ROMAN ABRAMOVICH’S love affair with a big-name striker has cost yet another Chelsea manager his job.
By the time Roberto Di Matteo was sacked at 4am yesterday on his return from Chelsea’s 3-0 drubbing by Juventus, Fernando Torres had played a huge role in the demise of the last three managers — Di Matteo, Andre Villas-Boas and Carlo Ancelotti.
You would have thought Abramovich might have learned something from the Andriy Shevchenko fiasco.
Jose Mourinho, preparing for the 2006-2007 season after winning his second title, was landed with a player he never wanted.
But the Russian owner was adamant: He’s my man, he cost £30million and he’s in the team.
Mourinho’s nose was put out of joint and his relationship with Abramovich never recovered.
By the time Mourinho was sacked six games into the 2007-2008 campaign, Shevchenko had scored just four Premier League goals in 31 games — and would eventually leave Stamford Bridge, his tail between his legs, with a record of just nine in 48.
Abramovich, though, is never wrong.
And so history has repeated itself with Torres.
Blinded by the Spaniard’s scoring feats at Liverpool despite evidence in his final year that the striker was going off the boil, Abramovich stumped up £50million in January 2011 in the hope Torres would regalvanise Carlo Ancelotti’s stuttering Double winners.
It has been an unmitigated disaster.
Torres would manage just one goal in 14 league games and none in four Champions League appearances that would see Chelsea knocked out by Manchester United in the quarter-final. Exit Ancelotti.
Enter AVB to blow away the cobwebs and initiate a revolution, an experiment that lasted just 27 league games with Torres scoring once in 22 games. Exit AVB.
And now he’s seen off Di Matteo. When the chips were down in the last seven games, Torres did his customary disappearing act. No-one is surprised.
Despite the best efforts of a manager who stuck with him long after his own team-mates had given up the ghost, Torres is a busted flush.
To such an extent that Di Matteo dared not risk him in Turin on Tuesday night even though he was warned that to start without the Spaniard would cost him his job. Thank God someone at the club had principles.
But Di Matteo has always been a source of unease for Abramovich.
He never wanted to appoint him and when the Italian won the Champions League it reflected poorly on the billionaire’s persistence and infatuation with big-name managers.
Then he felt he HAD to reward Di Matteo with a two-year contract. But, all the while, he was awaiting the first opportunity to offload him.
Meanwhile, Torres ambled through games, off the pace and seemingly both uncommitted and unconcerned.
Increasingly, there has been no greater example of a player whose life revolves totally around himself.
Me, me and me.
You got a fair indication of his true character shortly after the Champions League final in Munich.
Instead of glorying in the greatest night in Chelsea’s history, Torres moaned about not being allowed to take a penalty and being left on the bench for all but six minutes of normal time.
He went on: “I’ve been through the worst moments of my career this season and I’m not willing to re-live them. Next season I want someone to tell me what’s going to happen, what role I’ll have in the team, what is expected of me and to evaluate whether it’s worth it.”
That was big of you, Nando.
He added: “But for the fans this season I’d have thrown in the towel.”
Instead, he waited until this season to do it.
Even though he was told precisely what was going to happen and what his role in the team would be.
To this end and to give him all the support necessary, Abramovich went out and added Eden Hazard and Oscar to a list of goalmakers that already included Juan Mata.
Their brief? To provide the chances that would finally pay dividends on the owner’s £50m investment and to make Torres look good.
If this didn’t make the poor boy feel loved, Chelsea also waved goodbye to Didier Drogba, a true, heroic figure alongside whom Torres paled into whingeing, whining insignificance.
Torres had won the battle despite doing nothing to earn it.
Now, though, he had the chance to show what he could do and repay the misplaced faith placed in him by an owner desperate to retrieve a situation that had “Sheva II” written all over it.
And so Abramovich instructed Di Matteo that Torres started even if he was only on one leg. His manager, against his best instincts, went along with the scheme.
The results speak for themselves.
No, it’s not all down to Torres. Without leaders like Drogba, the injured John Terry and Frank Lampard, the heart seems to have gone out of the side.
And, behind the scenes, there are too many employees happy enough just to pick up the money and tell the boss what he wants to hear.
Transfer policy? That appears to be down to which agent is whispering what names in Abramovich’s ear.
He wants, of course, to sign Radamel Falcao from Atletico Madrid for £42m in the January window.
But add that to the £57m on Oscar and Hazard that wasn’t included in Chelsea’s last accounts and you are staring at a Financial Fair Play Regulations’ nightmare.
It’s desperate stuff about to become even more desperate with the entry of Rafa Benitez, the man who signed enough dead wood at Anfield to fill a timber yard and then lasted just six months at Inter Milan.
Having got 65 goals out of Torres in 102 league appearances at Liverpool, the hope that his fellow Spaniard can revive the defunct striker is Abramovich’s last throw of the dice on this particular subject. But how do you breathe life into a corpse?
Meanwhile, Pep Guardiola continues his sabbatical in New York.
Having spent his entire senior managerial career at Barcelona — a club that does everything the right way — he must weigh up the pros and cons of joining another that is more often making news for all the wrong reasons.
Few would blame him if he regarded a move to the managerial graveyard of Chelsea, a place where the players are the last to be held to account, as one he could quite easily swerve.
