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Chelsea manager Andre Villas Boas.

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Rafa Benitez is a short-term option. Is the Spaniard next in a list which reads Ranieri, Mourinho, Grant, Scolari, Hiddink, Ancelotti, Villas-Boas?

PROS OF SACKING ANDRE VILLAS-BOAS

Attempt to salvage the season with the club still in the FA Cup and the Champions League (just) and fighting to finish in the top four.

Unite a badly splintered dressing room disaffected by AVB’s tactics. Many players were also upset by his treatment of Alex and Nicolas Anelka.

Summon the famous Chelsea spirit with one last hurrah from the generation who won the club’s first title in half a century.

CONS OF SACKING AVB

THE cost. It does not have to be as much as the last change — especially if Chelsea target an available manager like Benitez or Fabio Capello — but it will be millions more down the drain.

Instability. It fails to address the long-term problem which is lack of direction, although this is nothing to do with the manager if the owner persists in buying players his manager does not want.

Yields to player power, which Abramovich has made a concerted effort to banish.

Who’s next? A short term move for Benitez? Another doing the rumour mill is for Capello in tandem with Republic of Ireland No 2 Marco Tardelli. Or perhaps a summer move for Mourinho?

WILL IT SAVE THE SEASON?

Maybe this team is over the hill regardless of who is driving it. After all, it was built in 2004 and has merely been patched up since.

Stand by the courage of your convictions and trust the decision which only eight months ago cost you £28million in compensation packages.

PROS OF BACKING AVB

Push through the revolution. Villas-Boas is deep into the messy business of changing the guard in the Chelsea dressing room. In Abramovich’s mind, it is an essential transitional step, so why apply the brakes now?

Stability in the long term, something Chelsea have lacked under Abramovich. They have had six managers in less than five years since Mourinho left in 2007.

AVB has talent, an apprenticeship under Mourinho and all those silver pots at Porto. They weren’t a fluke were they?

Although clearly unimpressed with AVB’s work, plenty of dejected fans flying back from Naples yesterday believe he should be allowed to complete the revolution and then hand over ‘the project’.

CONS OF BACKING AVB

The slide continues. Funny how the manager who arrived suggesting we might want to call him ‘The Group One’ seems to have successfully alienated himself from most of his senior players.

Perhaps a season without silverware and the potential cost of missing out on the Champions League next year — £30m-plus in monetary value alone, but the prestige matters, too, to the owner.

Beleaguered morale and dressing room friction continue to eat away with the squabbles about team selection and stories of mutiny damaging the wider image of the club. – Daily Mail

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