Chelsea FC’s culture rot: Manager is a disrepected and disposable patsy

Antonio Conte is the latest victim of Chelsea’s culture of treating the manager as the scapegoat of the week. His successor and that man’s successor will meet the same fate.

Here we are again. The FA Cup final will probably be the last game of Antonio Conte’s reign as the head coach of Chelsea. After Jose Mourinho “managed” the Blues all the way down to 16th place and dumped £150 million worth of raw talent, the powers-that-be thought it best to get rid of the title itself. Conte’s remit was to coach the players and leave the management to supposedly more qualified people at the club.

In his first season, Conte coached the team to a Premier League title and an FA Cup final. This was despite the board managing to miss out on all of Conte’s first choice transfer targets. The players at Conte’s disposal also seemed to believe in his ethos of “work, work, work” in his first season. Everything was rosy in the garden of Antonio. Or so it seemed.

Fast forward to the 2017 summer transfer window, and you could see things beginning to unravel. Antonio Conte got a pay raise, but the length of his contract remained unchanged. That was the first sign.

The second was the board missing out on transfer targets yet again, and managing to compound Conte’s misery by signing injured players. Think about it. Somewhere in Stamford Bridge is spreadsheet or program that spit out the name “Danny Drinkwater” as a player similar to Radja Nainggolan.

Not one to mince words, Conte let it be known that expectations would need to be adjusted for this season. And he was right.

But this is Chelsea. Even when they buy a Fiat we expect it to perform like a Ferrari. And when things go wrong, the first head on the chopping block is the one attached to the manager. Or in this instance, the head coach. This is not the first time it has happened.

Chelsea’s recent history is littered with incidents where the whole team starts playing like Sunday Leaguers for no apparent reason. This is accompanied by leaks about the training being too much or too little or too boring. The downturn reverses almost as soon as the incumbent manager is sacked.

A lot of Chelsea watchers thought this would end when the old guard were no longer at Chelsea. It did not, for it is ingrained in the culture of this club.

Chelsea are a club where the manager is held responsible for the players missing clear-cut goalscoring chances. The buck stops with the manager when the wingback fails to get rid of the ball or hits the first man from a corner. It is also the manager’s fault when he takes off a supposedly world-class player when said player has been a passenger throughout the game.

The players are absolved of any blame whatsoever, as long as it can be apportioned to the fool on the touchline.

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And the players know it. They know it all too well. They are not saboteurs, but it’s close. At this level of professional sport fine margins can dictate the difference between glory and failure. The players’ attitude when they are made to do something by someone they don’t really care for has spelt the end for successive managers at this club. A slight drop in their effort in training translates to misplaced passes, wayward shooting and other undesirables on the pitch.

Why don’t the players care for the manager anymore? Perhaps because he got rid of a player who was quite popular within the squad. Or he benched the club captain. Or maybe he decided he’d rather not have his blood pressure hit the roof when his curly-haired centreback vacates his post and loses the ball in midfield yet again. And most importantly, they don’t care for him because they’ve realized the head coach cannot replace them so easily because the board simply can’t (or won’t) get him the players he wants.

But do any of these reasons really matter? When Antonio Conte goes, the players will find some other excuses to become disillusioned with the new man. At this point, the person in the dugout is an interchangeable patsy, one whose time on the touchline depends on the players’ whims.

The players know they will outlast the new man and probably a couple more after him. And this is exactly what needs to change at this club. The players need to be told who is calling the shots because it cannot be them. Not again.

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Otherwise it doesn’t matter who comes in after Conte. Chelsea will be back at the same place after two years, looking for the next faceless entity to occupy the dugout until the players grow annoyed or bored with him.