Roman Abramovich's 12-year ownership of Chelsea FC has seen fully 10 managers come and go through Stamford Bridge's revolving door. He's hired World Cup winners, Champions League winners, Special Ones and former club heroes, and all have been dispatched with the misplaced ruthlessness of a Donald Trump put-down at the first sign of mediocrity.
Following their Saturday lunchtime shellacking at the hands of the hipster's wet dream, Chelsea and Jose Mourinho now sit 15th, 14 points from the top of the table and only four points above the relegation zone. Predictably, Sunday's papers were awash with stories that Jose has just two more games to save his second coming at Chelsea.
Given Abramovich's prediliction for an impulse sacking, however, we're surprised Jose has hung on this long. As you can see from the table below, his predecessors would have been long-gone given similar circumstances (NB: we’ve excluded both Rafa Benitez and Guus Hiddink since bother were only interim managers on short-term contracts).
We're not for a second suggesting Mourinho deserves the sack, but recent history clearly shows that he should have his feet up on the Portuguese coast by now: Jose’s faring markedly worse than any of his predecessors were – including himself – when they felt the Siberian chill of Roman Abramovich's trigger finger.
Nor should anyone kid themselves that last season’s league-and-cup double will have bought him any time: Carlo Ancelotti achieved the same in the season prior to his sacking, while Roberto di Matteo was sacked about a dozen Premier League games after leading Chelsea to Champions League glory in Munich.
So why is Jose still at The Bridge? Simply put: because Roman Abramovich has alienated the one qualified manager who's currently available. Do you really think Ancelotti would come back to Chelsea?
At any normal club a proven winner like Jose Mourinho would be given until at least the end of the season to turn around his team's poor form, but Roman Abramovich's Chelsea is no normal football club. Despite having hired some of the most successful managers in the world, the average tenure at Stamford Bridge during the Russian's reign stands at a miserly 43 league fixtures in charge - barely more than a solitary season. We can therefore very easily believe the "Two Games To Save His Career" headlines. We're just a little surprised he hasn't gone already.
