Chelsea After the Carling Cup: Mismanagement and Bruised Egos

By: Laurie | February 27th, 2008

When your entire team is made up of highly paid superstars, the worst part of a loss is that every player who wasn’t on the pitch is absolutely certain that he was the one who would have made the difference.

That’s what Chelsea manager Avram Grant is dealing with in the wake of his team’s 2-1 Carling Cup loss against Tottenham, a competition they won in 2007. The loss ended Chelsea’s already slim hopes for winning the quadruple this year. (League Championship, FA Cup, Carling Cup and Champions League.)

He didn’t help his case with the way he picked his team, or with the way he let his players know who was playing in the Carling Cup game.

Every other Chelsea player [except Lampard and Terry] had to wait until the day of the game, when the teamsheet was put up just before kick-off, to learn their fate.

Ballack, like the in-form Joe Cole, was one of those excluded, and he said: “I am not happy that I did not play but I have to accept it like everybody else who did not start. It was not explained, it was on the teamsheet shortly before the game and that was it.

Not only that, the players who weren’t playing in the final weren’t even invited to stay at the team hotel before the match.

…the players who were not involved in the match were not invited to stay at the team’s pre-match hotel. Ashley Cole, Andrei Shevchenko and Florent Malouda were among those who were told on Friday that they could go to the game independently.

Cup final tradition dictates that the squad would usually stay together the night before the match and Chelsea were based at the Landmark hotel in Marylebone, central London. However, those who were not named by the manager Avram Grant in the preliminary squad on Friday, who trained again on Saturday, were told by the club that they could simply report to Wembley to watch the game on Sunday.

Great way to save a buck or two, huh? Fantastic for team unity in a squad that’s struggling more than it should in Champions League, and which will need all the teamwork it can muster if it wants to have a shot at the FA Cup and/or Premier League title.

And now newspapers are using words like “revolt” to describe the mood of the players, and the Daily Star is reporting that some are even talking about trying to find a way to bring back Jose Mourinho.

Good luck with that one, boys. I think you’re just going to have to work out your manager-player spats like all the poorer teams.

For me, though? I’m hoping somebody will bring me a copy of the UK criminal code. Because I’m thinking there has to be a way to charge Grant with the brutal crime of playing a pure striker like Nicolas Anelka on the left wing.

(For more in-depth analysis of the Carling Cup game from the Chelsea perspective, check out Chelsea Offside. Or if you’re looking for a cheerier perspective, check out Tottenham Offside.)