I am not a chelsea fan, or any soccer club fan; I seldom watch soccer games - dont have the patience to sit through 2 hours (movies are out for the same reason), but I keep track of English Premier League events, and find the contrasting fortunes of the various clubs interesting to follow

Here are some photos of Scolari at various stages of his Chelsea period

the change from the summer to the winter is obvious; so what went wrong?

I dont believe it is a case of "player power" - while there are expensively acquired stars who need to be placated, the small group of players who reportedly were asked by Abramovich about the situation and gave negative feedback, are not influential enough to produce such a decision - they would be considered as less important than Terry and Lampart, who were not asked; there was no evidence of a general revolt nor anyone initiating a complaint to Abramovich; on the other hand, I also would not accept the cynical view that Abramovich deliberately chose the group for the purpose of getting bad feedback in order to find excuse to fire Scolari - he doesnt need to mavouvre like this - it's not as if he has to answer to a higher boss; but I believe after he had already made the decision to dismiss scolari, as a matter of caution he wanted to ask around a bit - if the group said unanimously "He is a good manager; if you sack him we will all quit" "It's all the fault of players so and so - they are disruptive to the team" or at least "Give him a bit more time" then he might have reconsidered.

Abramovich was not satisfied with Chelsea's recent performance, and just as with Claudio Ranieri in 2004 (the manager at the time he bought the club), Jose Mourinho in 2007 and Avram Grant  in 2008, the manager got the blame and was told to go, though each one was given a golden handshake.

In my view, Scolari did perform poorly - he did not have the experience of managing a team of multinational stars, which lacks the kind of cohesion a national team has, and requires season-long regimes of training and planning to participate in a variety of trophy contests playing a much larger number of games than a national team participating in regional and international contests that occur once every few years, each time with just a dozen games or less; he did not know the other English club teams well (nor his own team for that matter) and so was unsure of the best game tactics and team selection; further, he did not communicate his thinking clearly to the players. It was, for example, never explained to anyone why he did not field Anelka and Drodba together, and some of his mid game player changes were weird as well as unexplained; the players left out of games or sitting on the bench would have seethed, especially if the match outcome was negative. Locker room discussion would have been against him, and during matches performance suffered because of low confidence and resolve. In addition to worsening morale, the failure to communicate also meant he missed any chance of receiving feedback from players about his tactics and suggestions on improvements.

Because of his amusing press conferences, people would have had the impression that he communicated well,

so that any lack of communication must be deliberate. Dealing with reporters and with players require, however, altogether different communication processes, since often PR is done without passing information. In addition to not getting explanations of plans and tactics, it seems the players received few ideas and directions to adjust to actual situation during the games and how to deal with the tactics the opponents used in that particular game. He also appears to have made little effort to get to know the players well personally. Here his having his major past experiences only with Portugese speaking teams may have played a part - accustomed to be a kind of father figure to his players, he needed to break unfamiliar ground to manage "human resources", some much more expensive than himself. His desire to bring in some Brazilian players played some part in unsettling current members of the team, but if handled well the damage would be minimal, especially if the new members fit in and perform well; he never got to that point however.

To some extent, he was also harmed by the high expectations when he started, given his world cup successes with Brazil and Portugal, and by the early wins of the season (Erikson at Manchester City after Taksin bought the team had the same up then down experience) - these wins show that the team is still quite strong, even though it is aging a bit and in need of building up for the future - so the subsequent falloff in performance was harder to excuse. Scolari, in other words, was victimized by his own past success.

Yet the main blame lies with the owner: buying expensive stars, whether players or coaches, works for a time, and the Mourinho regime did win the team several trophies. Scolari's arrival boosted team morale, and probably other teams were a bit in awe initially, so Chelsea started this season very well; maintaining such successes, however, requires team building skills, which take time to adjust to a new situation, and even longer to be proven.

Manchester United, for example, combines buying players, developing youngsters (when Raphael de Silve came on for the very first time, I was immediately impressed - just 18 year old, and he is not the only one), and getting the best use of older guys like Giggs and Scholes; each player, regardless of at which stage of the game he gets sent in and which position he is assigned, understands what to do. Under the multi decade regime of Fergeson, ManU had time to build up its system. Chelsea simply does not have that kind of culture, and given the short time a manager has to show results, has not been able to develop it. This is particularly obvious with the sacking of Avram Grant: he took over in a hurry after the 2007 has already started, and managed to produce better result that season than most people expected, though Chelsea missed out on all the trophies. The main reason he had to go was less because of poor performance but more because Abramovich was impressed by Scolari and wanted the position vacated, and it turned out to be a very bad decision.

Can Hiddink improve the situation during the remaining three months of the season ? probably - he seems much more of a "human resources" manager and boss figure,

and he would be able to make straight talk to Abramovich whereas Mourinho would have appeared vain and touchy, Grant not sufficiently impressive, and Scolari would have looked vague; but given the history of Abramovich's handling of Chelsea, I am not optimistic about long term prospects. Just getting a well established manager to take the risk of moving to Chelsea long term would already be hard; and uncertainty about who will be the boss would also cause some players to leave this summer. After all, even richer patrons are over there at Manchester City waving petrodollars at everyone... not that I feel any more optimistic about them either... 

added on 23/5/11

when carlos ancelotti started two seasons ago, I wondered how long he would last; in the first year he managed both FA cup and premier league cup, but somehow Chelsea had an early collapse, from which it managed to pull back, but seemed to tire from the effort so that it lost the late season crucial games against MU and cost the manager his job. The transfer of Torres was but a side show - whether the team would have done better without him we shall never know.

if abromvich had any lingering appreciation of ancelotti's previous achievements, it would have been suppressed when he looks over at Manchester City, where another rich owner pumped in money, hired an italian manager, and greatly improved over the previous season after a hesitating start; mancini may not have won any cups, but it must have seemed to abromvich that MC's trajectory is more promising; so he acts as his usual, and you wonder who is going to be the next abromvich experiment

This has been a very strange EPL season; almost every team has great ups and downs; when it first started, Chelsea was supposed to be doing really well, then Arsenal, but both then looked disastrously underperforming for a while before recovering, Chelsea having to change manager to achieve this. Then Liverpool shot up - it was getting good results at the start but people said it was underperforming, but by December it was well ahead in the league table, but it then had a whole series of goalless draws, sometimes against very weak teams, so that ManU surpassed it, and went onto a long series of clean sheets, before its sudden collapse against Liverpool and Fulham. We also had the surge of Aston Villa past Arsenal, till its Euefa loss due to its deliberate fielding an inferior team in the hope of preserving strength for EPL matches, which however had the opposite effect. At the other end of the table, we had the Hull's surprising performance at the start followed by dismal shows subsequently, the opposite trajectory of Stoke, the recovery of Tottenham and Portsmouth from their disastrous start following successful previous seasons, the half recovery of Blackburn and the non-recovery of Newcastle. It has been a very unpredictable season as far as individual team performances are concerned.

(these comments were made towards the end of the 08=09 sesson though more or less appplicable this year too)

It should be clear that both machester united and liverpool are in serious trouble, and the reason is financial; with liverpool the management of bernitos added to the problem, though it is not entirely clear whether the poor handling of buying/sellilng of players (e.g., robbie keane) was his decision or the owner's and ex-ceo's faulty

when MU tried to get Tevez to lower his price, agreeing only when it was too late, I did not understand the situation at the time; today it is clear (a) it was a mistake (b) MU was desperately trying to cut cost - even after selling Ronaldo for 80M pounds, it only makde a small profit for the year, and would have lost close to 100M if it signed Tevez without selling Ronaldo

if you compare the performance of Birmingham with Portsmouth and West Ham, it is clear that a fiancially strong owner helps a team to perform better; in the same way (though not as obviously) you can compare Arsenal and Chelsea versus ManU and Liverpool.

why are some clubs heavily in debt?: because the previous owners cashed out at high price, which the new owners could not quite afford!! it is really quite similar to US real estate and some hedgefunds; EPL became the victim of its own success and capitalist greed