Why It Went Wrong For Big Fail Scolari...

[WV2 Blue]

Why It Went Wrong For Big Fail Scolari..........

Signing A Two-Year Contract

Questions about the wisdom of Scolari's appointment were raised the moment it was announced he had put pen to paper on a two-year deal. So much for long-term thinking. Not only did the short-term undertaking suggest that his roots in London were unlikely to be firmly established, but it also cast considerable doubt on whether he was the right appointment. Scolari, clearly, wouldn't provide the long-term outlook that many felt Chelsea desperately required after two years of gradual regression and with their side relatively elderly compared to their closest rivals.

The brevity of that contract may have also served as his death warrant: While the sackings of Jose Mourinho and Avram Grant from their long-term deals cost Chelsea tens of millions in compensation, dismissing Scolari will be relatively cheap.

Did He Lose The Dressing Room?

The BBC has reported that Roman Abramovich appeared at the training ground to 'canvass the opinion of the senior players' last week. If true, then there is only one conclusion to draw from the axe falling this Monday.

Losing The Fans

Scolari's substitutions became a weekly source of irritation to the Chelsea supporters, culminating in chants of 'You don't know what you're doing' on Saturday. That reaction may well have spooked the club's hierarchy into believing that wielding the axe would be both an appropriate and popular measure; don't forget that Jose Mourinho was ousted in the wake of less than 25,000 fans attending a Champions League qualifier 24 hours previously.

Failing To Adapt To Being A Club Manager Again

After so long as an international manager, did Scolari appreciate the different - and heightenend - demands that a return to club management would make? John Hollins, the former Chelsea boss, believes not. "Every day is very, very busy and I have to say I don't think there was enough in there from him to carry it through."

There's an interesting - if unverified - anecdote to endorse the suspicion. After the game with Middlesbrough, when it now appears that only a couple of late goals saved him from instant dismissal, Scolari failed to appear in front of the press. Why? According to reports, he had actually left the ground even before the final whistle to collect his son from St Pancras station.

Good parenting, to be sure, but hardly the sort of dedication to the job that Chelsea might have felt they were entitled to receive in return for his handsome remuneration.

The Absence Of Plan B

Scolari took the Chelsea job after almost ten years out of club management and it showed. Once the flaw of his favoured formation, which used both full-backs to provide all the width, was exposed, Scolari seemed to run out of ideas.

Perhaps he was right to believe that Nicolas Anelka and Didier Drogba were incompatible but Scolari's reluctance to try something different must have been a factor in the club believing he wasn't capable of arresting a 'deterioration in performances at a key time of the season'.

Failing To Speak The Lingo

Given the close relationship between communication and management, it was a puzzle from Scolari's first garbled press conference that Chelsea had appointed a man who could barely make himself understood in the Premier League's native tongue. If those press conferences were any guide, Chelsea's players must have been the most confused in the country. How could Scolari turn things around if his squad didn't understand him?

Failing To Entertain

There is no arguing with results and Scolari would still be Chelsea manager if they were top of the league but it is nonetheless telling that Chelsea cited both 'results and performances' in their explanation for his ousting. While it was never confirmed in public, the general impression last summer was that Avram Grant had been sacked because he failed to inspire an attacking brand of football. After a bright start, the entertainment provided by Scolari's Chelsea declined to the lowest level seen during the Abramovich era.

Losing Steve Clarke

Clarke's departure in September didn't seem a big deal at the time but it has become steadily clear ever since - both in terms of the defensive solidity he has organised at West Ham and the decline at Chelsea - that he was in fact an integral factor in the club's recent success.

Building Around The Wrong Players

One of Scolari's most prominent statements in the summer was that he would get the best out of Florent Malouda, making it sound like a simple procedure only requiring the Frenchman to be played in his best position. So much for that theory. If anything, Malouda's performances have declined from awful to the sort of thing you sometimes find at the bottom of your shoes. Worse, Scolari's article of faith meant that he refused to buy any alternatives in the summer. Was this a factor in the club eventually pulling out of the Robinho chase?

It wasn't until the final day of the January transfer window that width was acquired in the form of loan signing Ricardo Quaresma - by which time it was already too late.

While Deco was brilliant in his first few games this season, Barcelona's ready acquiescence in offloading the midfielder was a clue to the slump that followed shortly after. The 31-year-old simply does not possess the legs to star over a campaign and, having built the side around Deco and hired no alternative, his sharp decline spelled doom for Scolari's Chelsea.

source:http://msn.football365.com

[bjd]

There are many reasons but for me this is the key one.

The Absence Of Plan B

We'd been found out and there was no sign of anything changing.

I think the powers that be recognised this and smelled a UEFA Cup match away to Aalborg in September.

I think they have acted swiftly and acted correctly.

Edited February 9, 2009 by bjd

[TheWestwayWonder]

I dont honestly believe Scolari looked at the team and said he was fine with the players on the squad. All that sh*t about playing Malouda correctly, I dont believe it.

I think he was given the company line from the word go: no more superstars, we are going to tighten our belts and you will make do with what we have, bar getting Deco (disaster) and Robinho.

That, in my mind, is his excuse for failure. And its almost entirely on him, becasue he believed himself good enough to get the best out of these players, when most of them arent even that good to begin with. He accepted the chalice though he knew it was poisoned. And when he had a lack of a plan B, I think it was more out of fright for his job than plain stupidity. I think he needed to show faith in the guys at 90k a week over the kids just called up from the youth team.

No manager, football or otherwise, wouldve benched a young player Miroslav Stoch after he helped us get out of jail like that against Stoke. That player starts the next match if you want to send the right message. I have faith that LFS isnt actually a stupid human being, just a bad and gullible man, because nobody could make such awful decisions conciously

[Money]

So many key points there.

I think a big one as well is we didnt sign Robinho. Scolari was determined to get him and thought we had and then we didnt, he wasnt sure what other player he wanted and didnt know what to do!

Even in January, there was links of giving Drogba, Alex and £20m for Robinho?!

[charierre]

Eurosport - Tue, 10 Feb 22:39:00 2009

Chelsea captain John Terry has dropped a strong hint that a revolt by some of the club's players triggered the dismissal of Luiz Felipe Scolari.

Although he insisted that he personally had been shocked by Scolari's sacking and described the Brazilian as a "great man", Terry made it clear that not all of the Chelsea squad were of the same opinion.

Against a background of reports that Michael Ballack, Petr Cech and Didier Drogba had agitated for Scolari to be sacked, Terry pointedly stressed that he and a "few" other Chelsea stars had been behind the Brazilian.

"I got the call yesterday afternoon and I was very shocked at the time and disappointed because myself and a few of the players at the club were fully behind the manager," Terry said, later putting the number of Scolari loyalists at just "two or three players."

"So we're shocked to see him go but that is the people in charge at Chelsea who make them decisions."

Terry's comments will inevitably be interpreted as a sign of deep divisions within the Chelsea dressing room but the club captain said the entire squad had to accept that they had let down the man who guided Brazil to World Cup glory in 2002.

"I'm disappointed because we have not been performing as well as we can do and getting the results for the manager," Terry said. "It is a shame because it falls on his head when we should be looking at ourselves. We should have won a lot more games under the manager."

Scolari was sacked on Monday after Chelsea slipped to fourth place in the Premier League table, with no realistic chance of reclaiming the trophy.

The club are now attempting to bring in Russia manager Guus Hiddink on a temporary basis until the end of the season.

source

[abramovich]

There are many reasons but for me this is the key one.

We'd been found out and there was no sign of anything changing.

I think the powers that be recognised this and smelled a UEFA Cup match away to Aalborg in September.

I think they have acted swiftly and acted correctly.

To be honest, I have a feeling we may not have acted swiftly enough.

Hiddink will take over after Watford match at the earliest, so he'll have at best a week to prepare for a crucial match against Villa and four days later a home leg of the CL tie vs Juve.

Edited February 11, 2009 by abramovich

[evissy]

-When things were going wrong inside a game and/or in a short period of time no changes were made. To me it means he didn't recognize the problem(s).

-Trying to give free-roles to Deco, Lampard and Ballack a la Brazil. You all know what happens when a german gets too big area to work with (only joking, dont take it seriously). Seriously though the midfield has been our problem all the season. It is slow and chokes just outside the box. Lamps has done everything he can but that has not been enough. We used to turn the game from defending to attack faster than any team in the country, now we are probably one of the slowest.

-Defence has been shaky and that started right about the time Clarke left.

-Bringing in Wilkins to Clarkes place. I think Scolari gave all the power to Wilkins Clarke used to have and didn't even realize how big part Steve played.

-Language barrier is effecting inevetably in small things. He can't share all the nyances he want's. He should have had an interpreter instead of that quiet statue named Teixeira. I think the guy might actually be dumb.

-Scolari needed Robinho for a reason. Malouda isn't Robinho(this may come to as a surprise to many of you )