Victory over Tottenham in this afternoon’s Carling Cup final would do him a power of good, but is Wembley likely to reverberate to blue-clad choruses of “There’s only one Avram Grant”? Probably not. The Chelsea manager could win the lot, Champions League included, and still hear the fans bang on about Jose Mourinho, his celebrated predecessor.

The two men are chalk and cheese - Mourinho the charismatic populist, Grant a grump for whom the word lugubrious might have been coined - and this poles-apart contrast explains why supporters took one to their hearts and remain lukewarm, at best, towards the other. That and the enduring suspicion that Grant stabbed Mourinho in the back to get his job.

Footballing styles can hardly be the problem, their respective approaches broadly similar. Mourinho, admittedly, kept the cleaner busy in the trophy cabinet, but who is to say that Grant, given time and the same access to Roman Abramovich’s millions, might not do the same? He has been in the job for less than five months, so it is a bit early to be drawing cast-iron conclusions, but the evidence of his tenure to date reinforces the belief that Abramovich was putting up a smokescreen when he cited a lack of excitement as the reason for getting rid of the “Special One”.

For all his talk of an expansive, passing game, Grant is playing much the same functional football (Chelsea have scored fewer goals in the Premier League than Everton and Aston Villa) with no complaints from on high, and the contentious parting of the ways in September had more to do with a clash of colossal egos than the patron’s pursuit of “The Beautiful Game”. Having spent the thick end of £600m on the club, Abramovich was jealous of all the credit his manager was getting. “Why do they never chant my name?” he was heard to ask. If sacking Mourinho was designed to underline the importance of the Russian’s own contribution, it hasn’t worked.

Grant was not a popular appointment, and the fans still pine for the days when their Portuguese favourite dominated the headlines and kept Sky TV on constant alert. Death threats and racial abuse? Had Mourinho, not Grant, been the target, we would never have heard the end of it. Mourinho imagined victimisation where there was none, and had he received the mysterious white powder in the post, he would have filled reporters’ notebooks with emotional expositions on the impact on his family and the barbarism that spawned such sickos. Grant scorned the subject, a dignified response from a man who already knows the horrors of which human beings are capable. Grant’s father, Meir, survived the Holocaust in Poland and celebrated his 80th birthday last Thursday. He will be at Wembley today, a proud father watching his son lead out his team in a cup final.

If the Chelsea board wanted a quieter life, they are getting it. As chief executive Peter Kenyon said: “There’s still a lot of noise around the club, but the noise is around football. It’s less controversial. You would have to say there’s more stability under the new manager.”

Maybe, but while silence is golden, it rarely wins popularity contests. Management is nearly as much about presentation and public perception as it is about results and the Chelsea incumbent comes up short on both counts. That said, where it matters most, on the field, he has made a better start than almost any critic, this one included, expected. As Kenyon put it: “His results are not what 99% were expecting and you’ve got to give full credit to Avram. He’s got on with the job quietly and efficiently, under some pretty significant hurdles in terms of injuries and the African Cup of Nations. Several months on, we are in the Carling Cup final and still in contention to win the Premier League, the Champions League and the FA Cup. You’ve all got to recognise he’s done a good job.”

Quite so, yet the fans are still sceptical. When Grant lost his first Premier League match, 2-0 away to Manchester United, and managed only a goalless draw at home to Fulham in his second, there were mutinous looks all round. He would be lucky to last until Christmas. Instead, he won his next seven, beginning with an impressive Champions League victory in Valencia and including a 6-0 demolition of Manchester City. Chelsea won 4-0 away to Rosenborg, with whom a 1-1 draw at home had signalled Mourinho’s departure, and a 4-4 thriller with the Villa on Boxing Day had him feted as The Great Entertainer.

Again, however, the assessment was premature. The results have continued to be good – Chelsea are unbeaten in 16 matches – but recent performances have been efficient rather than compelling, with goalless draws against Olympiakos and Liverpool in the last four.

Was he really so different, in playing style, to his lamented predecessor? When I posed the question after training on Friday, he replied: “This season the team weren’t playing so well, and after a traumatic night against Rosenborg at home, I replaced Jose. My first priority was to build a staff to get the best from the players, which is what I did (principally by recruiting the Dutch coach, Henk ten Cate, from Ajax). I kept the good things, but changed the staff and the training, and we are moving forward. Almost all the players are better than they were and I am proud because it shows we’re working correctly.” So Chelsea ha improved since Mourinho’s departure? “You always try to compare with the past,” Grant chided. “I don’t like to, but there are a few things we are doing that are different.” Such as? “We try to pass the ball more than to play long balls. I believe you need to play at a quick tempo,and sometimes that means a long ball, but I see it as the alternative solution. I prefer to build from the back.” The acme had been the six-goal drubbing of Eriksson’s City, when Chelsea’s penetrative passing dissected one of the best defences in the league. “Yes, but we have done the same on other occasions without scoring the goals,” Grant said. “When we played Everton here we had more chances than we had against City but drew 1-1. But we are developing well, and in 70-80% of our games we play good football.” The fans remained dubious. “I don’t go and ask them whether they like me or not,” Grant said. “It was reasonable to me in the beginning that they did not accept me. I’ve been told it was the same when (Claudio) Ranieri came here and when Jose came. You are not always accepted at first, but I think now they are happy.”

Would victory this afternoon lay the ghost of Mourinho? “Why do we need to kill off Jose Mourinho?” Grant flashed back. “He did a good job and we need to continue with this. We need to keep going the same way.” A visiting Israeli journalist pointed out that Grant had won only one of his four cup finals back home. “Yes, but I won other things,” he shot back (four league titles, with the Maccabi clubs of Haifa and Tel Aviv). “That is typical, in Israel if you win 30 games and draw one, they will ask only about the draw. I’m not a man who lives in the past.”

With important players back from the African tournament and others fit again, there were difficult choices to be made for the final. The grapevine has it that John Terry and Frank Lampard will start, Wayne Bridge will be preferred to Ashley Cole at left-back and Nicolas Anelka will edge out Joe Cole.

TV match - Chelsea v Tottenham Today, Sky Sports 1, 2.30pm, kick-off 3pm. Highlights, ITV1, 11.15pm

Probable teams

Chelsea(4-1-2-1-2) Cech; Belletti, Terry, Carvalho, Bridge; Mikel; Essien, Lampard; Ballack; Anelka, Drogba

Tottenham(4-4-2) Robinson; Hutton, Woodgate, King, Chimbonda; Lennon, Zokara, Jenas, Malbranque; Berbatov, Keane

Inside track

FORM GUIDE

Chelsea

D 0-0 Olympiakos (a)
W 3-1 Huddersfield (h)
D 1-1 Portsmouth (a)
D 0-0 Liverpool (h)
W 1-0 Reading (h)

Tottenham

D 1-1 Slavia Prague (h)
W 2-1 Slavia Prague (a)
W 3-0 Derby Co (a)
D 1-1 Man Utd (h)
W 0-0 Everton (a)

- Chelsea have won the League Cup four times – once more than Tottenham Hotspur

- Chelsea netted 13 goals in fi ve matches to reach the fi nal and conceded four. Spurs hit 12 goals, but let in two

- Frank Lampard, of Chelsea, is the Carling Cup top scorer with four goals. Aaron Lennon, Dimitar Berbatov, Jermaine Jenas and Pascal Chimbonda have played in all fi ve of Tottenham’s Carling Cup ties so far

Avram Grant v Jose Mourinho: spot the difference

THE MORE THINGS CHANGE ...

- Jose Mourinho rotated his squad, but for the big games he had a cadre of nine so-called ‘Untouchables’ who always played. These were included regardless of form, or even fi tness, and included Michael Ballack and John Terry. Avram Grant also tries to vary his starting lineup, but selects more on form than reputation. ‘I’m not sure anyone is untouchable now,’ Ballack remarked after the goalless Champions League clash with Olympiakos in Greece last week, when Frank Lampard and Terry were left on the bench

- The shortcomings of Andriy Shevchenko, a favourite of Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich, left Mourinho without a real partner for Didier Drogba in attack and therefore reliant on a single orthodox striker in a 4-5-1 formation [4-3-3 when using two wingers]. Grant remedied this weakness with the acquisition of Nicolas Anelka from Bolton Wanderers last month. Grant has the option of using a 4-4-2 lineup now Drogba is back from African Cup of Nations duty with the Ivory Coast national team

- Mourinho said he wanted to use wingers to capitalise on Drogba’s aerial prowess, but lost faith in Damien Duff and Arjen Robben, who both left Stamford Bridge, and Shaun Wright-Phillips, who was marginalised. Grant’s decision to persevere with Wright-Phillips [23 league appearances this season] and Joe Cole [22 league games] has been well rewarded

... THE MORE THEY STAY THE SAME

- Under Mourinho, Chelsea’s default mode was the long ball to Drogba. Grant promised to be less direct, but with one notable exception [the 6-0 drubbing of Manchester City] his teams have ground out results with the same frontal assaults rather than by using intricate passing movements

- One reason Abramovich sacked Mourinho was that he wanted more entertainment. He hasn’t had it. Chelsea have scored 10 fewer Premier League goals than Tottenham this season. Like his predecessor, Grant’s priority is defensive security