Di Matteo, Forever Our Legend...Does Benitez Deserve Chelsea Support?

My Views on Di Matteo's Sack Before Benitez' First Game, Chelsea versus Man City

So as I woke up Tuesday morning very busy preparing for my citizenship test which was due at 10 a.m. my relative a die-hard Arsenal fan came in to wake me up with the news that Roberto Di Matteo (RDM) had been sacked. First I was satisfied with the fact that my buddy wasn't waking me up to say Arsenal had beaten Chelsea while we were sleeping and I connect this satisfaction with something I saw by a  by Peter Theobolds on twitter as people react to Di Matteo's sack: "We (Arsenal) may have had same manager but no trophies. Chelsea chop theirs' regularly and still win. Who is better off?" I just love it when fans stepped out of fanaticism and point out to facts...

Either way, I should say that I was pretty dismayed at hearing the news that Di Matteo had been fired.  However, I also need to confess that while I was among the Chelsea faithfuls who supported the idea of letting André Villa Boas, I was neither a believer in Di Matteo as a coach.  But just few days after AVB's departure, either Di Matteo had made a quick statement to me(his doubting Thomas) or the Chelsea so-called old guards made a statement to our opponents and some of our fans who had bashed these old guards who have been a reason of why Chelsea had become the great club it has been in the last decade, Di Matteo together with his old-guards defeated the odds by coming back from a 3-1 away loss to an in form Napoli and eliminate the Italians in a super convincing 4-1 win. I watched this game not expecting that Chelsea would eliminate Napoli, but at least was hoping for a respectful bow out of the Champions League at least with a win, any win. But 4-1 was just too much. I silently asked myself a question, "can I believe in Di Matteo or it's just that our legends were trying to fight their way out of the recent developments at the club?"

A doubting Thomas I remained, I only gave credit to the so-called old guards and only used this on poor AVB and say he has completely been proved wrong by stopping to trust the parts of the engine that had kept this machine working over the past years. You just don't come to a club and reject the stars who have been shining for the club even if they are becoming old...Anyways, that wasn't the only lesson, the other lesson would be for me to learn to trust Di Matteo. It didn't take too long, the guy started to gain my confidence as he started winning games at the same time somehow going back to our 'old' Chelsea. The Chelsea we Stamford Bridge folks liked, the Chelsea that not only flew forward to score in the excuse of so-called beautiful football, but a Chelsea that was also disciplined at the back. All of a sudden Di Matteo was somehow starting to remind me of the Mourinho days. I am not going to buy the 'beautiful football card' anytime soon. This criticism has been overemphasized, beautiful football to me is a game that's played with the aim of winning...And there's no way a team could play over eighty games at home field without losing and be playing 'bad football'...There's no way a manager who has held a firm that has stood "firm across four different countries, against 76 different teams, over 144 games, 3,223 days (at the time of writing) and 12,600 minutes of football" without losing a game at home. He has to be one of if not the greatest manager of all time. Mourinho brought this philosophy at Chelsea and I liked it, actually many of us really liked it...

The sunday we were going to play another in form London rivals, Tottenham Hotspur, as Barcelona fiersely waits on Tuesday. Di Matteo did completely contrary to what I would have done, fielding a team to beat Hotspur without reserving something for the Barcelona game. Boy, did he get it right! He did. Smoke Hotspur out of the F.A Cup

He won the F.A. Cup against a team I arguably fear the most when they play against Chelsea, yes Liverpool (you can say whatever you want, but ask me if I want Chelsea to face Liverpool or Barcelona or Real Madrid or the Manchesters, I will take anything but Liverpool). Now come the appointment of Rafael Benitez a move which was very unpopular among many Chelsea fans. I won't deny that Benitez was a great unwelcome rival at Stamford Bridge, the guy behind the reason Chelsea failed to go past the Champions League semi-finals in 2005  and 2007. Chelsea had won everything by then and was left alluded about the Champions and Liverpool led by Benitez clearly played a big role. Even a team of Barcelona calibre wasn't as much of a stumbling block as Liverpool was for Chelsea's Champions League glory-hunt. I was and still remain a Chelsea fan who silently has Liverpool as second favourite team though their Benitez days seem to have gone with the former. I admired the Liverpool that played with determination you could see it from their 0-3 come back in the 2005 Champions League finals. I admired the discipline of Liverpool's defence that left their losing opponents in agony, I was on the receiving end of such agony during their win over Chelsea as they stubbornly defended their fourth minute goal up to the ninetieth minute on the way to winning the Champions League. They repeated such discipline in 2007 as they denied Chelsea a draw that could have allowed us to go into the final.

While I never ever thought nor was I ever wanting to have Benitez at the Bridge we, Chelsea fans, might want to wait and see maybe Benitez will be the person who'd revive our defence discipline was that eroded by AVB's so-called attacking football... Attacking with eyes closed that you have your net to defend... Surely, the best way to defend is attacking, but that should not happen at the expense of devaluing the importance of defending. This is something that the Chelsea team needed improvement from and maybe just maybe Benitez could be the guy to do it. Let us let him do this just for now till the end of the season where I think he'd be gone.

It would only help us Chelsea fans to support Benitez because now he's not Liverpool coach, he's the Chelsea coach and Chelsea fans need to support. I should sign off by saluting Roberto Di Matteo for a job very well done. Forever our legend! Forever our hero!