Why AVB needs backing

Monday, 20/02/2012

by Joshua Block, Shoot's Chelsea blogger

Another disappointing weekend of football for Chelsea fans has cranked the pressure up on manager Andre Villas-Boas ahead of the Blues’ crucial midweek Champions League clash with Napoli.

Despite Championship outfit Birmingham City being undefeated since December, the FA Cup Fifth Round encounter at Stamford Bridge was one that Chelsea needed to win comfortably, or at least win, in order for the media and some misguided home fans to cut the Portuguese tactician some slack.

Although he sent out a strong team to face Chris Hughton’s side, the first half display was not up to the standards that the home faithful have been so accustomed to witnessing over the past ten years, and sloppy defending at a set-piece allowed the away side to go into the break a goal up.

With Didier Drogba back from the African Cup of Nations having scored three goals in the Ivory Coast’s run to the final, AVB took the bold step of replacing the ineffective Fernando Torres with the talismanic striker. This change, along with the introduction of Salomon Kalou in place of Jon Mikel Obi, sparked a revival which culminated in a beautifully crafted goal involving Branislav Ivanovic planting a perfect cross on to the head of Daniel Sturridge to finally beat keeper Colin Doyle.

Doyle had saved a penalty from Juan Mata in the first half to deny the Spaniard the chance to emulate Peter Osgood’s record of scoring in every round of the FA Cup in a season. The Chelsea players had cause for complaint about the Birmingham keeper’s repeated time-wasting efforts in the game that had gone unpunished in their eyes but continued to press for the winning goal.

Sections of the home crowd had taken to chanting for Frank Lampard as the second half wore on but when the change finally came and Juan Mata was the outgoing player, it was met with resounding boos.

It seems that those that choose to boo every decision of AVB believe they know better than a man who won everything his side played for last season with FC Porto.

They must also have forgotten that the squad must travel to Naples for the most important game of the season so far and that making sure his key players are fit and ready for that far outweighs the necessity to avoid a replay in a domestic cup competition that Chelsea have won three times in the past five years.

The decision to bring on Lampard was unfortunately not successful and rather killed the momentum of what had been a rather enjoyable second half. City even had the chance to win the tie at the death but Nathan Redmond struck tamely straight at Petr Cech.

Hopefully such part-time cup fans will not be present at the Napoli home fixture as we are going to need the best and most positive atmosphere in order to negate the travelling fans’ support.

Even with the Blues’ torrid season so far, it is quite possible that Chelsea will be the only English representatives in the quarter-finals of the Champions League.

The squad must pull together and take the heat off the manager because it is their performance on the pitch that matters.

Roman Abramovich has supposedly given AVB the backing to overhaul the squad in order to ensure Chelsea’s success in the next decade, and he must be allowed to do that.

The manager is not the problem here and we should all know it, these results were happening last season under Carlo Ancelotti as well but were covered up by Manchester United letting us back into the title race. The rest of the top English clubs have now caught up to Chelsea and Man United, which is why this season’s title race has been somewhat unpredictable until a few weeks ago.

Hiring and firing managers cost a reported £28m last year, which was almost half of the club’s losses for the year. It needs to stop.

The manager needs to be given time to create his own team and get rid of high-earning deadwood and build the team around such quality young players as David Luiz, Ramires and Juan Mata (an AVB signing, by the way).

A big performance and result on Tuesday night like the one against Valencia in the group stage would go a long way to easing the pressure on the self-proclaimed ‘Group One’, but it is up to ‘the group’ to pull together and earn their wages and act like they care about playing for one of the greatest clubs in Europe.

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