Forget those uncomfortable moments in the Houses of Parliament this week, the most cinematic backdrop to the drama that is Chelsea Football Club these days was Dracula’s castle. Reports from Romania that Roman Abramovich has just purchased the Transylvanian pile for €50m were oddly appropriate — West London’s own Vlad the Impaler has no money to buy Jose Mourinho a new striker, but a home for blood-letting and deception? Roman would have that.
This summer might be the time for a joint visit. For the time being blood is off the table, replaced with an uneasy peace pact that may be enough to see Mourinho walk off with a clutch of silverware at the end of this season, but will not be sufficient to retain his services as Chelsea manager.
The deal was brokered last weekend either side of the 4-0 defeat of Wigan. Its instigator was Peter Kenyon, flown back from a marketing trip to China the previous day to find the club at war with itself. Infuriated by the board’s refusal to sign a replacement for the ineffective Andriy Shevchenko, and its attempts to foist upon him a defender and assistant coach he did not want, Mourinho had dropped Shevchenko, challenging his employer to sack him and pay off the £25m-plus outstanding on his contract.
Having already sounded out several replacement coaches, Abramovich was ready to dismiss Mourinho. Kenyon attempted to make both sides see sense. The club was still in four competitions, with most of the players firmly behind Mourinho; an acrimonious divorce would not promote success on the field.
By Saturday night, the Russian camp had agreed to sign a centre-back that Mourinho approved of and to stay silent on their reservations regarding his management style until the end of the season. In return, the Portuguese must attempt to reintegrate Shevchenko and hold his own tongue until the summer.
Mourinho accepted the compromise when it was offered to him on Monday. He did, though, urge Kenyon to complete the transfer of Tal Ben Haim in time to field the Israeli against Liverpool yesterday — a request that went unfulfilled.
Bolton demanded £3m for a player with six months left on a £7,000-a-week contract, rejecting the loan of Shaun Wright-Phillips or Lassana Diarra as part payment. By Wednesday, Chelsea had taken the step of formally announcing that “Ben Haim will not be joining Chelsea FC in January,” leaving Mourinho fuming that the club would not sanction an extra £1m on cover for the injured John Terry.
When the manager, chief executive and first-team squad pitched up at Westminster on club PR duty the next day, Mourinho’s message on his future was precisely coded. “Peter Kenyon says support is there and, if that support is real support, that’s good,” he said. “I like to hear that. But being supportive is not just about giving you money to spend. It’s about big respect for your job at the club and, if that is there, I will be very happy to see out my contract.”
Standing as far away from Mourinho as possible in the parliament buildings was Shevchenko, who had spent the week being cold shouldered in training despite putting more effort into daily sessions than at any stage in his Chelsea career.
Newspaper claims that he was Abramovich’s spy in the Chelsea camp prompted the Ukrainian to start legal proceedings against one tabloid and invite two football correspondents to his house to explain that his “relationship with [Abramovich] is the same as every other player”. If that hardly tallied with the owner’s invite to Shevchenko and his wife to share his house while looking for their own accommodation last year, nor did it come as a surprise to learn that a condition of the interview was that the copy included the claim that Shevchenko had missed the Wigan match with a “buttock strain”. Shevchenko was not pleading injury yesterday when he did not start ast Liverpool.
There was other apparent misinformation around Chelsea last week. While Mourinho confirmed the club’s attempt to introduce a Russian-speaking Israeli coach to his support staff, claims it was Avram Grant appeared inaccurate. The former Israel coach does not speak Russian, says he received no invite from Abramovich to work with the team, and actually knows Mourinho well, having spent a month shadowing him before becoming Portsmouth’s director of football.
It is the influence on player recruitment of two individuals already in Abramovich’s employ that has seriously upset Mourinho. Frank Arnesen, Chelsea’s chief scout and director of youth development, and his former colleague at PSV Eindhoven, Piet de Visser, are personae non gratae.
When Abramovich began his overhaul of Chelsea in 2003, his plan was to recruit the best-in-class personnel in all departments — players, coaches, chief executive and scouts. In the last category the order was to “get the man who found Ronaldo”, which led him to De Visser.
By the autumn of 2003, De Visser was on the Abramovich payroll. One of his first recommendations to Chelsea was the Brazilian defender Alcides, watched at the 2003 World Youth Championship and signed despite possessing neither a European passport nor any hope of acquiring a UK work permit. Flown into London, Alcides was held up by passport control at Heathrow and had to be loaned hastily to Benfica.
Contacted in Paraguay on Friday, where he was watching the South American Under-20 Championship, De Visser declined an interview request.
Arnesen’s Chelsea youth teams have also come under fire. The coach Ruud Kaiser, an Arnesen appointment, has been blamed for the team’s underperformance, while Mourinho has complained about the shortage of players ready to step up into the senior squad.
Questions have been asked as to why Slobodan Rajkovic, a Serbia Under-21 centre back signed by Arnesen for a reported €5.2m, has not yet been able to train with the first team. If Rajkovic was of the advertised quality, a January transfer from the nursery club OFK Belgrade could have provided the defensive cover Mourinho so clearly lacked at Anfield yesterday.
That was Mourinho’s 100th Premiership game as Chelsea manager. Peace pact or no peace pact, few expect him to complete 100 more.
