Dinner with Avram Grant. As invitations go, this one is unexpected, given that only Heather Mills has received a worse press in the past six months. Grant’s explanation is that he intends to stay around as Chelsea’s first-team coach, so we should get to know him properly.

It is a process that begins slowly, his lugubrious features giving away little, but over several hours takes in a broad sweep from his vision for a new attacking Chelsea to a history of terrible family hardship from Iraq to the frozen wastes of northern Russia.

By the end, the man described as having a face like a well-tended grave is even cracking jokes, including the one about the chancer who promises to teach a horse to speak. “He tells the king it will take ten years, but he needs paying half up front. When his friend asks him, ‘You’ve taken the money, but how are you going to teach the horse?’ the man replies that it’s not a problem. ‘Either the king or the horse will be dead in ten years.’ ”

An allegory about life at Stamford Bridge? Well, Grant claims to have bought himself time at Chelsea, if not quite ten years. He says that there are plans in place to build the team that Roman Abramovich craves; attacking, adventurous, popular. A team who will fill the empty seats that so rankle with Abramovich, not because they cost him money but because they provide undeniable evidence of a lack of interest.

The owner would happily satisfy his desire for adventurous football by spending £50 million tomorrow on Kaká, Lionel Messi or Wayne Rooney. “There are players who make smoke and players who make fire. I want players who make fire,” Grant says. Just one problem. Even for a billionaire, those superstars are out of reach.

Chelsea’s solution is to target the next generation. A worldwide network of 52 scouts, eight of them in South America, are under orders to find the next Messi, the next Kaká, the next Alexandre Pato, the teenage Brazil striker who joined AC Milan under Chelsea’s nose.

“If it is not possible to bring in a Messi or a Kaká, we will try and find the next one,” Grant says. He makes it plain that money is no object, provided that the target is a playmaker, a dazzling winger. “We want to bring more flair. Roman is ready to back us.”

If they sign teenagers rather than the finished article (and we can probably discount moves for Ronaldinho or Luka Modric, the Croat, this summer), it will take time to see the changes. Given the doubts about his stature, his ability to prove himself at the highest level, will Grant be around to oversee the transition? “I took over in a very difficult situation and I think people at the club understand that,” he says. “We are second in the Premiership, still in the Champions League and I think they can see the team progressing. I’m not sure there is any other manager who could have done better than me. I’m building for the future and no one has told me otherwise. I don’t need to speak to Roman. I’ll just continue doing my job.”

He knows that he will not be kept on for sentimental reasons, despite a relationship with Abramovich stretching back over several years. “You’re my manager now, not my friend,” the oligarch told Grant in September when he replaced José Mourinho. Chelsea sources are adamant that results will dictate Grant’s longevity in the job.

So what did Abramovich see in Grant? Given the Russian’s ambition to make Chelsea top dogs in world football, there must have been more to it than parachuting in a mate.

Putting his modesty aside, Grant talks about his tactical acumen, his understanding of the game. He is particularly proud, for instance, of his change against Arsenal last Sunday when, to the horror of the fans, he put on Juliano Belletti. “Did you notice he came on at right wing, not full back?” And helped to set up the winner.

He is faintly offended by the requirement, at 52, to take the Uefa Pro Licence so that he can manage in the Barclays Premier League. “When the story came out, there was a headline in Israel which said, ‘Teaching Grant about football is like teaching Tom Hanks about movies’,” he says. His experience, he claims, comes not just from his work in Israel but from studying first-hand the Liverpool of Bob Paisley and Brian Clough’s Nottingham Forest.

He talks, too, about his wider understanding of sport, and science, from many trips to watch basketball in the United States. One of his favourite motivational videos, featuring the legendary Michael Jordan, has been screened to the Chelsea players.

He is a man with many high-profile connections, from Israeli politicians to Russian oligarchs, and yet nothing has influenced him like his parents. Sadly, their stories will have no impact on the bigots who have bombarded him with anti-Semitic messages.

His mother was brought up in Iraq but was forced to flee when she was publicly outed as a Jew. His father, Meir Granat (Avram changed the surname), was raised in Poland until 1941, when the Nazis forced the family into Russia. He describes his father as the most positive person he has known. “You can go two ways when you are a holocaust survivor. Either you become bitter, more than bitter, or you feel like you are born again and that every day is a second chance. My father is the second type, most definitely.

“I was standing after the Carling Cup defeat to Tottenham Hotspur with my sister and my father says, ‘You know, there are worse things in life than losing a cup final.’ I thought, ‘Is he about to talk about it for the first time. Is he about to mention the holocaust?’ Eventually, he says, ‘You could have lost in the semi-final.’ Sometimes I can’t understand how a man can come out of this hell on earth as an optimist.”

Grant made a speech at Auschwitz a couple of years ago. He was given a prepared lecture but put it aside to tell his own story. He told the tale about sitting on a balcony one night as a teenager. “Suddenly I heard this screaming coming from inside, the kind of screaming that happens when a chicken has had its throat cut. I ran inside and my father was lying in bed, yelling.” His mother told him that it happened every night for years. Grant’s father had been dreaming that he was back in the Russian forest where he was forced to dig graves for his parents and five brothers and sisters who had died of cold or starvation. “He is so positive, but he cannot control his dreams.”

As Grant talks, it is hard to square him with the man who can be such painful company at press conferences, who seemed not to know what to say before extra time in the Carling Cup final. Grandstanding is not his strong suit, which is something he is forced to acknowledge, particularly in comparison with Mourinho.

“I have to take a quieter approach [in press conferences],” Grant says. “I have not come here, like Mourinho, as the winner of the Champions League. I have not had the success of Ferguson and Wenger. I know the success I have enjoyed in Israel counts for nothing here. But they said the same when AC Milan got Arrigo Sacchi from Parma. No one could understand why Silvio Berlusconi wanted him. They said he would have to change now that he had better players. But Berlusconi said if he changes I don’t want him. I want the Arrigo Sacchi of Parma.”

He compares himself, too, to Vic-ente Del Bosque, the man who worked in the shadows at Real Madrid and then steered the team to two European Cup triumphs. But he knows that to make the comparisons work, he has to win the Premier League or the Champions League. He might get away without winning a trophy this season, but only just.

Defeat by Arsenal would have been greeted with howls for his head. Instead, he celebrated a victory that was emotional for several reasons. “My best friend, David, was killed in the Yom Kippur War. He was killed by a single bullet. I still feel the guilt, that I am alive and he is not. His parents came to the Arsenal game last week as my guests and I feel it every time I see them. I am fifty-something and their son is still 19.”

Grant by numbers

74 Days between Grant arriving at Chelsea to become director of football and being appointed first-team coach

18 Age at which Grant became youth-team coach of Hapoel Petah Tikva, the Israeli top-division club

46 Age when Grant became Israel’s youngest coach

4 Israeli league titles that Grant has won as a coach – twice each with Maccabi Tel-Aviv and Maccabi Haifa

2 Number of spells that Grant had as Maccabi Tel-Aviv coach

0 Matches that Grant lost as Israel coach in their ten-match qualifying group for the 2006 World Cup finals; the group included France, Switzerland and Ireland 2 Defeats suffered by Grant in his 32 Barclays Premier League and Champions League games as Chelsea first-team coach

14 Years of age between Grant, 52, and Sir Alex Ferguson, 66, manager of Manchester United, Chelsea’s rivals for the Barclays Premier League title

Words by Bill Edgar