Well I never quite concluded exactly why was it Chelsea slumped suddenly and badly a few years back - after winning the double with Ancelotti. They began the next season very well, beating teams 6-0 and 5-0s even. But straight after that, results were poor and it continued for a long time, and eventually Ancelotti was sacked and all....

I was a fan of Chelsea for a short time, partly becos I hate Man U and Chelsea managed to fight them for a long time. I liked Hiddick and thought Ancelotti were ok. He made the likes of Malouda, Drogba, Alex really hit form, some of my favourite players. But the very same players forms just dipped at the same time as mentioned above... I figured it was largely loss of motivation after winning the double and aging team?

I might have asked this somewhere, but think I should ask properly here. Can u real Chelsea fans enlighten me? Thanks

Ray Wilkins ("the players' coach") was sacked in November (pretty positive) of 2010, the early months of Ancelotti's second season.....essentially down hill from there, with the exception of a little resurgence in the second half of that season

Players got older, Malouda deceived a lot of coaches etc etc.

Ray Wilkens has a lot to do with it, since then they players have been too old to preform at that level again. Kind of snowball effect.

But Ray Wilkins, what exactly was his job there? To have such a big effect? And why fire him in the first place if he was so influential? Abromovich have wasted so much money and this was another terrible mistakes then

BarcaLearning wrote:But Ray Wilkins, what exactly was his job there? To have such a big effect? And why fire him in the first place if he was so influential? Abromovich have wasted so much money and this was another terrible mistakes then

i dunno how influencial he was but it was after his sacking that the poor performances started piling up. Yet to find a definite correlation between the events though

Reports suggests that he was fired for saying something extremely offensive about Abramovic that was overheard. Allegedly he was lucky to be just fired rather than 'silenced'

Ray was our first assistant coach. Had been for ages. Great guy.

Ray had a big impact on what happened, but i think the main issue was that we've had the same spine in our team since mou and alot of those players are well past their best and we still havent really bought in many players to replace them
Also i think the turblance and instability created by the constant hiring and firing of coaches finally caught up with us

I wouldn't really say it was Ray, our bad moments started before Ray got fired.

It was a combination of things like older squad and players like Deco, Ballack, and Cole were not properly replaced.

Thx for that guys, I guess a number of issues added to the problem... but I would think the lack of determation and hunger consistently Man U style must have played a part after the double... they started well, and dipped, and just couldnt bounce back for long period....

Vs Napoli just now though, the old guards showed their worth and still got it in them, although Napoli were terrible defending, but still a great victory for Chelsea.