Liam Rosenior fired as Chelsea manager after dreadful run and less than 4 months in job

Liam Rose­nior has been fired as Chelsea man­ag­er af­ter a des­per­ate Pre­mier League run of five loss­es with­out scor­ing a goal.

Chelsea con­firmed his de­par­ture on Wednes­day, less than four months in­to the job and just four days be­fore it plays in an FA Cup semi­fi­nal at Wem­b­ley.

As­sis­tant Calum Mc­Far­lane will take charge on an in­ter­im ba­sis un­til the end of the sea­son.

“This has not been a de­ci­sion the club has tak­en light­ly, how­ev­er re­cent re­sults and per­for­mances have fall­en be­low the nec­es­sary stan­dards with still so much more to play for this sea­son,” Chelsea said in a state­ment.

The team that won the Club World Cup last year now looks like­ly to miss out on next sea­son’s Cham­pi­ons League. That would mean a huge fi­nan­cial hit for a club that has spent bil­lions of dol­lars un­der U.S. own­ers Clear­lake Cap­i­tal and Todd Boehly.

The five-game los­ing streak is its worst since 1912 — the same year the Ti­tan­ic sank.

Tues­day’s 3-0 de­feat to Brighton proved the last straw for Rose­nior, an in­ex­pe­ri­enced coach at the high­est lev­el who was hired from Chelsea’s sis­ter club Stras­bourg in Jan­u­ary. It was a sev­enth loss in eight games in all com­pe­ti­tions.

Chelsea has won one of its last nine in the league, is sev­enth in the stand­ings and sev­en points adrift of the top five, who all qual­i­fy for the Cham­pi­ons League.

Rose­nior, 41, turned on his play­ers fol­low­ing the Brighton match, say­ing the per­for­mance was “in­de­fen­si­ble” and that “some­thing needs to change dras­ti­cal­ly.”

The club’s hi­er­ar­chy clear­ly agreed, de­spite say­ing Rose­nior had “al­ways con­duct­ed him­self with the high­est in­tegri­ty and pro­fes­sion­al­ism”.

Rose­nior re­placed Club World Cup-win­ning coach En­zo Maresca in Jan­u­ary and on­ly took charge of 23 games.

He start­ed im­pres­sive­ly with a run of six wins in sev­en games, but things un­rav­elled quick­ly in re­cent weeks, in­clud­ing elim­i­na­tion from the Cham­pi­ons League at the hands of Paris Saint-Ger­main.

His tenure was brought to an end de­spite Chelsea prepar­ing for its FA Cup semi­fi­nal against Leeds on Sun­day.

Rose­nior be­comes the fifth per­ma­nent man­ag­er to lose his job since Clear­lake and Boehly bought one of Eng­lish soc­cer’s most sto­ried clubs in 2022. Now the search is on for a sixth to try to bring sus­tained suc­cess.

“As the club works to bring sta­bil­i­ty to the head coach po­si­tion, we will un­der­take a process of self-re­flec­tion to make the right long-term ap­point­ment,” Chelsea said.

Rose­nior’s de­par­ture comes af­ter fans of the two-time Cham­pi­ons League win­ner and six-time Eng­lish cham­pi­on be­gan to protest against the U.S. own­ers.

While there have been tro­phies, the Club World Cup and Eu­ropa Con­fer­ence League last sea­son, this could be the third cam­paign out of four in which it has failed to qual­i­fy for the Cham­pi­ons League.

Un­der for­mer own­er Ro­man Abramovich, Chelsea was one of the most dom­i­nant teams in Eu­rope, win­ning a full set of tro­phies, in­clud­ing two Cham­pi­ons Leagues and five Pre­mier League ti­tles.

It last won the Cham­pi­ons League in 2021, the year be­fore Abramovich was forced to sell the club af­ter be­ing sanc­tioned by the British gov­ern­ment in the wake of Rus­sia’s war with Ukraine. —(AP)

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Sto­ry by JAMES ROB­SON | As­so­ci­at­ed Press