Ranking all ELEVEN of Chelsea’s mid-season managerial changes: Potter, Benitez, Tuchel… | OneFootball

Chelsea have made Liam Rosenior their TWELFTH mid-season managerial appointment of the Premier League era. That’s more mid-season changes than Arsenal, Manchester United and Liverpool have made combined.

But you can’t say it hasn’t, by and large, worked out quite well for Chelsea. No matter the situation, or who sits in the dugout,  they’ve continued to lift silverware. Ruthlessly switching coaches has often been effective, but not always.

With that in mind, we’ve ranked all 11 of Chelsea’s mid-season appointments since 1992. Where will Rosenior end up on this list, do you reckon?

Note: we’re including caretaker managers if they came in for more than a couple of games, but not blink-and-you ‘ll-miss-them interim coaches like Steve Holland and Bruno Saltor.

11. Frank Lampard

Sorry, Frank.

In what would’ve sounded like sacrilege to yer data-worshipping Twitter tacticos back in 2021, the past couple of years might’ve shown Lampard to be a more astute coach than Potter.

He certainly did a better job at Stamford Bridge in his first, proper spell at the helm. But things got even worse when he replaced Potter in the spring of 2023.

The second, caretaker, stint was ultimately inconsequential and doesn’t affect Lampard’s standing in the Blues’ all-time Hall of Fame, but we can’t have his disastrous return anywhere but bottom.

Infamously chaotic, Chelsea have often been a rabble in the Premier League era, but this is surely as bad as they’ve been in the modern era.

Lampard led them to eight defeats and just one win from 11 games in charge as Chelsea slumped to a 12th-place finish.

10. Graham Potter

The only Chelsea manager to be hired and fired in the same season.

That sums up quite how little things ever got going under Potter. The indignity of getting lumped in with the likes of Remi Garde, Bob Bradley and Nathan Jones at relegation-battling crisis clubs.

The erratic, scattergun recruitment from those above is an extenuating circumstance, but Potter’s short reign looks inexcusable sandwiched between coaches of actual pedigree, Thomas Tuchel and Mauricio Pochettino.

9. Avram Grant

It feels harsh putting Grant as low as ninth in this list, given that he led them to a Champions League final.

But the Israeli coach’s subsequent career – taking Portsmouth and West Ham down – underlined his limitations as a coach.

He inherited a squad from Jose Mourinho that could, and indeed did, win on autopilot.

Had Terry not slipped that night in Moscow, Grant may well have become the worst-ever manager to boast a Champions League trophy.

Chelsea ended Grant’s one season of steadying the ship trophyless, a rarity in the early Abramovich era. They finished runners-up in the League Cup, Premier League and Champions League. Ouch.

8. Guus Hiddink (second stint)

Honestly, fine.

But who really cares? Chelsea’s season was effectively done after Mourinho’s spectacular implosion before Christmas.

The fireworks were over – who could be bothered to pay attention to the laborious process of clearing up the wreckage?

Top half (albeit 10th) was a respectable enough finish given their place down near the relegation zone at the halfway stage, but they did little of note in the cups and were well-beaten, home and away, by PSG in the Champions League Round of 16.

7. David Webb

Ask your parents.

Webb, a 1970s Chelsea hero, spent four months guiding the club to a decent enough, if not especially memorable, midtable finish following Ian Porterfield’s sacking in February 1993. A different era.

6. Rafael Benitez

Rafa didn’t exactly win the Chelsea fans over, but that was always an impossible task.

Even his most ardent critics would have to concede he did a passable enough job, at least.

A third-place finish and delivering the Europa League trophy is about as much as could be realistically asked for. A handshake, farewell and a very begrudging thank you. Job done.

5. Guus Hiddink (first stint)

Hiddink’s first firefighter spell was more impressive than his second.

Third and an FA Cup was probably only about par for that stacked Chelsea squad at the height of their imperial phase.

But it was a decent enough return in the context of where the club was at following Luis Felipe Scolari’s dismissal in February 2022.

4. Claudio Ranieri

You could knock the tinkerman down a couple of places in this list, given the lack of silverware. His four years at Stamford Bridge were a fallow period compared to the trophy-laden years before and after.

It’s actually quite tough to judge Ranieri in this ranking, given he feels a lot less like a mid-season stop-gap than the rest of the names that feature here.

His reign was less about a short-term impact, but rather a relative period of stability and laying the foundations for the immense success of the Abramovich era.

One game shy of 200 in charge, this is actually the longest stint of Ranieri’s long and distinguished coaching career.

Amazingly enough, it’s also the longest reign of any Chelsea manager in the last 40 years.

3. Gianluca Vialli

Replacing his former team-mate and once great Serie A rival Ruud Gullit in the Stamford Bridge dugout, Vialli was another iconic 90s player-manager. They don’t make ’em like this anymore.

The cool-as-f*ck Italian boasted an impressive 53% win ratio before Chelsea were the all-conquering force they’d later become. He also delivered three trophies – the FA Cup, League Cup and Cup Winners’ Cup.

2. Roberto Di Matteo

This would be the romantic’s choice for the top spot.

Already a hero at Stamford Bridge, he swanned in, soon delivering both the FA Cup and long-awaited Champions League seemingly purely off the back of his impeccably joyous vibes.

Ruthlessly sacking him later that year still feels a bit harsh, but if we’re honest we couldn’t have ever seen Di Matteo delivering long-term success. Sailing off into the sunset with ol’ big ears in tow would’ve been the perfect goodbye.

1. Thomas Tuchel

We’ve gone with our head rather than our heart with this one.

While Chelsea’s first Champions League triumph was built on Di Matteo’s vibes, their 2021 image was purely in the image of Tommy Tactics.

Switching them to a back three worked wonders. The decision to sack a club icon like Lampard was a bold call, but it’s difficult to argue it wasn’t vindicated. Few, if any, mid-season appointments have had such an impressive instant impact.

Further down the line, his stubborn, volatile manner made him an awkward fit with the ownership structure BlueCo put in place, but history has been kind to his side of the argument.