Meeting of Blues top brass at Bridge

[abramovich]

http://www.chelsea-mad.co.uk/news/loadn ... &id=392973

Grant's future in balance

Avram Grant's Chelsea future is being hammered out today.

Following on from last night's Champions League defeat, all of Chelsea top-brass including, it's believed Roman Abramovich, have decended on SW6 to pick over the bones of the crushing defeat.

What should have being Roman's crowning glory in his own back-yard, turned into a humbling experience and it's one that he will not want repeated next season.

Chelsea have signed just one player for next season and are struggling to come to terms with who to keep on.

New deals for Lampard and Drogba are being complicated by the uncertainty of Grant's future.

Once that is decided, players will know if they want to stay or go.

Other new players will know who the coach will be and if they want to play for him.

To that end, it's expected that today's summit meeting will have one thing on the agenda and that is to sack Grant or back him?

The word from inside the camp is that Roman is happy with Grant and will want to return him to his boardroom job of director of football.

But the Russian will also demand a new coach to take the club onto the next level.

More expected later today...

[youlots]

Irrespective of the result this was always going to happen and we've laboured back and forth on this site since September and, on occasion, with hostility and downright intransigence of position in equal measure as to his appointment, abilities and personal qualities as a manager. However, most of the threads on the issue and the contributions made by the respective camps and most posters have been noteworthy and in the main, erudite and passionate.

My position on the intertwined issues on the subject of Avram as, are most others, a matter of record and revisiting same would be boorish and passe.

If, as expected, Avram is booted upstairs now that the season is over, I just want to thank him for the commitment, grace and dignity that he has shown in the extremely demanding circumstances of following what can only be described as the Jose phenomena. I doubt any manager could have or could have been expected to and possibly never will be ever able to top what Jose achieved in those 3 years (ableit that I hope that I'm wrong!) Those qualities of Avram were all on show again last night and he and his managerial staff in my estimation put the right combination on the field and subbed appropriately.

And given Avram's qualities I think it is undoubted and must be acknowledged by even his most voracious critics that his commitment, grace and dignity have slowly but surely brushed off on the players and with good results and there was surely a latent respect developing between certain players and Avram in the last six weeks or so.

Of the countless images that we have of Avram since September (most being pretty uncomplimentary and pretty unfair) I think that 2 have preminence. The first when we sank to his knees on the turf at the end of the 2nd semi against the filth and the 2nd being his consolation of JT last night whilst soaked to the bone. Those 2 images for me sum up the man and his qualities best: He is a good man in a turbelent, unrelenting and difficult field.

So thanks Abramovich for choosing that image as your new avatar. Hope you keep it for awhile. And I hope that Avram is allowed to stay as our Director of Fottball for as long as he wants to because I think that he has shown that he has a lot to offer to the club behind the scenes and I salute him for what he's achieved this year.

Just wish we could get rid of that extraordinary cnut Kenyon...but hey we're surely all agreed on that issue!