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The pressure on Chelsea is growing, with manager Luiz Felipe Scolari admitting yesterday that he was making changes to his training methods and preparation to try and reverse an alarming run of form which threatens to derail the club's season.
Chelsea take on Manchester United tomorrow morning (NZT)
in a match Scolari admits that, if Chelsea lose, their season may be lost.
"I try to understand and I try to change some things for the future," the manager said ahead of the vital Premier League meeting with United.
"This week, I have some ideas and I change some things for this month, January. Some things change in our training, in our concentration. Maybe when we go to the hotel, something like that, because I need to change some things."
The admission follows discussions Scolari has had with senior players, such as John Terry and Frank Lampard, who have, for some time, been asking for more intensity and variety in the training sessions. Two team meetings, on the last two Tuesdays, have been held which have also been used to clear the air, although club sources deny they degenerated into arguments.
A run of just two victories in seven league matches and last week's embarrassing FA Cup draw at home to Southend United has added to the unease, while the sale of Wayne Bridge to Manchester City for more than 11 million ($28 million) has also caused disquiet. Bridge is a popular squad member and also one of the few naturally left-sided players at Chelsea.
Terry, in particular, has expressed his concern and also, not for the first time, used his captain's programme notes ahead of last week's cup tie to demand greater unity from the players. The commitment of some, such as Florent Malouda and Didier Drogba, has been questioned.
The rigidity of Scolari's tactics - he appears reluctant to play Drogba with Nicolas Anelka in a 4-4-2 variation, for example - and his training methods have been questioned internally. But there is no sense the club's hierarchy doubt his suitability for the job, especially as he has accepted he may not be allowed to buy the attacking player he craves in the transfer window.
"I've lost many games with Chelsea at Stamford Bridge," Scolari admitted. "Away, we win. Sometimes when you play at home, it's more difficult. Maybe, for me, it's more difficult at Stamford Bridge than away. I don't know why. If I knew, I'd change it."
It's perhaps fortunate then that Chelsea are at Old Trafford tomorrow, although Scolari added to the sense of pressure by admitting it was a contest his team could not afford to lose.
"This is a game where if you give your opponent the chance to advance by three points, it's difficult to recover after," he said. "When you draw, you lose points and the opponents lose points but when you lose, it's difficult. Now, in our position, it's impossible to think about a draw. We think about a win. We need [to win] because they are four points behind but they have two games [in hand] and these two games are not against us. If you lose three points against a direct opponent such as Manchester, you are in trouble."
Scolari confirmed that, Michael Essien and Malouda apart, he had a full squad to chose from, with Terry and Michael Ballack returning from suspension. Club owner Roman Abramovich is set to miss the match, which will only serve to heighten the debate that he is losing interest in football and may be considering how best, at some point, to divest himself of the club's ownership. This theory, however, is strenuously denied by Chelsea.
Meanwhile, Manchester United, like most of British football, are looking querulously in the direction of Liverpool after manager Rafael Benitez launched an extraordinary attack on Sir Alex Ferguson - accusing the United manager of getting away with disrespecting referees and whingeing about the fixture programme. But the attack may not be as cuckoo as some think. In April 1988, a 46-year-old Ferguson gave his take on how Liverpool benefited from refereeing decisions.
"I can understand why clubs come away from Anfield choking on their own vomit and biting their tongues knowing they have been done by the referee," he said. "It would be a miracle to win here. I am not getting at this referee. It is the whole intimidating atmosphere and the monopoly they [Liverpool] have enjoyed here for years that gets to the referees eventually."
More than 20 years on, despite all that Ferguson has said since, that quotation is one of his most memorable. In fact, you can still buy T-shirts in Manchester bearing those words.
Coming after a 3-3 draw, it became the defining take on the perceived bias of referees towards Liverpool at Anfield. It was argued over for months. The point is not whether Ferguson was right or wrong. The point is that people remembered. The point is that referees remembered.
If Rafael Benitez's invective against United was designed to do anything, it was designed to stick in people's minds, especially the part about United players haranguing referees and getting decisions at Old Trafford. It is about having a calculated effect on referees in a title run-in that is heating up nicely.
Ferguson is a bully. In fact, he's brilliant at it. After the FA Cup third round tie against Southampton, the manager Jan Poortvliet said, as respectfully as possible, that Ferguson stood up once in the whole game and after that, every decision went for him.
He may well be right but does anyone seriously expect Ferguson not to use his 23 years of unprecedented success, his fame, his forceful personality to gain an advantage? There is no manager who would not do the same.
Benitez has taken Ferguson on at his own game and for that, he deserves admiration. It is testament to his own understated way of going about things that he had every argument typed out in bullet points on a sheet of paper.
Ferguson prefers the molten-eruption, phlegm-flecked, finger-jabbing approach. Benitez delivered in the manner of a geologist giving a lecture on soil erosion.
The desired effect for the Liverpool manager is that every referee in charge of a United game to the end of the season is eager not to be the man fingered for caving in to Ferguson. It will be the issue that grips us from now on: is Benitez right?
That is just the way the Liverpool manager wants it. If one referee has a moment of doubt because of what Benitez has said and denies United accordingly then, for Liverpool, it will have been worth it.
- INDEPENDENT
