Former Chelsea Football Club head coach Liam Rosenior has fired shots at the media in England for how he was treated during his time in charge of the Blues.
Rosenior, 42, is enjoying life again in France and currently sits fourth in Ligue 1 as manager of Paris FC. The up and coming English coach was dismissed by Chelsea in April of this year after only being appointed in January.
Results and player buy-in were seen as a big issue because despite starting with six out of seven wins, decisions such as replacing Robert Sanchez with Filip Jorgensen for a crucial UEFA Champions League fixture away at PSG did not go down well with the squad.
Chelsea lost seven of their last eight matches before Rosenior's dismissal, and went on a run of five Premier League matches without scoring, a Blues record only previously seen in 1912.
The hardest experience of Rosenior's life
In an interview with So Foot, a Paris-based French football magazine, and aggregated by Sport Witness, Rosenior details how despite winning his first few matches in charge of Chelsea, he was under heavy media spotlight.
He said: "It was the best experience of my life, and the hardest too. It was fantastic, even though it only lasted four months.”
“I don’t want to go into details now; I’ll talk about it one day, when the time is right. But in a country where tolerance is an important value, what happened there has nothing to do with football.”
Pressed further by So Foot to provide more detail, Rosenior responded: "Actually, the moment that worried me the most was at the beginning, when we went through that five-game winning streak.”
“Any club would have been happy with such a run, but not Chelsea. You get good results and you’re in the spotlight."
The messaging from Rosenior feels a bit disingenuous. Chelsea are a club that have won several league and European titles, and clubs of this stature do not get carried away one way or the other after a string of good results. It seems bizarre that Rosenior may have been implying that he was expecting pats on the back for a good start.
Perhaps Rosenior was looking too much at social media. Many fans at the time questioned whether he was the man for the long term, or whether the early wins were just 'new manager bounce' results following the departure of Enzo Maresca.
After all, he was hired from Chelsea's sister-club Strasbourg and had previously been sacked as manager of Hull City. There was validity in suggesting that Rosenior did not deserve such a huge job based on merit alone.
However, what would have mattered the most is the messaging he would have been receiving at the time from the Chelsea hierarchy, which would have been that of major support after working together already for several months as part of the Blueco model with Strasbourg.
In any case, even if he was under the spotlight win lose or draw, that is what you sign up for when you become Chelsea head coach. Look at Xabi Alonso, a man with far more stature and skin in the game as both player and manager, even he has been questioned by the media lately for some of his decisions and tactical game plans. Dealing with questions, criticism and feedback is partly why managers get paid so much money. Some can deal with it and some crumble, Rosenior was the latter.
Bullying claims
More seriously, Rosenior seem to hint that he was bullied when he was Chelsea head coach, and that people mocked him for what he wore and how he spoke. He referenced a moment where in his view, the media made fun of him for handing Alejandro Garnacho tactical notes at home to PSG when Chelsea were down to ten men.
Continuing on with the interview with So Foot, he said: "They made fun of those instructions I gave Garnacho on a scrap of paper when we were down to 10 men against PSG. The clothes I wore became a joke, the way I spoke too. I’m not a joke!"
Of course, it would send a bad message to the squad if their manager was giving up on the team tactically and not coaching, but the context of this moment was that there was seven minutes left in the game and Chelsea were already 3-0 down with a red card but more importantly, 8-2 down on aggregate scoreline to PSG.
Was it really neccesary to hand out instructions on paper at that moment of the tie, what realistic positive outcome did Rosenior expect to happen apart from having the cameras pointed on him and Garnacho?
Garnacho even slightly shook his head as he walked off almost shamefully with the paper in his hand to go and distribute to his teammates. At that point in the tie, all realistic positive outcomes were off the table, and instead, this simply seemed like a coach unnaturally trying to impose an authority on a group of big name stars.
Rosenior vowed to So Foot to expand more 'one day' on 'what really happened'. It will be interesting to understand what moments he felt that he was mocked for how he spoke and what he wore. One instance he could be referring to on the speaking part is when he claimed that his players wanted to 'respect the ball' after forming a team huddle in the centre circle ahead of a home defeat to Newcastle in the Premier League in March.
What made the incident more viral was the fact that Referee Paul Tierney was standing next to the ball at the centre spot and stayed there, so he ended up trapped in the middle of the Chelsea huddle. It looked ridiculous and drew widespread attention at the time.
Paul Merson, a boyhood Chelsea fan and ex Arsenal player, responded at the time to both of the above incidents and bashed Liam Rosenior : "You don't want to change Liam Rosenior, that's the person he is - very honest. But there's probably a couple of things where he probably would come away and go: why did I say that?"
"Respect the ball? Don't say it. Just don't say it. I didn't like the Alejandro Garnacho incident against PSG. Even he was walking over thinking: what am I doing with this note? Just stop it."
Rosenior however, was dissapointed and felt there was more important things to focus on. Chelsea soon moved the placement of the huddle in the next games.
Media to blame for poor results?
What was particularly fascinating is that Rosenior seems to believe that whatever narrative he feels the media portrayed about him being Chelsea head coach, also then snowballed into the trajectory of the club.
He said: “In England, there’s this preconceived notion of what a Premier League coach should be, how he should behave. You have to conform to that standard. People who know me know that I’m someone who tries to be sincere and authentic"
“But I don’t have control over how the media describes me or talks about me. What I’ve understood now, and this is important for all coaches worldwide, is that social media, or the media in general, can dictate public opinion about the quality of a player or a coach.”
“This isn’t new, of course, but the biggest lesson from my time at Chelsea is knowing that they are also capable of constructing the entire narrative around a club’s trajectory.”
At the end of the day the most important thing is results. It is a results based business and Rosenior knows that, so comments around what the media might have said about where Chelsea will or may go under his leadership at the time seem pretty irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.
The fact of the matter is that he failed to win over a dressing room of stars and did not provide enough tactical evidence for Chelsea to stick with him after a poor run of results.
Perhaps some comments, tweets, videos, labels or questions were unfair towards Rosenior, but guess what, you aren't going to get everything plain sailing, only certain characters and personalities survive at the highest level.
Instead of living and truly learning about factors he could have controlled, Rosenior seems bitter and is passing blame onto external factors as to why he didn't succeed at Chelsea.
For that, a character like Xabi Alonso, who has played and managed at the highest level, seems more fitting to handle the pressure and at times potentially unfair labels and judgement on the club and himself.
Sources close to Chelsea FC declined to comment on the interview when approached.
