IT ALWAYS seems bizarre at this stage of the season when we get the teams dropping out of the Champions League into the Europa League.
This time round we have last year’s Champions League winners in Chelsea going into the other competition and they have been installed as second favourites, but at 9-1.
It is strange enough switching from one competition to another, but with the quality in the Stamford Bridge squad, and with Rafa Benitez at the reins who has a great record in Europe with Liverpool and Valencia, you got to feel that at nines Chelsea must be worth a pound of anyone’s money.
But the whole Europa League drop is daft and you had the strange situation in Manchester this week where City fans were willing their team to be knocked out of European competition while United fans were praying their rivals would stay in!
IT WAS only a couple of weeks ago that I was writing about Chelsea’s habit for changing managers in this column – what are the chances I will be talking about the Stamford Bridge club looking for a new man again this time next week?
What is really hard to understand is why a club would bring in a new manager and then not give him total support behind the scenes.
Rafa Benitez has arrived at Stamford Bridge and I am sure he expected that the owner, club staff and coaches would all be behind him.
That does not appear to be the case and it is an incredible situation.
Rafa is a top manager who has won the Champions League with Liverpool, a club he took to a second-place finish in the Premier League, but he doesn’t seem to be being given a chance.
The reaction of the fans with their banners was possibly predictable, but to then find Roman Abramovich suggesting that his advisers had prompted the move for Benitez makes the whole scenario laughable.
I am not the biggest fan of Benitez, but I do find myself desperate for the guy to get a couple of wins just so he can steady things and then hopefully be allowed to get on with the job.
He will benefit when John Terry gets back to fitness because they do seem a side who are lacking leadership on the field.
But you look to next week and Chelsea have got an awkward away trip to Sunderland in the Premier League tomorrow and then next Wednesday are away to Leeds United in the quarter-finals of the Capital One Cup – which will be a tough game given all the history that fixture carries.
You think you have seen everything in football, but I could be left shaking my head again next week because two defeats might mean we are talking about Chelsea looking for a new manager again.
