Jose Mourinho was reportedly looking for a house in London last week.
There may well be a new place on the market this morning, with the owner eager to sell quickly.
Andre Villas-Boas arrived at Chelsea as the "new Mourinho", a Portuguese manager with a formidable record of success with Porto and a hunger to test himself on a bigger stage. He was sacked from Stamford Bridge yesterday; leaving the club as damaged goods, having failed to bend Chelsea to his will in the way his predecessor did so spectacularly.
Villas-Boas was reportedly hand-picked by Roman Abramovich, the club's owner, who paid £13.3m for the man he believed was perfect for revolutionising both the squad and the playing style at Stamford Bridge. The 34-year-old failed on both counts; alienating senior players with both his selection and tactics, while showing little sign of delivering the stylish football he is so famously a disciple of.
Yet, Abramovich continued to give him more leeway than any previous coach, seemingly determined not to bow to the kind of player power previous Chelsea managers claim contributed to their own downfall. The Russian finally lost patience, though, fear of failing to qualify for the Champions League once again trumping any other concern.
The signs this would prove a turbulent transition were there from the start, a series of unconvincing performances exposing the kind of defensive frailty which would continue to haunt Villas-Boas' tenure.
Defeat by Manchester United in September – Villas-Boas' first in a league game for 17 months – summed up everything that was wrong with his football philosophy. The Portuguese immediately showed the first signs of pressure, lashing out at television pundits for criticising his side.
Then began the Frank Lampard saga that ultimately spiralled into a breakdown in the relationship between player and manager and led to reports of a divided dressing room. By November, speculation was already rife about Villas-Boas' position, with failure to qualify for the Champions League knockout stage a very real prospect.
The Portuguese insisted he had the full backing of Abramovich and, despite defeat in the Carling Cup, he masterminded Chelsea's best performances of the season in early December.
However, the victories over Valencia and Manchester City were achieved by the club going back to basics, abandoning the high defensive line that had cost them, while focussing on counter-attack football. The win over City was as good as it got, with the run of just five wins in the following 16 games ultimately costing Villas-Boas his job.
He failed to reinvigorate his squad, his relationship with more seasoned players coming under real scrutiny – not least from Abramovich, who spent nearly an entire week at the club's training ground last month in an attempt to get to the bottom of what was going wrong. If the players felt that as a death knell for the manager's reign, they certainly began to perform as such, the 2-0 defeat by Everton at Goodison Park the low point of the season.
Villas-Boas was reportedly openly challenged by some of his squad soon afterwards, the Portuguese responding by claiming he did not need their backing because of Abramovich's unstinting support.
That came to an end yesterday, with the manager becoming the latest in a string of coaches to bow out acrimoniously. It is another house on the market; didn't Mourinho want one of those?
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