choice for favourite recent Chelsea moment between John Terry falling on his arse when one successful penalty kick would have brought the trophy back to Stamford Bridge, the Barcelona goal with the last kick of the match, the Norwegian referee and his phobia of awarding penalties no matter how blatant the foul or handball or the Liverpool goal that was never over the line.

Abramovic’s quest to win the ultimate club prize has restricted any long term planning in south west London that they’re probably going to pay for quite heavily over the next 18 months to two years. The pursuit of immediate success has meant that, while Chelsea hoover up any promising teenager they happen to clap eyes on and often pay big money for them, very few players have progressed from the youth team to the first at Stamford Bridge. Michael Mancienne played regularly for QPR and Wolves for five seasons on loan without ever getting a look in at Chelsea who preferred to pay money for Alex, Ricardo Carvalho, Branislav Ivanovic and others in his position.

Fair enough, you may think, given the quality of those imports compared to Mancienne but Chelsea are now facing the prospect of the majority of their starting 11 all getting too old at the same time. Mancienne meanwhile is playing for Hamburg and would probably have been quite useful had they kept hold of him and developed his obvious promise. He’s not on his own - Swansea are enjoying the benefits of giving serial loanee Scott Sinclair a regular home. Josh McEachran remains the only serious young prospect brought through by the Chelsea academy and given a first team chance since Abramovic arrived.

Since Abramovic turned up Chelsea have constantly signed players at vastly inflated prices because they were in form or the flavour of the month, rather than because they needed a player in that position or the deal made sense. It’s been like QPR’s transfer policy since Flavio Briatore arrived, but on a much grander scale, and players like Scott Parker, Steve Sidwell and our own Shaun Wright Phillips have found big money moves to Stamford Bridge followed by the realisation that the club had no real use for them.

This short-termism has also seen a succession of managers come and go. We’re not quite talking QPR levels here but since the classless dead-man-walking episode with Claudio Ranieri Abramovic has never given a manager more than a couple of season to achieve success, and even when Jose Mourinho took the club to unprecedented levels of achievement he was shown the door. We know ourselves that a constant change in management is no way to foster long term success.

He has now turned to Andre Villas Boas, the sixth boss of his reign and, like Mourinho, a manager with virtually no professional football background as a player who cut his teeth at Porto. His record in Portugal is admirable, but the task at Chelsea is a big one. Firstly large parts of the team are going to need replacing in the next 18 months and while Chelsea still aren’t shy to splash the cash, £23.5m for Juan Mata paid in August, they are, like everybody else, unwilling or unable to keep up with the money being spent by Manchester City. That sudden arrival of City on the English and European stage is going to present Villas Boas problems in the second part of his task – maintaining a consistent trophy push during the rebuilding programme. If anybody thinks Abramovic is going to give this protégé the three years he probably needs to get Chelsea back into a position where they can realistically reach the Champions League final without winning a few pots in the meantime I suspect they’re mistaken.

Villas Boas is faced with a similar situation to the one Arsene Wenger had at Arsenal five or six years ago – a great team coming to the end of its natural cycle requiring revitalisation. Wenger has obviously got it wrong but has kept his job, Villas Boas will lose his in half the time if he so much as hints at doing the same.

Interview

LoftforWords was grateful this week for the input of lifelong Chelsea fan Denise Hone from thechelseablog.org ahead of this Sunday’s clash at Loftus Road.

How have Chelsea started the season? What are the hopes and expectations for the short and medium term? We got off to a slow start, maybe more reverse than first gear in truth, but have quietly gone about our business and we’re not too far off the pace now at all really. In the short term it’d be nice to see that gradual improvement continue and in the medium term, the introduction of a few more younger players is a must.

What have you made of Andre Villas-Boas so far? Is he likely to go the way of all his predecessors if he hasn't won the Champions League in the next 18 months?

I really like him. He doesn’t just sit back and wait for things to work out for him; he does what he needs to do to make things work. He’s ambitious and self assured without being arrogant – kind of like Mourinho with manners.

Is it fair to say Chelsea are currently in a period of transition with so many key players coming towards the end of their careers? Are major honours realistic while this is taking place?

I think we’re definitely in a transition period with newer players coming in but that doesn’t necessarily equate to key players careers ending. Personally I think it’s more a case of using our squad in a different way. There’s been much said about Frank Lampard being past it, for example, but his recent hat trick has quietened that down somewhat. As for major honours, you’d have to think that with a new manager coming in and inheriting a squad in a new league, never mind one that needs a bit of work, well realistically we might have to sacrifice silverware in the short term for the longer term gains.

What do you make of Man City? Are we in a situation now where even Abramovic can't/won't keep pace with the spending going on there?

I can never decide whether they’re crass or hilarious but either way I can’t stand them. The minute they got the money it was like fantasy football and they thought they’d take on the world. Not that the irony of that is lost on me of course because I remember feeling like a kid at Christmas myself when Abramovich came and our transfers alone could fill every column inch of the rags on a daily basis. I’ve just never been a big fan of silly money being thrown at clubs and I think it’s fairly evident already that Abramovich won’t be going up against City financially.

Tell us about Chelsea fans' feelings towards Fernando Torres. He's looked a bit sharper this season but he's a gigantic waste of money isn't he? What's the general opinion?

Unless he’s about to retire in the next month or two, I think it’s a little optimistic for anyone outside Stamford Bridge to suggest he’s such a huge waste of money. I don’t doubt the majority would love that to be the case but given the fact is he did score two in his last two games, if that trend continues when he gets back from his ban then I’d fail to see where the waste is. I’ll admit that whilst I pretty much pretended last season didn’t happen, his start to this season had me worried. He quietly started to turn himself around though, looking much more like the player we hoped we’d bought and with the sort of service he gets from Mata, I can only see that getting better still. I can’t really speak for Chelsea fans as a whole but I think one thing that was pretty evident in his last game was that whatever opinion might have been before the red card, it went up a notch after it.

On the other hand Daniel Sturridge seems to be maturing into a fine player. What do you think of him and do you think he'll be in the England team for the Euros now Rooney has imploded again?

He’s young, he’s enthusiastic, he takes his chances when they come and he scores goals – of course I’m going to think he’s bloody great. More than that though, what impresses me is his attitude. When he went out to Bolton there was no bitching, he vowed to prove he was good enough for our first team and that’s exactly what he did. And he’s continued to do that since his return whenever he’s had the chance. He seems very level headed at Chelsea – quite how he’d fill the boots of England’s kick-boxer with the travellers temper, I don’t know.

Chelsea seem to snaffle up every half decent youngster going, stick them in their academy, loan them out and then get rid of them without ever using them - Sinclair, Mancienne etc. Is the lack of youngsters coming through a concern? Apart from McEachran are there any coming through at the moment? What do you make of your club's youth policy?

I think a youth policy is something we’ve previously paid no more than lip service to, with JT being the last player to actually make it through. I love Josh McEachran though and hope he’ll be the next one. I do genuinely think the club want to start looking seriously at this – if only for financial reasons – but like everything else AVB has to do coming into the job, it’ll take a bit of time and we’ll have to trust him to get round to it.

Is there a concern about the club in the long term, given Abramovic is unlikely to be around forever?

Is he going somewhere then? Come on, we’ve been told this since the day he came and there’s no signs of his luggage at the back door yet. Besides, if he ever did decide to go, I honestly don’t think he’d leave us in the same sort of position he found us in.

There has been a lot of talk about the stadium situations of all three West London clubs, what are your preferred options for Chelsea moving forwards?

Do I want some glass monstrosity in the middle of nowhere or the ground I know and love? Not too difficult for me but then I’m a sentimental old soul really. My preferred situation would be to build on what we’ve got already. I know they tell us they can’t but I’m sure if they wanted to stay there enough there’d be some way to expand, I don’t know, maybe move a hotel or something?

Manager

He’s very young you know Andre Villas-Boas, very young in fact. Isn’t he young? He’s 34 would you believe, which is terribly young for a manager – younger even than some of his players. Very young this guy. Very young indeed. A veritable youngster. Young. Young.

That, and the fact that his first coaching job came when he was “just” 21 and he was put in charge of the British Virgin Isles senior squad, has been the crux of just about all of the hundreds of profile pieces that have been written about Villas-Boas since he became the new Chelsea manager in the summer.

To be fair to the hacks who’ve each taken a turn with one of the Premiership’s more intriguing managerial appointments in recent times there isn’t really a lot to go at. He has no playing career of any sorts to look back on, because he’s so young, and he hasn’t really managed in that many places either, because he’s so young.

Apart from his age and time in the British Virgin Isles, where he was apparently rather too keen on the beach but still a very conscientious coach, the other main hook for stories about him has been the parallels with Jose Mourinho. Both grew up under the tutelage of Bobby Robson – Mourinho as his translator at Barcelona, and Villas-Boas as part of the set up when Robson was at Porto after fate threw them together in the same apartment block.

“The Special One” came to Chelsea after winning the Champions League against the odds with Porto and while Villas-Boas can’t quite match that, his record in Portugal last season was immense. He won everything there was to win – the Portuguese title, domestic Super Cup and cup and the Europa League. In fact Porto didn’t lose a single match in any competition last season, the won 27 and drew three of 30 league games. In the cups Nacional beat them once to knock them out of the League Cup, and they suffered two single game defeats in the Europa League before winning through on aggregate. That’s three defeats in 54 games and four trophies in total. Chelsea’s 3-1 defeat to Man Utd in September was the first suffered by their manager in a domestic game since his previous spell with Portuguese minnows Academica.

With Chelsea he faces an immense task. A squad to be renewed and revitalised, an impatient chairman, and a notoriously cliquey dressing room full of strong characters. His start has been promising – Chelsea ground out results initially, and were lucky to beat the likes of West Brom early in the season, but the shackles appear to have come off in the last few weeks and they’re now scoring freely at Premiership level which could be ominous for QPR and they’re wildly inconsistent defence.

Scout Report

Ever since Claudio Ranieri moved in at Stamford Bridge and gave rise to the phrase “The Tinker Man” Chelsea have always been rather fluid with their team selections. That hasn’t really changed under Andre Villas Boas.

The rookie boss favours a formation not that dissimilar to the 4-3-3 we faced Blackburn with last week with Fernando Torres in the leading striker position and Jon Obi Mikel refusing to cross the halfway line in the Shaun Derry role. There aren’t many constants between those two though – Kalou, Malouda, Anelka, Mata and Sturridge have all played in the wide attacking roles either side of Torres and Lampard, Meireles, Ramires and Malouda have played in the midfield ahead of Mikel.

It’s worth saying, although I doubt it will be tried in an away game even against a defence as potentially leaky as QPR’s, that in the more winnable games Villas-Boas has switched to a system with two strikers (Anelka and Drogba have each had a go at partnering Torres) ahead of a midfield diamond – and the above run down of players highlights that they’re certainly not short of potent options for the tip of such a midfield set up. Indeed against Norwich when we caught the second half in the pub after our game at Wigan they seemed to be playing with five men dedicated to attack – Drogba and Torres up front, Lampard, Malouda and Ramires behind them.

Chelsea send marginally more of their attacks, 39%, down the left hand side where Cole and (more often than not) Malouda can combine but with Bosingwa ready to raid from right back as well there are certainly threats from both flanks.

The settled and experienced back four with Mikel sweeping in front has been reasonably mean with the shots it has allowed which doesn’t bode well for shot-shy QPR. Chelsea have the lowest average shots conceded per game - just ten - but a record of nine goals conceded in eight games is nothing more than average. QPR average a surprisingly high 16 shots a game (seventh best in the league) but have scored just twice at home which is the league’s worst record and six overall which is joint worst with Wigan and Stoke.

If you’re looking for a chink in the armour then I can tell you that Chelsea have a third of their nine goals this season from free kicks. They conceded from free kicks in consecutive games against Man Utd, Bolton and Swansea but as QPR haven’t scored direct from a free kick since Derby away in 2009 we’re not exactly ideally placed to take advantage of this. The quality of the set pieces from Rangers this season has been a regular cause for complaint but if they can get them right there is an indication that Chelsea are not altogether comfortable with the way Villas Boas has them defending set pieces – certainly the Chris Smalling goal for Man Utd against them last month would have had George Graham waking up in a cold sweat in the night.

It’s Torres who I find most interesting in all of this. He’s looked a lot sharper this season, even his astonishing miss at Old Trafford came after he’d scored one and looked dangerous, and Villas-Boas certainly seems to have faith in him. The problem for Torres, in my opinion, is similar to the challenges faced by Michael Owen. Owen was all about raw pace in his prime, and while there was more to Torres’ game when he used to terrorise Vidic and Ferdinand twice a season, they were both slain by a series of niggling muscle injuries. Two goals against a woeful Genk side mean little, but there have been signs this season that Torres is adapting his game to his physical limitations. Thankfully suspension means we don't have to worry too much about him for now.

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Photo: Action Images

Myke added 23:52 - Oct 20 Torres is banned for our game
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Toast_R added 09:40 - Oct 21 Great article, made me laugh and well done for pulling no punches with the questions to the Chelsea fan. I'm looking forward to Sunday now, nevermind the result it's where we've come from to get to this stage that should really matter. So just enjoy it.
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NorwayRanger16 added 10:10 - Oct 22 Tom Henning Ovrebo (that norwegian ref) is a legend! Will never forget Ballack screaming like a insane person at him and Drogba threatening to kick his a** LOL! I feel Chelsea have more porpose and urgency under Villas-Boas, and they attack with more pace now than under Scolari and Ancelotti. And with Mata and Meirelles they have finally found those missing pieces in the jigsaw that have made Torres click.

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