Life in Football Manager

What if…

We’ve already seen how Paul has done in Italy and Capello at Crewe, now lets turn are attention to one of the Premierships big four (which doesn’t include such small clubs such as Everton). Chelsea a team that has showed how alot of money can change the fortunes of a club when the arrival of Roman Abramovich, which saw the coincidental win of 5 trophies. But before Roman’s reign Chelsea was a team with such high promise with the likes of Zola, Guillet, Villia, Di Matteo and Wise, but yet they were unable to achieve much in their time.

Wise who played at the Stamford Bridge club for 11 years and made 445 appearances for the club putting himself in the top 5 most capped players at the club. Wise is probably best known for his cheeky chappy cockney attitude, which seen him in trouble a few times, his disciplinary record and accusations of biting players and assaulting taxi drivers tarnished his Cheslea career seeing him stripped as the captain, yet he still remained a loved figure at Stamford Bridge.

Wise’s managerial career started at Millwall were he took a player-manager role were he was able to stir the Championship club to the FA cup final, but disagreements between the board meant Wise left. His next job a brief caretaker role with Dave Bassett at Southampton before George Burley was appointed. Dennis fell to the depths of League Two for his first full managerial position at Swindon joining up for the first time with former team mate Gus Poyet. A good start at the club sought attraction from Leeds, who were destined for relegation to League One. In the current season Leeds started their campaign for promotion with a 15 point deficit, but regardless of this Leeds climbed up the table and look favourites for promotion, if the negative point difference wasn’t taken into consideration Leeds would be clear at the top by 2 points at the time of writing. After a short time in management Wise made the surprise move to Newcastle taking up an executive role advising the board on footballing matters and working along side Kevin Keegan.
Season 2007/08

Dennis’s first season didn’t start off well, a 2-0 loss to Manchester United in the Charity Shield, but it was probably that spur Wise on to do better as the start of the league began, 7 wins in a row with three 4-0 victories would setup the season well until Arsenal abruptly stopped the run with Sagna’s late goal gaving the home team the win. Again Wise was able to win the majority of their games until he was faced with another one of his main rival’s United who went to Stamford Bridge and battered Wise’s team, which had summed up Wise’s first season at Chelsea as they finished 2nd in the league. The only thing stopping Chelsea from winning was the inability to beat the teams around them at the top. Arsenal were they only top team to suffer a defeat to Chelsea, the rest of the points were dropped at Middlesbrough and Pompey further hampering any challenge. Chelsea have a great side and why would anyone want to shake it up too much? The only signing of the season was Mutu who cost nearly £20 million. Mutu who had already spent some time at Stamford Bridge before his problems with the white powder fitted in well up front rotating between Drogba and Andriy who all had a brilliant season contributing plenty of goals to the cause.

Although Chelsea didn’t manage the league Wise still kept up with winning traditions claiming the FA cup in his first season, although to be honest he was very lucky to only meet up with one Premiership opposition team along the way until the final that being Derby. West Ham were waiting for them in the final who were able to dispose of Villa, Blackburn and Arsenal along the way. Droba’s goal was the only difference between to the two teams in which Chelsea dominated.

Season 2008/09

The second season saw Chelsea improve this time managing to beat all the top teams throughout the season, all results reading 2 goals to 1. Drogba and Mutu being the thorn in the side of many of the top clubs as they were always the names on the score sheet. No surprise that Drogba scored the second highest amount of goals in the season although he was way behind Berbatov’s record. Captain Terry lead the way and finished with the average rating of 7.57. This time around though Wise didn’t feel like he needed to spend a single penny of Romans money to take the league. Wise had found his feet, knowing what would work and the players he wanted, but he didn’t just stop of the league, but he even went further to lineAbramovich ’s pockets by taking the Champions League. Looking at the teams that Chelsea had to face along the way to European glory Wise well deserved his win, knocking out Italian giants AC Milan before taking on a hatrick of Spainish teams, Real Madrid were first to go before Barcelona and Valencia in the final, Mutu and Drogba again dominating everything that Chelsea did. Before the final where it was an extra time penalty by Essien that brought the honours to Stamford Bridge.

Chelsea did manage the League Cup final, but just like any big team now Chelsea took it as a chance to rest first players and develop the young players, many of the fringe players putting forward their case for a first team place. Especially Sinclair and Sahar the latter scoring the only goal for Chelsea in the game before getting sent off, but it was Villa that came up victors as they looked for a return of the Millions O’Neill had spent over the seasons. The FA cup didn’t turn out as good as the rest of the season Liverpool in the 4th round dumped them out, but then that freed up much of their season to concentrate on Europe and the domestic league, the domination of Chelsea showed in the awards, Drogba finished top goalscorer in all competitions, Wise was the manager of the year and Mutu put his bad past behind him and claiming the players of the season.

Season 2009/10

For the second season running Wise kept his hands out of Roman’s wallet, but as a result the rest of the league used this to spend their cash improving their teams in order to catch up on Chelsea and it showed. Chelsea having a disappointing season and dropping to a 6th place finish and in a turn it was probably because Drogba and Mutu had a bad season, the latter even being dropped from the side in favour of Sahar and Sinclair who both had brilliant seasons finishing behind Didier in the goal scoring chart. Dennis was shown the hard way that sometimes you do have to spend some money, as teams that did such as Spurs, Villa, Everton dominated Chelsea, winning by significant margins. Ipswich and Liverpool in the FA Cup and League Cup respectively made sure that Chelsea were unable to find any success at home.

In Europe though it was a different matter, this time it was Drogba and Sahar that were dominating teams Ben scoring an hatrick against Lyon and goals against Real Madrid and Roma also saw Chelsea to the final were they would meet Valencia again in a repeat of last years final. Valencia were seeking revenge this time after just missing out last season. Yet again it was another tight affair, but the difference was the fact that Valencia were able to convert their chances, a 3-1 victory completed the revenge campaign by Valencia, helped by former Chelsea player Steve Sidwell who was quickly sent packing as soon as Wise arrived, he again must have shared the search of vengeance against Chelsea which attracted the top Spanish side.

Season 2010/11

In attempt to get back to winning ways Wise started splashing the cash, spending £47.5 million on two South Americans. Most of the money was spent on Dani Alves (£38 million) the Brazilian right back whose attributes show that he probably one of the greatest players in game able to do anything which was shown as he started paying back his fee straight away finishing as the best player in the team over 51 games he averaged out at 7.53. Trejo who arrived at the club for a small fee of £9.25 million and another one of the signings from Wise that made an impact straight away finishing Chelsea’s joint top goalscorer with 20 goals. Chelsea’s front line contributed 69 goals in total Sinclair having the best game goal ratio at 34 games and 20 goals. Belletti and Shevchenko both left at the end of their contracts. But Trejo’s goals weren’t enough Chelsea only managed a 4th place finish, better then last season and again they will play in the Champions League. But we know how demanding Russian Billionaires can be and by christmas Wise was shown the door to be replaced by Martin O’Neill. It was Chelsea’s inability again to beat the top teams that saw meant that they were unable to compete for the title. finishing 12 points off the pace if they were converted into wins against the top four then the season would have been theirs.

Martin did lead Chelsea to the FA cup final, beating former club Villa along the way, but again Chelsea didn’t really face any major competition on the Road to the final and it was Derby they met at Wembley. a 1-1 draw in a game that Chelsea should have came out victors, seen it go to penalties in the lottery Mikel and Trejo were unable to convert and Derby were able to place all but one shot into the back of the net. In the UEFA cup Lyon were the team to seek revenge this season knocking Chelsea out at the quarter final stage.

Martin’s first season in charge was another trophyless season for Chelsea again finishing outside the top four in 6th place, even after carrying on his trend of spending big bucks. But after saying goodbye to O’Neill, Drogba and Mutu. Steve Clark took brief control of Chelsea before he left to take the Inter Milan job as you already know from Paul Ince’s story. Spaletti then took control and the three managers combined brought the league back to London in 2012/13. The next season Spaletti was able to keep Chelsea in the top four finishing 2nd some way off the pace but it was encouraging that they weren’t having the same yo yo affect as we seen at Inter. Another Champions League win came against Valencia in the final for the third time, Abebayor an O’Neill signing was able to separate the two teams. From then Spaletti constantly kept Chelsea in the top four and visited the Champions League final again at Sevilla which they lost and were never to win a trophy again since the last European cup win.

Dennis Wise didn’t get back into management after Chelsea and probably is showing his executive qualities somewhere after he resigned from football management in 2014. So what does this show? I am not sure, again Wise’s story is very similar to what happened in the Paul Ince scenario, who is Wise’s favoured personnel, maybe they both share empathy with each other. But it was definitely the quality of the team he had that made him successful, but it is hard to say being the fact he couldn’t find the a job afterwards even with his Champions League medals. In the transfer market, he was able to add quality to an already quality team, but for any football manager regular, the scouts at Chelsea will always pester the manager to pick up Mutu and Alves and with their power of money can pick them up easily and the money spent on them you would expect results. Although I feel that Wise did made some good choices in bringing through Sinclair and Sahar and the spot of Trejo to bolster his talented squad.

Dennis Wise

All Time Best Eleven