From Russia With Impatience

With his scruffy little beard and penchant for cheap-looking nylon leisurewear, the multi-billionaire Roman Abramovich doesn't exactly cut the image of a prototypical James Bond villain.

He may not (to my knowledge) possess a white Persian cat, which he strokes for camp and menacing effect, but like 007's nemesis, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, Abramovich is clearly capable of dispatching underlings whenever the whim takes him.

So here we are again. Another November, another dip in form, and another Chelsea manager looking for work. Roberto Di Matteo took a decent and dignified stride in his brief managerial tenure at Stamford Bridge. But from the moment he was euphemistically installed as "interim first team coach" he knew he wasn't exactly the anointed one. He may even have been another 'dead man walking', as Victim No.1, Claudio Ranieri, referred to himself.

Go back two managers, which in Chelsea years means to last March, and Abramovich had grown impatient with his bizarre gamble - football's very own Charlie Buckett, Andreas Villas-Boas - and in looking for a replacement was desperate for Barcelona's Pep Guardiola. But with the 41-year-old Catalan making clear he was, at season's end, taking a year's sabbatical in New York with his family, the unemployed Rafa Benitez was being fitted up for a temporary spell in the manager's chair.

But when Benitez threw one of his customary hissy fits at the prospect of being a mere seat warmer, Abramovich had no option but to install, quickly, the popular old boy, Di Matteo. The club's history of appointing from within has not always gone well: Ruud Gullitt and Gianluca Vialli both fell foul of Ken Bates over money, while Ray Wilkins felt the sharp end of Abramovich's sword for, it would appear, looking at the Russian the wrong way.

Di Matteo - a club hero still for scoring the fastest FA Cup Final goal after 47 seconds of the 1997 final - had been AVB's assistant, fulfilling a role similar to that Wilkins had been employed for at Carlo Ancelotti's side - a link to the club's history for both fans and players.

But in being condescendingly titled Interim First Team Coach, it was clear that Di Matteo was only installed by default.

How embarrassing, then, that he should go on and end Chelsea's desperate hunt for the European Cup, land yet another FA Cup trophy at the same time, and galvanise a fractured dressing room.

Perhaps Chelsea had to accept a moral obligation to give Di Matteo the job full-time after all that. Drop him then and Chelsea's reputation for lousy manager management would have made the club toxic for anyone else to become interested - least of all, Pep Guardiola.

Abramovich had been making overtures to Guardiola again in the run up to Di Matteo's sacking. But this obsession with landing him is turning the Russian into the greatest stalker since Max Cady came after Sam Bowden and his family. And he's done it before: so the story goes, Abramovich fell in love with football by watching AC Milan, and set about buying the club. With that not possible, he set about recreating the club by buying Chelsea and installing Andrei Schevchenko, the rossoneri's star striker, while trying to lure Carlo Ancelotti as coach,

He didn't, but then he got Jose Mourinho, and that didn't work out too badly. Or, at least, until Chelsea's results started to go "in the wrong direction", the self-same excuse given for firing Di Matteo. Like Mourinho, Di Matteo delivered silverware and good times for the club. But as soon as things started to cool off - i.e. results went against them - they were summarily fired by the itchiest trigger finger since Dirty Harry.

Abramovich, then, has a totally unrealistic level of expectation. But he also appears to lack strong leadership and footballing advice around him. There's a reason why Manchester United are the most successful football club in history - it's because they've had the same manager for 25 years, who has built, invested and reinvested in consistency and excellence. Personally I loathe the old Scottish git, Alex Ferguson, but you could never knock his record, or indeed his club's ongoing support for him.

For Chelsea, eight managers in as many years is not only inconsistent, it's an embarassment. We want success and we've had success. We want our club to be led by a dynamic manager whom we can get behind. We had that in Mourinho, we had that in Guus Hiddink, we had that in Ancelotti and we could have had that in Di Matteo.

But, from now until the end of this season (and, it is claimed, with an extension to next season if "mutually acceptable"), Chelsea will be managed by the most divisive managerial appointment it would have been possible to appoint: Benitez.

You may, already, sense some antagonism towards Benitez. That's because many Chelsea fans consider him a tactical fool, more interested in defensive formations and squad rotation than anywhere near the attractive, free-flowing attacking football Abramovich himself is said to desire.

It's also because he spent an inordinate amount of time as Liverpool manager winding up Chelsea fans and, especially, Mourinho, and then behaving like an emotionally challenged teenager whenever things went wrong. He's been out of work for two years, with only a short spell at Internazionale since leaving Liverpool. That speaks volumes.

Abramovich has, at times, treated Chelsea like a plaything. When he's pumped more than £1 billion into the club since 2004, that's his prerogative. But you wonder whether he has always had the best advice. Did the club really need a physically crocked Andrei Schevchenko, or a mentally and physically crocked Fernando Torres, each for vastly inflated transfer fees and equally inflated wages?

The problem is impulsiveness and impatience. If Roman wants a bigger yacht, he orders it. Bigger mansion? He knocks through the rest of the street. This has been the 'see it, want it' nature of his ownership of Chelsea (which isn't that dissimilar to the way many Premier League players splash the cash around). More than just an oligarch, like some emperor acquiring lands at will, he has made some ridiculously rash decisions at Chelsea.

Benitez is going to have to endure six months of indifference and hostility from Chelsea fans. Even after Di Matteo had been appointed in March, Chelsea fans still let it be known at Di Matteo's first home game in charge that Benitez wasn't and would never be welcome. And so here he is, like the frog in Peter Gabriel's song Kiss That Frog "all puffed up, wanna be your king".

At any other club, the sort of success Di Matteo brought in just 167 days in charge would have had his name emblazoned above a new stand at the stadium. But not at Chelsea. This is a club which, for all you or I know, may have fired Benitez before he's even begun, and hired - and fired - his replacement.

Benitez has a rough ride ahead of him. Even if he does well, he'll be out on his ear as soon as you know it. Pep Guardiola knows it too. Just as Ancelotti was the coveted one, once, there is no life expectancy at Chelsea. And if he has any sense, Guardiola would give Chelsea one almighty swerve.

Dead men walking in the Roman empire

"I knew my time was up. I knew from the start, from the very beginning I was just a dead man walking." Those were the reflections of Claudio Ranieri, the likeable if somewhat erratic Roman sacked by Roman Abramovich as Chelsea manager after a year of speculation. The poor man had to endure almost a season of rumours, including the clumsy, clandestine meeting between the Russian oligarch and Sven-Goran Eriksson.

When Ranieri was sacked, after a season in which he had earned the tag "Tinkerman" for his often eccentric team selections, he left with a rare dignity in an era of professional disrespect in football. Contrast that with his replacement, Jose Mourinho.

Roll on seven years and history has repeated itself: Carlo Ancelotti, another highly likeable Italian, has been dispatched by Abramovich, with the club explaining that: "This season's performances have fallen short of expectations and the club feels the time is right to make this change ahead of next season's preparations." This is the same club which won the Barclays Premier League title and the FA Cup in Ancelotti's first season in charge, the first league and cup double in Chelsea's history (patronisingly, the official club statement does make a nod to the Italian's achievements by adding: "Carlo will always be welcome at Stamford Bridge, where he will be given the reception and respect his position in our history deserves." Cheers. Thanks. Grazie.)

It is, of course, ludicrous to sack a manager who wins The Double in one season and only manages the  runners-up spot in his next. By this token, Arsene Wenger would have been fired years ago. But when you're Roman Abramovich, Britain's third richest resident and the 53rd richest man in the world, you can - and patently do - whatever you want.

What makes it all the more ridiculous, however, is that Ancelotti was the manager Abramovich wanted in the first place, even before he signed Mourinho (who remains Chelsea's most successful manager ever). So the story goes, when the newly-minted billionaire decided that his next 'must-have' bauble would be an English Premier League club, he began an obsession with winning the European Champions League - just as AC Milan seemed to be very good at doing...under then-manager Ancelotti.

Abramovich is said to have courted Ancelotti to become Chelsea manager several times before he eventually prised him away from the San Siro in 2009. Until then, all Abramovich had been able to get out of Milan was the perma-crocked and extremely expensive Andrei Shevchenko. With Ancelotti finally he had the manager he'd always wanted; and with the results of the 2009-2010 season, it would appear his obsession with the Reggiolan had been worth it.

Come the new season, and Chelsea came back out of the traps like Wile E. Coyote strapped to a new Road Runner-seeking rocket, winning their first two games 6-0 and seemingly running away with the Premier League before most people's summer tans had started to peel. But then the wheels started to fall off: Ray Wilkins - the genial former club captain-turned media-friendly coach was informed - at half-time of a reserve match, if you please - that his contract wasn't being renewed. Both the timing and the motivation of this stank. Almost at once, Chelsea's fortunes turned, soon conceding top spot and the generous margin it had built over Manchester United, and enduring a winter of discontent which even saw them fall out of European positions for next season.

Whatever magic Ancelotti had applied in his first season had somehow been irretrievably lost down the back of the sofa by Christmas. Nothing, and no-one seemed to be getting the side up on its feet. Ancelotti was already looking like the next dead man walking. Given that Abramovich had dispensed with Jose Mourinho after an indifferent Champions League match in September 2007, his successor, Avram Grant went within days of taking Chelsea to within a penalty kick of the European Cup, and his successor Luis Felipe Scollari walked the plank after just seven months in February 2009, Ancelotti's departure was a foregone conclusion, regardless of the logic.

To his credit, the club rallied: despite or in spite of the preposterous £50 million arrival of Fernando Torres in the January transfer window (an arrival which has produced just the one league goal since), Chelsea clawed their way back into contention for the league title itself. However, as incredible as it seemed that they could still retake the top spot they'd conceded to Manchester United some months before, defeats in Europe and the league to the Mancunians sealed Ancelotti's fate.

Disarming and dignified to the last, the Italian maintained a que sera sera stoicism that whatever would happen wouldn't bother him. There would be no wailing or gnashing of teeth, no Latin histrionics. He would politely walk away.

No Chelsea manager walks away empty-handed, of course: the modern penchant for golden parachutes means that in prematurely jettisoning five managers in seven years, Roman Abramovich has also forked out a substantial amount of money - as much as the price of a Torres - in payoffs.

And so, Chelsea starts its search for the eighth manager of the Abromovich era. Money is already changing hands on who will be the next lucky individual. Meanwhile, Sir Alex Ferguson celebrates his 19th league title in almost 25 years as Manchester United manager. That's almost a quarter of a century, and 27 trophies in all. No prizes for guessing the secret of his success, then.

Success for anyone mad enough to take on the Chelsea job will always be fleeting. Jose Mourinho won back-to-back Premier League championships but was still sacked; Ancelotti was even the one Abramovich had wanted, but was still sacked. Whoever enters the Roman lion's den next will have but one objective - win the Champions League. If he fails, there will be only one outcome.