Gary Neville eh? Pretty bizarre to find myself even agreeing with what he’s got to say two weeks running, nevermind admitting it, but again this week he’s made some really valid points about the goings on at Chelsea.
When I read Frank Lampard confirming in the press things are not ‘ideal’ with AVB, my initial reaction was to get on his case for dishing out the sticks to beat the club with but whilst I still think Frank’s going about this completely the wrong way, Neville’s piece in the Daily Mail at least affords me enough understanding to see why he’s done it.
Of course Lampard will be pissed off, he’s played a huge part in Chelsea’s previous successes and given he says “if I sit on the bench, I want to see Chelsea win”, clearly still sees himself as a key player – and he can be – but as Neville points out, he does have to accept this won’t necessarily mean being on the pitch when he wants to be.
Obviously he’s a long way off that acceptance though, given his comments in the press this week suggesting “I’m sure we’re all frustrated at the minute. Everyone who’s involved, especially people who have got Chelsea in their hearts, who have been here a long time and want to see us performing as we should do. But it’s never a case of players throwing their toys out of the pram to the detriment of the club.” I’m not sure what he thinks he’ll achieve with statements like that aside from getting a few cheap digs in at his latest manager but in spite of what he says, it clearly is a case of players spitting their dummies right now.
This isn’t just another rant laying the blame at our senior players feet though because whilst I still think they’ve behaved like spoilt brats lately, Neville is quite right to suggest AVB has to accept he stole their smarties in the first place.
From the player’s point of view things were just fine before AVB turned up, so presumably they’ll be thinking ‘if it ain’t broke why fix it?’ And of course, no-one’s saying we’re a complete write-off just yet but what AVB will undoubtedly realise is that without some major repairs, we’ll be taking a trip to the knackers yard before too long.
The thing is though, you’re not going to strip down a beaten up old escort and turn it into a sleek, shiny Porsche overnight and nor is AVB going to turn us into title contenders again by ripping the old spine out of the side and hoping the replacements fill the gaps left behind. These things have to be done carefully, lovingly – and as Gary Neville quite rightly points out – AVB has been about as gentle in his approach to this as Chisora discussing the finer points of boxing with Hayes. In fact, in an effort to assert himself under what has been relentless pressure from all angles, AVB might have come out fighting, yet only succeeded in hurting himself.
Whether his decision to drop Lampard, Essien and Cole against Napoli was done to prove a point or because he genuinely thought it would work in our favour, it cost us, and AVB had to take some blame for that. Of course that just puts more pressure on his job but I thought he used it to his advantage. He turned the focus back on our under-performing players and threw down the gauntlet ahead of Bolton.
Irrespective of snide digs to the contrary though, I don’t think Roman picked the side yesterday. AVB knew he’d made a mistake against Napoli and having publicly accepted the blame, he made some very shrewd comments about the players before putting them straight back into the starting XI to prove their point – which of course they did. In fact, Frank Lampard gave us the best game we’ve had out of him for some time.
Of course, that sort of tactic isn’t sustainable though and we certainly don’t need anymore of our dirty laundry aired in public because whatever Frank says, that clearly is to the detriment of the club. What we need is some kind of truce where AVB accepts that to an extent, he does need key players onside if he’s going to stay at the club but they, likewise, need to accept the need for change – for Chelsea’s sake.
How do they get to that point though? Well, they could do worse than have a read of Neville’s column to be honest but failing that, it’ll be back to conkers!
Blue is the colour
