How I Met Your Mom :)

Not
from a footballing point of view, of course. No, it’s a dress sense
thing. Who could forget the Armani (or was it Matalan) 3/4-length coat
of his first season? The bristling Clooney-esque buzz cut? The casually
unbuttoned shirts? The freakish ‘Val Kilmer in Top Gun’ quiff of this
August? Whichever way you look at it, young José cut a dashing figure
alongside such style luminaries as Surralexferrguson (padded mac and,
we suspect, shirt tucked into his Y-fronts) and Arsene Wenger (who
never quite lost the look of a man who’d just crawled out of bed and
hastily run an iron over his crinkled features).

If history has taught us anything, it’s that sacking a manager
mid-season rarely produces the results that the hierarchy are hungering
for. And yet, and yet. The vigorous young scamps who are at this very
moment lining up outside Roman’s palatial office with a PowerPoint
presentation in one hand and a long list of "wanted" players in the
other… well, many of them have their own inimitable look. There’s the
affable but sadly Spurs-tainted Jürgen Klinsmann, with a nice line in
rumpled casual suits; a Teutonic Mourinho in all but name. And playing
style. And possibly sense of humour. Then there’s the terribly serious
Frank Rijkaard, a man who may never escape the priceless image of his
impromptu attempt to bolster Dutch-German relations by spraying Rude
Völler with phlegm, but who favours a similarly relaxed, if probably
awfully expensive, 2-piece suit look. And then there’s Guus Hiddink, of
whose crinkled anorak and cheery Santa features probably the less said
the better.

Our concern, in this dark hour, is not the future success of the
expensively-assembled team. We have no doubt that Messrs Lampard,
Terry, Ballack, Shevchenko, Drogba and Cole are old enough and ugly
enough to be wondering (or perhaps dreading), on this chilly morning,
whether José wants them to accompany him or not. No, what we really
want to know is whether José’s successor will have the necessary
panache to lead a club of Chelsea’s stature to its inevitable destiny:
that of the world’s biggest football brand (TM) by 2011. Chelsea have a
ten-year plan, you see. I know this because thus the Face of Kenyon
spake. Can we really be expected to win the Champions League twice in 5
years if we’re being led by a man for whom the words "Levi-Strauss"
mean naught save as the author of "The Elementary Structures of
Kinship"? Do we really expect to put teams like Barcelona to the sword
if the tactics are coming from a gent who doesn’t know his Anderson
from his Sheppard or his Hardy from his Amies? What we need, fellow
Chelsea fans and lovers of sartorial elegance, is someone who really
understands the importance of a notch lapel. Someone who isn’t
interested in a haircut unless it costs in excess of a hundred nicker.
Someone who buys really, really big ties.   

Roman and Mr Kenyon, or Pravda and the Ogpu to thee and me,
doubtless have their reasons for dispensing with the services of the
Special Coat. It doesn’t do for an owner to be upstaged by his manager,
perhaps. And Roman’s predilection for - how shall we put this -
clothing from the bottom barrel in the bargain basement, might be the
key to the whole debacle. To this observer, it smacks of a puritan
soul. Jeans from the Gap? A jumper from… shudder… Mr Byrite? And
could that be a Swatch watch dangling from his wrist? Perhaps Roman
tired of the vigorous Portuguese parading his elegant ensembles before
all and sundry. Perhaps, somewhere in the chilly depths of that heart
(some corner of which will, forever, be Siberia) he rebelled against
the colourful pizzazz of his employee’s outfits? And perhaps this
parting was the final expression of a deeper misunderstanding between
two men; a misunderstanding that went far deeper than mere sophistry on
the nature of open, attacking football and whether Andriy Shevchenko’s
legs had gone before we shelled out £31m on him. Perhaps it just came
down to the clothes. We may never know. Unless, of course, Pravda
neglects to add a "keep your mouth shut" clause to the large
remuneration package José is about to trouser. Whatever the outcome,
whatever the reason, I for one wish the Special Coat well. He brought
us sunshine. He brought us Drogba. And he bought us some priceless
looks on Surralex’s face. I’ll miss him. And his coat.