Posted July 12, 200915 yr Claudio Ranieri (2000-2004) Written by Loz in July 2008 Tinker (noun) – the act of fiddling with something in an attempt to repair it. At least that is what dictionaries said prior to April 20th 2004. From that day forth all dictionaries were withdrawn from circulation and new versions reissued stating: Tinker (slang) – the act of removing the last shred of hope of retaining your job. For Chelsea fans the word ‘tinker’ will never again be associated with lonely men in garages trying to re-enact the A-Team by making war artillery out of a few tin cans and a collection of over ripe vegetables. It will, forevermore, be associated with Claudio Ranieri/ Don Claudio – the Tinkerman, but above everything else a damn lovely fella! In the middle of September 2000 Chelsea fans were still reeling at the sacking of crowd favourite Gianluca Vialli, a man who had given up smoking for the good of our club! We loved him for his sacrifice, I worshipped him for his baldy napper and Mike O’s eyes filled with bitter tears when the axe dropped. The sports writers were having a free lunch on us – they didn’t even need to get out of bed to write the back pages, they just had to pick a high profile name and link it to Chelsea and all the noises coming out of the club were that we were looking for a replacement who had those high profile credentials. However days after Vialli was sacked a man was spotted in the crowd taking notes as Chelsea played out a somewhat forgettable UEFA Cup tie against European heavyweights St Gallen. That man was Claudio Ranieri. Although he had had spells as manager of Napoli. Fiorentina Valencia and Atletico Madrid (and was the man who gave Gianfranco Zola his big break in football when he trusted the youngster to fill Diego Maradona’s departed boots - so many class narcotics in his body even his boots could fly) his profile was still, relatively speaking, higher than John Spencer but a tad shorter than a house plant. Colin Hutchinson explained the appointment by saying "I felt that to take us to another level, that - and this is no disrespect to Luca - we had to go to a coach with vast experience and Claudio Ranieri gives us that. It has happened very quickly but it was important to end the speculation." So on September 18th 2000 Claudio took over and we watched and listened, though what we were listening to at first was entirely beyond us as his grasp of the English language was pretty much on a par with Ian Wright’s. Early training sessions were conducted in a combination of English, Italian and Spanish with the players helping out with translation. He wasn’t exactly welcomed with open arms by the Chelsea fans many of whom carried on singing Vialli’s name for months after Claudio’s appointment. His Chelsea career kicked off with a credible 3-3 draw away at Old Trafford however over the season it was no great surprise that our results fluctuated as we jolted to a sixth place finish. The media didn’t take to him as they resented his inability to give post match interviews and there was a feeling that he always looked grumpy! The summer of 2001 gave Claudio his first real chance to build a squad of his choosing and he deemed the highest priority to be the midfield which he provided with a face lift so dramatic Liz Taylor would have blushed. In came ‘Fat Frank’ from West Ham, ex gooner Emmanuel Petit, Dutch winger Boudewijn Zenden and a winger who could run but never cross in Jesper Gronkjaer. In addition he brought in a stroppy centre half from Marseille who had gone on strike and who was not particularly a household name in England. He would turn out to be one of the finest centre halves we have ever had and also continue to be a stroppy git as and when he woke up feeling itchy. William Gallas was truly a star buy from a football perspective but undeniably a knob! However in amongst all this incoming was a very significant outgoing. Dennis Wise, club captain and the heartbeat of the team for ten seasons was deemed surplus to requirements after spending Ranieri’s first season often played out of position, and occasionally as excessively as being played at left back, not an easy job even for an orthodox left back, just ask Ashley Cole! Another development over the summer was his media approach. With his confidence in English growing, albeit still littered with peculiarities, he was becoming good for a bizarre quote including ‘If it is the case that you need just a first 11 and three or four more players, then why did Christopher Columbus sail to India to discover America?’ Another classic was ‘Damien (Duff) is Damien. When I don't put him in the squad my mother, who's 84, asks 'why isn't Damien playing?' She kills me about it and that's true.’ All of a sudden he became something of a lovable fool in the eyes of the nation and the same media who had shunned him the previous season now criticised the Chelsea fans who didn’t back their manager and by his final season they took great joy in attacking the Chelsea board for their undeniably shabby treatment of the man they had grown to love. The changes in personnel did little to improve our league performance, nae, did nothing to improve our league performance, as we finished that next season once again in sixth place. We did get to the FA Cup final but… is that the kettle boiling… Now where was I? Oh yes the 2002/03 season. This was the season when Claudio acquired the nickname ‘Tinkerman’ as he adopted a full blooded rotation policy drawing much criticism. In retrospect it was harsh criticism as he entered that season with pretty much the same squad as the one before (sorry how could I be so dismissive of our one star signing – De Lucas joined the squad and brought with him …err… luggage). Not only did we finish the season in fourth spot (achieved on the last day of the season with a 2-1 win over the dippers) thus qualifying for the Champions League but Claudio also brought through players from the youth team with the most notable being John Terry (he was also instrumental in the early careers of Carlton Cole – Claudio’s ‘young lion’ and Robert Huth who was built out of houses and pissed Irn Bru). The true impact of that result against Liverpool transpired not to be the sought after Champions League qualification but the fact that it led to the club being taken over by badly shaved boy Roman Abramovich. It has been widely reported that Roman was considering a number of clubs and that his criteria was mainly that it be a big club with some progress still to be made rather than a club already at the top of the table. We fitted the bill perfectly however without the Champions League berth it has been subsequently reported that Roman would have taken his hard and entirely honestly earned cash elsewhere. Now Claudio was like a little boy in a 38 storey sweetie shop. The transfer market exploded to the sound of his hands rubbing together with glee as we spent the kind of cash that would have kept Paul Merson in rehab for a century. In came Damien Duff, Joe Cole, Scott Parker, Juan Sebastian Veron, Wayne Bridge, Glen Johnson, Hernan Crespo, Claude Makelele and Adrian Mutu and out went somewhere in the region of £125m! The influx of so many players in such a short space of time would prove a challenge in terms of blending them into a team and it also brought back the old language barrier problem. Three of the new arrivals at - Makelele, Crespo and Mutu spoke no English and Claudio was once again giving team talks in a combination of Italian and Spanish, as well as broken English. Ranieri said at the time ‘I’d speak with Marcel Desailly in Italian or Gus Poyet in Spanish and they would pass it on to other players. Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink is Dutch but he can speak Spanish and can talk to Crespo. I speak to Crespo in Spanish or Italian. "Mutu is Romanian and Crespo is Argentine but they can communicate with each other because they both speak Italian.’ "When I talk to the players I speak first of all in English, then I say 'sorry, now I will speak in Spanish, or Italian'. Then on the touchline I speak another language so the other manager doesn't understand what I am saying!†‘With great wedge comes great expectations’ was a line Dickens never wrote but if he had he would have scribbled it on a packet of Lambert & Butler during the half time interval at the Bridge whilst cursing the pain in the back of his legs from having to stand up then sit down every 3 minutes of the match. And in fairness to Claudio the record books will show he delivered. We finished second in the league (our highest league place since 1955) and we were only beaten to the title by an Arsenal side which were the first side for over 100 years to go an entire domestic season unbeaten. We also reached the semi final of the Champions League however if there were doubts about Claudio’s future prior to this game (and there were bucket loads of them) there was to be a building sites worth by the time the 90 minutes in Monaco was over. To set the scene for the tie in France you have to appreciate the phenomenal pressure Claudio had been under in the weeks and even months building up to the game. There was constant speculation in the press about his future, speculation which was never going to be abated by the somewhat timid votes of confidence being expressed by Peter Kenyon. Claudio, with pretty fair justification, thought he had done pretty well over the season. It couldn’t have been easy to introduce so many new players into a team all at one time and he appeared to have managed it and taken Chelsea to a domestic level they had never previously achieved. Even the forums lovable Dr Grump Mike O stated that if Claudio got us to second place then he would have earned the right to another season. However rightly or wrongly the British media don’t listen to Mike and they proceeded to build up the Champions League as Claudio’s only chance of hanging into his job. This pressure was further exacerbated by the fact that Roman Abramovich and Peter Kenyon were rumoured to have met Jose Mourinho on the eve of the semi final. So what did happen in Monaco? Well for a start we were treated to another of his famous pre match interviews when he greeted the gathering press by saying "Hello my sharks, welcome to the funeral†A champions league semi final against a decent but far from great Monaco side was surely a stunning opportunity to reach our first ever final. Even more in our favour was the fact we had the away leg first. Monaco took a lead through Dado Prso but then Crespo got a priceless away goal and things were going to plan. The first of Claudio’s cock ups occurred at half time when he replaced the admittedly crap Gronkjaer with Veron whose level of fitness prevented him breaking into a gentle jog let alone a run. What he was even doing on the bench is a mystery. So we were in effect playing with 10 men and it was all our own doing. However Monaco were soon also playing with 10 men and again it was all our doing! Andreas Zikos was shockingly sent off thanks to an appalling piece of play acting by Claude Makelele. At the most Zikos brushed the back of Makalele’s head but after giving it some thought and taking a few steps Makelele hit the ground as if he had been harpooned! So there we were holding a comfortable 1-1 draw with Lampard imperious in the centre. Then Claudio’s brain melted. I can only imagine he saw his chance to kill the tie there and then and prove to the watching football world that he was the man to take Chelsea forward to glory. He made substitutions and restructured the team into something that bore no resemblance to any kind of football logic including the sight of Hernan Crespo playing on the right side of midfield! Mario Melchiot was replaced by Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink and Robert Huth came on for Scott Parker. As a side we collapsed and 10 man Monaco dominated the rest of the match going on to win 3-1 courtesy of goals from Giuly and Nonda. We went on to draw the second leg 2-2 at the Bridge despite going into a 2-0 lead and Claudio’s days as a Chelsea manager were very much numbered. Even the most ruthless Chelsea fans must remember Claudio and afford themselves a smile. He was undeniably fun, his interviews often comical without ever deteriorating into abject absurdity and if there is one memory of Claudio that will surely live with all of us it will be the him celebrating Bridge’s goal which knocked Arsenal out of the Champions League. In that moment we saw a man who had fallen head over heels in love with the club and, most importantly, us fans. It also highlighted why some believe Claudio will never win the big trophies – as we knocked Arsenal out of the Champions League there was the bizarre sight of some Arsenal fans on the North Bank actually applauding our manager – some will say Claudio was just a little too nice Throughout all the pressure and the appalling way he was treated by Kenyon and Abramovich Claudio maintained his sense of humour. When Charlton fans taunted him with "You're being sacked in the summer ", he answered: “No, I will be sacked in May!"' With the benefit of hindsight it is clear that the sacking of Claudio and appointment of Jose Mourinho was the right decision to make from the perspective of bringing success to the club however without that hindsight I truly believe he was harshly treated. I think we showed enough in his final season for him to be given at least one more crack at winning the Premiership. Maybe his biggest flaw was that he never made all the right noises about being a winner, he would often play down the team’s ability and always referred to the fact we were still building a team, and portraying the message that we still had a lot of work to do to catch up with the Arsenal’s and Manchester United’s of the world. So I raise a glass to Don Claudio, of all the people who have managed Chelsea in my lifetime he is undoubtedly the one I would go out on the piss with!
