Andre Villas-Boas: Sacked by Chelsea from Moment He Signed

Andre Villas-Boas, fired today as Chelsea manager, should never have become Blues boss—thanks to the influence of the players, he was a sacked man walking as soon as he signed from FC Porto.

The 1-0 defeat away to West Bromwich Albion was Villas-Boas' 10th in 40 games, with 11 draws and just 19 wins giving him a win rate of 47.5 percent.

Carlo Ancelotti in comparison had a win rate of 61.47 percent in his time in charge at Chelsea, before callous owner Roman Abramovich said "Carlo that's your lotti" to him in a Goodison Park corridor following a 1-0 away defeat to Everton.

While even Luiz Felipe Scolari, who didn't last as long as Villas-Boas in the Chelsea hot seat, managed a better win rate, winning 20 of his 36 games in charge for a 55.56 win percentage.

So the alarming rate at which AVB's side were under-performing always meant the managerial grim reaper—AKA Mr Abramovich—would soon wield his axe on the man said to be Jose Mourinho 2.0.

However, Chelsea's stunning lack of form was largely out of the manager's control it would seem.

When any new man takes charge as manager, it always takes time for the players to adapt to his new football methods.

But in the case of Villas-Boas, a lot of his players never adapted.

Players such as Didier Drogba, Frank Lampard, John Terry, Florent Malouda, Branislav Ivanovic, Petr Cech, Ashley Cole—they must all be delighted that AVB has been sacked.

After all, these were the "senior influences" in the Chelsea dressing room said to be at odds with the manager, and the players on the pitch who clearly weren't enforcing the ideas laid down by the young boss.

While Ancelotti would want the team following the same tactics, same timings for a pass, a tackle, a forward run, a shot, etc, Villas-Boas gave his team freedom, allowing his players the creativity to make their own decisions in a match.

It was an idea that served the 34-year-old tactician well at Porto, with the freedom, and thus unpredictability, of Porto's attack seeing them score a ton of goals—Radamel Falcao and Hulk scored 74 goals between them in that treble-winning 2010-11 campaign.

It's a revolutionary philosophy which works well, and made Villas-Boas the hottest managerial property in world football back in June 2011, as his Porto side, using those tactics, not only won virtually everything on offer to them—but did so in a historic, record-breaking and purely scintillating style.

However, when he came to Chelsea, such ideas were always going to be a lot harder to implement.

First of all, they were clearly the right ideas, especially if the Blues were finally going to win the UEFA Champions League. 

Plus, if anybody was most likely to implement them, why wouldn't it have been the man everyone in world football was talking about?

And, he's a man who actually knows the club inside out, having worked for three years as Mourinho's chief opposition scout, or as the elder Portuguese statesman said, his "eyes and ears."

But, it was never meant to be.

Villas-Boas came in on the back of Carlo Ancelotti, a hugely popular manager in the Chelsea dressing room, and one with completely different footballing ideals, being sacked.

So this is how it was to the senior Chelsea players.

A man just a year or two older than them, who has no playing experience whatsoever, becomes manager and tells them what to do.

He tells them to forget everything they learned under Ancelotti (a man with 16 years of managerial experience compared to the new manager's two years), and learn his methods instead, as they are the best methods to succeed.

These new methods make the players think for themselves, and take the accountability if it goes wrong.

Inevitably, such a scenario was always doomed for failure.

Despite his swashbuckling success at Porto, Villas-Boas was never going to succeed by coming in and telling the Chelsea players how they should really play the game.

His tactics do work, and it's clear the players who have listened to him—who incidentally are the new, younger players—have succeeded so far this season.

Juan Mata, Daniel Sturridge, Oriol Romeu, Ramires, all have undoubtedly done well this season, taking on board Villas-Boas' ideas.

This is what Ramires said about AVB:

"

Last year I did not have much under Ancelotti and this year I have more [freedom] with Villas-Boas. He already knew me from Portugal, he knew my style and what I could contribute to the team - speed and physicality. 

"

Villas-Boas' main problem was, however, that the key players clearly thought were too important to really listen to his tactics, and thus take the accountability when things go wrong.

In that defining match against West Brom, six players could be pointed out as under-performing, players who were making the same passes, movements and generally not putting in a lot of effort.

Those six players? Ashley Cole, Branislav Ivanovic, Michael Essien, Frank Lampard, Didier Drogba, Florent Malouda and even the goalkeeper, Petr Cech.

All senior Chelsea players, all big dressing room voices, all too big to leave out of the team.

And all, as the cynical would say, players who conspired to get the manager sacked.

Had Villas-Boas replaced those players with Ross Turnbull, Sam Hutchinson, Ryan Bertrand, Oriol Romeu, Lucas Piazon and Romelu Lukaku, they probably would have won the game.

So unfortunately, the former Porto boss didn't get to the end of the season to have the chance to rebuild his team, and get rid of players refusing to his listen to his proven methods, and replace them players who will listen.

If he did, he probably would have stayed in his role for many more years, given his tactics were already having a big impact on the games of Mata, Sturridge, Romeu, Ramires, etc.

But as it stands, he paid the ultimate managerial price for trying to break the mold and impart new ideas on the game—always a likely outcome when managing the currently antiquated Chelsea team.

As for Roman Abramovich, this might be his most embarrassing sacking yet, as he too paid the ultimate price.

£13.3 million to be exact, with no return on that investment barring a club destined for the Europa League, and a load of players now happy they wasted their owner's money.