Is Frank Rijkaard the next man to fall into the Chelsea money trap?
The result against a poorly equipped Copenhagen side has bought Carlo Ancelotti time as Chelsea manager, he can really only do one thing to keep his position and that is to win the Champions League with the Stamford Bridge based club.
Being a man of morals it would not surprise me, that even with a Champions League winners medal for Chelsea, and despite claiming that he will not quit the club, Ancelotti may well just do so, and he would have good reason to. Having your second in command fired without even being notified is quite scary, imagine coming into work in the morning to find the man who cleans your tools no longer there and replaced with someone you do not even know!
For the owner of Chelsea there remains possibly one man within their reach and that is the Dutchman Frank Rijkaard. Whilst he won the Champions League with a Barcelona team that had perhaps already been made for him, one must not forget that they won the final in 2006 due to a lot of luck when the Arsenal goalkeeper was sent off in the first few minutes.
That will not be an issue for Abramovich and he will see Frank Rijkaard as a perfect replacement for Ancelotti and with the Russian apparently in love with Barcelona, he will feel a former Barcelona manager as a man who could perhaps take Chelsea to the next level, perhaps not in winning competitions immediately but in playing the type of football that Abramovich wants to see.
For Rijkaard however it will be case of whether he wants to work long term, or be given a year to work to the olgiarchs crazy demands, it is amazing to think that he hasn’t taken a leaf out of Arsenal and Manchester United’s books where keeping a manager is concerned. Rijkaard will also want to be assured of having and keeping his own training team, coming in one morning to find half of them on skysports news explaining their absence is not something he will put up with.
Bringing in Rijkaard would also bring with it some big changes in personnel, the likes of Frank Lampard and John Terry can no longer be seen as the future of Chelsea where matters on the pitch are concerned and should the Dutchman be called upon, his first job would be to find out just how hungry the two still are.
In all honesty it is strange to think why any manager would want a job at the club, they are normally give two years maximum to produce results, they have their colleagues removed without notification and are expected to continue to work miracles when the team is not under their complete control.
For monetary reasons Rijkaard may not pay attention but if he wants to end up on the Chelsea scrapheap like Avram, Felipe, Ray, Gus and probably very shortly Carlo, then he may wish to think long and hard about any future move to West London.
