How AVB worked his way out

A background picture on his BlackBerry messenger account shows Andre Villas-Boas and some of the Chelsea players celebrating on the touchline after their 2-1 victory over Wolverhampton Wanderers in January.

Certain members of the squad believed that image was a sign of the manager’s immaturity, betraying the fact that, at 34, he was not much older than them and lacking experience at a club of that size.
It was a brutal assessment and an unfair one. Although football dressing rooms can be cruel places, there is something peculiarly hard about the environment at Chelsea. How else to explain the way Villas-Boas’s hopes and his status at the club have crumbled so dramatically?
Perhaps he was not up to the task. There were several obvious mistakes. The treatment of Alex and Nicolas Anelka, annexed and moved on, the sensitivity to criticism and the odd crouching stance on the touchline did not help. But another of Europe’s leading clubs is likely to snap him up and he may well return to haunt his previous employer as Jose Mourinho, now the favourite to return, has done. Maybe the brutal truth is that the dysfunctionality belongs to Chelsea.
The sacking of Carlo Ancelotti last May, a year after he won a Premier League and FA Cup double, led one club official to despair that Chelsea had effectively told the world a manager would be dismissed if he failed to win silverware every season. But this is worse than that. Chelsea have sent out a message that they are a club in which the players remain more powerful than the manager.
It was to be different with Villas-Boas. He arrived last summer to be charged with a special project: change the team and style of play.
Roman Abramovich encouraged him to treat all the players as equals, and then backed off. The talk around Chelsea was who would be brave enough to drop Frank Lampard? Not because it was Lampard, but because the midfielder was a symbol of an ageing team and of players who were fixtures in the starting line-up.
It was deemed Guus Hiddink would not do it but that Villas-Boas might have the youth and vigour for change. He also liked to play expansive football and Abramovich always prefers to hire young people. It was hoped Villas-Boas would be like Mourinho, but without the confrontational edge towards his superiors.

Source