Is The Chelsea Job Toxic?

I have just started a new job. I'm enjoying myself and I really like the people who I'm working alongside. Excuse me while I am a bit self-indulgent, but I do have a point. I wasn't actively looking for a job when I got offered it. I was offered 2 jobs in the same day. I was also offered quite a few more interviews on top of that. I turned a few interviews down. Why? Simply put, because I thought that if I had some of those companies on my CV, it would make it toxic.

They're bad companies to work for. I could have done well there and probably made more money than I am at the moment, but that's not the point. What if I get made redundant? With that company on my CV, no one will look twice at it.

That's the problem with the Chelsea manager's position. I would be surprised if Rafa Benitez got another job after this. I'm surprised that AVB got another job after Chelsea got rid of him (albeit, he has done well at Tottenham). Roberto di Matteo and Avram Grant are two names that spring to the top of the pile when you talk of Chelsea managers that have gone on to do next to nothing after they've left. Di Matteo is a Champion's League winning manager. There shouldn't be a team in Europe that doesn't want him to sign for them, but he's from Chelsea. He has been tarred with the same brush.

I think that's a shame, it really is. Outside of Spain, I've never really thought Benitez was a good manager. He did well at Valencia with a very young team, breaking the stranglehold Real and Barcelona had on La Liga. Then he moved to Liverpool and won the Champion's League in his first season. Yet you look at the squad he had back then and you think that there was no way he could fail to win it. It was a very talented group of individuals who played together as a team. Not to mention a younger Steven Gerrard and a vibrant Xabi Alonso. Then he floundered at Inter Milan and eventually got given the Chelsea job. He needs to go back to Spain. He ought to go back to Valencia and produce the next generation of David Silva's to challenge the top two over there again.

I think Di Matteo was lucky. The squad were in 'that season' where everything just comes together. Except in the league, where they came 6th. That's not the point though. When Arsenal reached the final of the Champion's League, they only just managed to scrape 4th place away from Tottenham. Even so, he should be employed elsewhere by now.

But he isn't. That's because he has Chelsea on his CV. No one wants him because he has, at some point in his career, taken up a position which he knows can only ever be a temporary assignment. Which makes him a temporary manager at best now. Even with the Champion's League behind him, he can't get away from that fact.

Don't get me wrong, if I were offered that role at Chelsea, I would grab it with both hands. Anyone in my position would. Then I have no long-term future to worry about. I would be happy to bank the wages, get a huge payoff at the end and know that I have left a club in no worse state than when I found it. Which Premiership manager now would take that job? None. They all know what it entails. Abramovich only wants one person to look after the players at Stamford Bridge, and that man's got his heart set on the Manchester United job.

On a completely unrelated note, I was at a charity dinner with Gianfranco Zola and Gus Poyet last night.

Until next time!