Southend to face Chelsea

LONDON – Chelsea travel to Southend for an FA Cup replay today where an upset win for the minnows would leave Roman Abramovich’s club in crisis and manager Luiz Felipe Scolari’s job in jeopardy.

Having just lost 3-0 to title rivals Manchester United in the Premier League these are tough times for a club that planned to dominate world football following the arrival of their Russian billionaire owner.
Chelsea justified that ambition when Abramovich appointed Jose Mourinho as manager and they won two league titles, two League Cups and an FA Cup during the Portuguese’s first few years in charge.
But last season Mourinho was sacked, replaced by Avram Grant, and Chelsea failed to win a single trophy despite reaching the Champions League Final in Moscow, where they lost on a penalty shootout to United.
The ensuing departure of Grant, replaced by Scolari, was expected to return the London club to the path of ever-greater success.
Instead the Blues have been knocked out of the League Cup by lower division Burnley and dropped 14 points at home so far this season – including defeats by Arsenal and Liverpool.
Meanwhile their performance at Old Trafford on Sunday was of such mental fragility that many critics believe they are out of the title race already. It has all left Scolari, a coach who won the World Cup with Brazil, under intense pressure ahead of a banana-skin Cup tie against a Southend team who play in English football’s third tier but who still managed a 1-1 draw at Stamford Bridge a fortnight ago.
It’s all a far cry from the Mourinho days and Scolari is further hampered by a new era of spending cuts.
The worldwide credit crunch is said to have hurt even Abramovich’s finances and the arrival of other wealthy foreign owners, including Sheikh Mansour at Manchester City, have left him unable to dominate the transfer market in the way he did when spending more than 50 million pounds on Andriy Schevchenko and Didier Drogba. – Nampa-AFP