Ninety minutes from a Champions League final in Moscow, the perfect location, the icing on the cake for the owner and still we cannot be sure that Avram Grant will be Chelsea first-team coach next season. Would you put a fiver on it?

Chelsea head into next week's second leg in their strongest position yet; it is the first time that they have an away goal from one of these semi-final encounters with Liverpool and it is the first time that they play them at Stamford Bridge in the second leg, but how secure are Grant's employment prospects?

The general consensus was that Tuesday's match was exciting when compared with the previous semi-finals, even if it took an own goal in the dying seconds to change the complexion of the evening for Grant. So it is Grant rather than José Mourinho at the helm of Chelsea when they finally get an away goal at Anfield, yet no one would be surprised to wake up on Thursday next week to headlines of “Grant out - Zola in to lead Chelsea in Moscow final”. Only Zola would stop that headline.

Sure, there is a Chelsea factor here, in that there is pretty much nothing that Roman Abramovich, the club's billionaire owner, could do to shock. He does not need to balance the books or speak publicly and he certainly does not need to please anyone other than himself.

As controversially and suddenly as Mourinho was jettisoned, so Grant can be airlifted back to an apartment in Tel Aviv. When Mourinho was showing signs of frustration at the club's owner, the fans rallied behind him, but Grant has nowhere to run. The supporters were ambivalent about his appointment, the media were no more enthusiastic, yet his win percentage is similar to that of his predecessor. Some people can do no wrong; Grant can do no right.

Why is this? Why has Grant felt the need to employ PR experts outside of the club? Why did he decide to offer strange monosyllabic answers after Chelsea's 1-0 win over Everton last week? Some have suggested that Grant's appearance is getting in the way of Chelsea fans falling in love with him; he is no George Clooney, but neither are Arsène Wenger and Sir Alex Ferguson and their fans love them.

But they did not inherit their jobs from the Special One. If Daniel Craig handed over the reins of James Bond to Pete Postlethwaite, it would be an uphill task in the PR department to convince women to fall in love with him and men to want to be him. Ask Gordon Brown what it is like inheriting a coveted job from someone who, for a period at least, was untouchable.

I am not suggesting that Chelsea fans are any more particular about the way their managers look than the rest of us, but they have a track record when it comes to sartorial elegance. Aside from Mourinho there have been Gianluca Vialli, Ruud Gullit and Glenn Hoddle, all dashing men. Linking Chelsea and fashion is nothing new and any psychology student will tell you that babies are attracted to better-looking people.

In recent times, though, it has not been all Armani models and waxed torsos. Claudio Ranieri resembled a language teacher on an exchange visit, but he had humour, a cracking smile and grace, so there is another route to fans' hearts.

Grant has courted a few journalists and bared his soul, which usually works as a method of eliciting sympathy, but a good gag at the beginning of a Friday morning press conference could carry him even farther. If he could take the mickey out of himself he would have people eating out of the palm of his hand. Deep down I think we want to feel for him, but he will not let us.

A straw poll of random strangers I met this week seemed to suggest that there is no way back for Grant and that even a victory in Moscow would be the end. Looks were not mentioned specifically, but the word “grumpy” was.

Well, sorry, but as much as I admire the man, grumpy has been Ferguson's mood du jour more than once in the past 22 years of ecstasy and agony as manager of Manchester United. Grumpy and moody work off the pitch only if there is beauty and joy on it, at least some of the time.

Perhaps we are barking up the wrong tree. Are we simply heading to a new world order - one manager a season? It is rare in the big Italian and Spanish clubs for someone to keep his job for any length of time: even Fabio Capello failed to stay at Real Madrid longer than 12 months despite winning the league during his second period at the club. The season before that, Real had employed three different coaches in a 12-month period.

Is nostalgia forcing us to hang on to the idea of long-serving managers in the face of a harsher 21st-century reality of easy come, easy go?

Whenever a manager is deemed to be sacked unfairly after a short period of time, we point to United and Arsenal and suggest that longevity is the key; stick with the man through the rough times and the good times will roll. That philosophy takes patience and while today's billionaire football club owners can buy anything they want, time is not for sale.