Date: 20th May 2013 at 3:00pm
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PetrCechPortraitChelsea goalkeeper Petr Cech has urged the club to appoint Rafael Benitez’s successor as quickly as possible to give them the best chance of winning the title next season.

Cech, who turned 31 today (Happy Birthday!), was asked about the managerial situation at Stamford Bridge and stressed how important it is to have a good summer as your preparations can have a knock-on effect for the rest of the season.

He was quoted in the Evening Standard:

“The earlier he can be here, he can start work on things and not leave it for the last moment. You give the new boss the time to prepare things.

“Every summer is important. If you have a bad summer it can have consequences for the whole season. If you don’t get people to rest and to have a very good pre-season, you can start the season chasing. This is not an ideal situation. Every summer at a club is important because you have some changes in the squad. We will have a new manager and have to prepare for the oncoming season.”

Benitez recently revealed that the club will likely invest around £100 million during the transfer window and will sign ‘three or four’ players. It’s likely that Chelsea will continue its long-term transfer policy and will continue to chase targets such as Luke Shaw, Andre Schurrle and a star forward, like Edinson Cavani, Robert Lewandowski, Wayne Rooney or Radamel Falcao.

Cech believes that the club are in a great position to attract players to West London because of they have maintained their tradition of winning silverware, despite a turbulent couple of campaigns.

“Last season everybody wanted Eden Hazard and because we won the Champions League he chose our club ahead of everybody else.

“This year we won back-to-back European cups and we did well in all sorts of competitions. We will play the Super Cup, which is guaranteed, and we have all the possibilities to win the Premier League next season or other cups.

“The Europa League win was very important because a lot of players would say: ‘If I can choose between teams I will go to Chelsea because they always win something’. I think this was a massive win in terms of that.

“Let’s see how fast we get the manager officially and who it will be and then you can obviously start working on [signings].

“The managers know what they want for the season and will work on that. As soon as you can do transfers, the market will move all over the place and everybody will try to get ready for the new season.”

I completely agree with Cech as it’s important to get someone to work and organise as soon as possible, and it’s particularly prevalent this summer as both Manchester clubs will be going through a host of changes themselves and we need to take any advantage we can.

We have a group of players that adjust fairly quickly to changes in the dugout which holds us in good stead, just don’t want any more talk of player power or mutiny, and by winning things we remain an attractive outfit for any player. I think the next manager has a good environment to come into and am optimistic about our chances next season, it’s the perfect opportunity to put our name on the Premier League trophy once again.

There has been rumours that Jose Mourinho, who is likely the next manager, has already pulled a few power moves by requesting that Frank Lampard’s contract is extended and may have outlined his own targets if he’s spoken to Chelsea already but we can only speculate. Everyone has been quite candid when it comes to talking about Mourinho and Benitez has hinted that he will be his successor on numerous occasions.

Source: Evening Standard

 

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