ENGLISH PREMIER LEAGUE: Chelsea 0 Hull City 0LUIZ FELIPE Scolari will be long accustomed to the volatility of football crowds. After all he comes from Brazil where the mood can swing from euphoric to suicidal and back again in the course of a single game. Nevertheless there cannot have been many occasions when a World Cup-winning manager has been loudly informed by supporters that he is, all things considered, no longer with it. Alf Ramsey had his dog days after 1966 but it is difficult to recall him being assailed by chants of "you don't know what you're doing".
Ray Wilkins, Scolari’s assistant at Stamford Bridge, doubted whether his boss would have understood what a disgruntled section of the crowd were shouting as Chelsea struggled in vain to break down a Hull City defence which had been systematically dismantled at West Ham 10 days earlier. Boos or whistles, however, are an international language and a banner reading “Scolari out”, while giving pointed mentions to Gianfranco Zola and Roberto Di Matteo, former Chelsea icons now making a decent fist of managing at Upton Park and MK Dons, made the point visually.
Scolari kept his own counsel after a damaging scoreless draw leaving Wilkins to soothe things as best he could. “By all means come and boo,” Wilkins said, “but to say someone does not know what he is doing when he has achieved what he has in the game is a tad out of order. . . He clearly knows what he is doing. He has been in this game a hell of a long time and won a lot of trophies as well.”
But football is about now, not then, and Chelsea are stuck in a trough of mediocrity from which they need to extricate themselves pretty sharply with a Champions League tie against Juventus just over a fortnight away.
Saturday’s disaffection among the Stamford Bridge faithful made itself heard when Scolari replaced Ricardo Quaresma, newly arrived on loan from Jose Mourinho’s Internazionale and immediately adding width and wit to the attack, with Didier Drogba just past the hour. So the displeasure really said more about the extent to which Drogba has fallen out of favour than any imagined shortcomings on the part of the Chelsea coach. The Ivory Coast striker is a hollow tree compared with the mighty conifer he was two seasons ago and Hull’s defenders were minimally disturbed by his presence.
Chelsea look like they no longer believe in what they are doing. Roundly beaten at Manchester United and Liverpool, with laboured home wins over Stoke and Middlesbrough in between, they are not pinning opponents back as they once did and their football has lost its old hubris.
On Saturday Frank Lampard beavered away intelligently, with spasmodic assistance from Michael Ballack, while Quaresma and Salomon Kalou were a consistent threat on the flanks. Yet Hull’s central defenders, Kamil Zayatte and the excellent Michael Turner, were not seriously challenged and the chance missed by John Terry in the second minute, when he met a rebound off Matt Duke’s save with a shot over the bar from a range of three yards, was Chelsea’s best scoring opportunity of the match.
“There seems to be a little bit of anxiety among the lads when the goal doesn’t come early,” Wilkins conceded. “Had that one gone in I’m sure it would have settled the boys down.”
In an increasingly uncomfortable second half Hull exploited some lax defending by, among others, Alex, Jose Bosingwa and John Obi Mikel to create several chances of their own. Phil Brown’s side’s obdurate, disciplined defending was punctuated by incisive counter-attacks.
Wilkins admitted “it is going to be difficult to catch Manchester United but we will try”, while adding that “second is never good enough for a club as big as ours”.
Second? On Saturday’s showing Chelsea will do well to finish fourth.
GuardianService
