Football’s Fickle Fans

Posted by Rob Shepherd on Thursday, March 16, 2017

In 1970, Chelsea beat Leeds United in a replay to lift the FA cup. 28 million people watched the match on TV and many still feel that this was one of the greatest ever FA Cup finals.

Not many Chelsea fans would have believed it at the time but this was to be the start of a barren spell for the London team from Stamford Bridge.

The club would be relegated to Division Two and an over ambitious plan to redevelop Stamford Bridge had left the club burdened with debt to the tune of about £80 million and there was a real possibility that the club was facing extinction.

In 1982 Ken Bates bought the club for £1 and things started improving slowly. Ruud Gullit and later Gianluca Vialli were managers who brought a sexy brand of football, this led to FA Cup success in 1997 and 2000.

Chelsea had some amazing players back then, Gianfranco Zola, Roberto Di Matteo, Gus Poyet and of course “super sub” Tore André Flo. Despite these two cup wins, Chelsea never really had a seat at the top table with the “big boys”.

In 2003, Bates sold Chelsea to Roman Abramovich for £60 million, Abramovich wiped out £80 of debt and engaged on a player shopping spree of around £100 million and the Russian revolution began.

Claudio Ranieri was Chelsea manager and became a firm fan favourite but he was dismissed by Roman in 2004. This was mainly due to some bizarre tactical decisions in the semi-final loss against Monaco in the Champions League.

Jose Mourinho was his replacement. What would follow would be the clubs most successful period.

With Jose at the helm, Chelsea were double league champions and they seemed to be winning trophies for fun, it looked like a very long and fruitful relationship was forming. However, Roman is not the most tolerant of people and deep cracks were soon evident in his relationship with Mourinho.

The fans adored Mourinho, in fact they idolised him and the devastation they felt was obvious when he left the club in 2007. On his return to the club in 2013, fans heralded the return of the “special one”. In their eyes, he was Chelsea through and through and in 2014, he repaid that faith with another Premier League title.

The next year he would once again leave the club after a disastrous start to the season that saw Chelsea flirt dangerously with the relegation zone. In August to December, Chelsea had won just 5 out of 19 games and by December Roman had had enough.

Once again fans of the club were outraged. A poll of 100,000 readers by Daily Mail showed that nearly 70,000 people thought it was the wrong decision to sack Mourinho. Some Chelsea fans even called on Roman to resign, despite the hundreds of millions that Abramovich had spent to make Chelsea a force to be reckoned with both domestically and in Europe.

It would seem bromance with Mourinho and Chelsea fans was unshakable, grown men openly cried about his departure and declared their unwavering love for him. It was a love that would be thoroughly tested though when Mourinho became manager of one of Chelsea’s main domestic rivals, Manchester United.

With this background in mind, I was intrigued to see what sort of welcome Mourinho would receive in the FA cup game against Manchester United at Stamford Bridge. This wasn’t the first time Mourinho had gone back to Stamford Bridge with Manchester United, earlier in the season Chelsea easily beat Mourinho’s United 4-0. However, this game was likely to be less one sided and was indeed a bad-tempered affair.

After Ander Herrera was sent off for two bookable offences and United players surrounded referee Michael Oliver, sections of the crowd turned on Mourinho.

“F*** off Mourinho”, “It’s all your fault”, “You’re not special any more” and “Judas” could be heard from admittedly a small section of the crowd.

Mourinho turned to the crowd, pointed to himself and then held up three fingers to signify the amount of titles he had won. Some of the crowd responded by sticking two fingers up, I somehow doubt that this was to indicate he had been dismissed twice by the club.

In his post-match interview following a 1-0 win to Chelsea, Mourinho was defiant. “Until the moment they have a manager that wins four Premier Leagues for them, I’m the number one. Judas is number one.”

It looks from this posturing that this love affair is over, he may have been their most successful manager but that love turned to hate when he went to a rival.

It does seem a bit harsh on Mourinho, remember he didn’t leave, he was sacked! What was he supposed to do, wait and hope for yet another U-turn from Roman to manage them for a third time and stay in Chelsea’s hearts?

Another example of fickle fans was the situation at Leicester City. You know the story as well as I do! A real life fairy-tale in which a team that were one of the favourites for relegation, defied all the odds and won the top prize in English football.

Fast forward a year and a very bad start to the next season saw some fans calling for the Leicester City manager Claudio Ranieri to be sacked. For the clear majority of Leicester City fans this was unthinkable, to dismiss the man who had brought more joy to them than even the most optimistic fan could have ever dreamed of was absurd.

However, the Leicester City board seemed to be listening to the vocal minority and on 23rd February, just nine months after winning the title, Claudio Ranieri was dismissed as Leicester City manager.

A similar situation is occurring at Arsenal now. Arsène Wenger revolutionised Arsenal. His modern take on player’s diets and fitness regime was new to English football but is now consider the norm.

At Arsenal, he has won the Premier League on three occasions as well as the FA Cup on six occasions.

You would think qualifying for the Champions League every year would be enough to keep faith in their long serving manager but many Arsenal fans are calling on Arsène to quit, stating that it is time for a change.

Fans can be fickle, very fickle indeed!