What can Chelsea fans expect from Villas-Boas? [Part 1]

Seven years ago Chelsea finished second, sacked their Italian manager and hired a young Porto manager who had just won a European trophy. Now, we all know what followed that appointment, would we be wrong to expect a repeat performance? Worse? Better? What do we expect from André Villas Boas.

I personally was not a fan of Chelsea’s appointment of Carlo Ancelotti, having followed an Ancelotti team for a number of years, (even before his managerial time at Milan) I believed that there were too many negatives associated with his teams, that he could transfer with him to Chelsea.

Unfortunately most of the problems that I had anticipated came to fruition, but, seeing as I did a fairly good job last time, I wanted to repeat the exercise and hopefully provide a peek into the future of what we can expect from Andre Villas Boas, warts & all.

This first part will focus on what we might expect initially.

Understanding Mourinho is important to understanding Boas, I know so many people want to get away from the comparison, including Boas, but, listening to one of his press conferences, Andre himself talks about experiences under Mourinho he’s learned from, it’s not just that particular press conference either, more than once he has talked about a previous situation that a Mourinho team had faced and what he has learned from it, so throughout this article, I may refer to Mourinho, after all it’s clear to see that a lot of his methods have rubbed off on him..

I know one of the first questions asked is how Boas plans to deal with the “ego’s” in the dressing room, it’s argued that Villas Boas hasn’t encountered these ego’s whilst being a manager yet, which is true, however, we know that he was around when Mourinho had the same question labelled at him on becoming Chelsea manager in 2005. The “what will Boas do about Drogba & Terry” question is very similar to people wondering what Mourinho will do about Crespo & Veron, insight on the details of how Mourinho had dealt with particularly Crespo was explained thanks to Daniel King.

Crespo’s proved a difficult character in the dressing room under Ranieri, in fact, tales of Crespo’s strange behaviour were already legion. Amusingly, he used to defy a rule banning pets from the training ground – imposed after goalkeeper Carlo Cudicini’s rottweiler bit the groundsman – by bringing his wife’s poodle to work. Crespo was held in such low esteem that when he mislaid his payslip in the dressing room it soon found its way into a national newspaper, revealing Crespo to be the club’s highest earner on £94k a week.

So when Mourinho became manager and his team-mates returned from their summer break to start pre-season training to find that Crespo had failed to turn up, without apology or explanation, everyone was wondering how the new manager would deal with this “Ego” and he did not disappoint them. All the players were handed personal copies of Mourinho’s guide on how he expected his highly-paid professionals to behave on Monday, Unlike Crespo turning up two-and-a-half days late for training on a Wednesday.

Mourinho ordered Crespo to his office, there the fireworks began, Crespo hardly had time to begin making his excuses – family issues, problems with flights from Argentina – before Mourinho launched a blistering attack. When Crespo pretended not to understand, the man who had worked as Sir Bobby Robson’s translator in Lisbon and Barcelona switched to the Argentine’s native Spanish and demanded to be told in which language Crespo would like to receive the dressing down of his life. At a volume which made him audible to anyone in the adjacent gym or corridor, Mourinho expressed his disbelief that a senior professional should fail to appear for the first two-and-a-half days of pre-season training without so much as a phone call of explanation. Who did he think he was? Mourinho, was in charge now and this sort of disrespect and indiscipline would not be tolerated.

It did not take long for news of the carpeting to reach the ears of the other players. The reaction of one, his eyes bulging in delight, said it all: ****ing brilliant – he’s been taking the piss for a year.’ More seriously, Crespo and fellow Argentine Juan Sebastian Veron were all too often out of contact and once, when faced with a less than appetising FA Cup tie in Scarborough, the pair decided they would not travel to Yorkshire, leaving manager Ranieri and his staff to round up reserve team players to make up the numbers.

Sorting out Crespo & Veron was a vital first step in Mourinho’s creation of the team spirit that every Chelsea player mentions when asked what had changed since the Ranieri era, they were both farmed out on loan to Milan and Inter respectively. Two of the more prestigious players in the dressing room were shipped out, not dissimilar to Andre Villas Boas after his arrival at Porto, Bruno Alves & Raul Meireles were sold, it’d be presumptuous to automatically presume that this was down to the same reasoning, but Meireles as an example who was sold near to the close of the transfer window, whilst the season had already begun, was hardly used by Villas Boas, it was understood that though Meireles had been a big player for Porto before, not under Boas.

The Chelsea hierarchy have been adamant they want Didier Drogba to stay, although he’s ageing and reported to being difficult behind the scenes, they understand the success that Didier Drogba has continued to bring to the team, the psychology of Boas is likely to mean that he’d want to have the authority to ship Drogba out if he proves a problem. Boas has come to Chelsea with a record of guiding winning teams and he hasn’t needed Drogba to do it thus far, if Drogba does not show respect he could very well be a similar casualty to Bruno Alves, Meireles, Veron & Crespo, even if it’s the strong willed intention of the board to keep him around.