Chelsea legend Pat Nevin insists Maurizio Sarri has had a “brilliant season” and Blues fans have become spoiled by recent successes.
Nevin feels under-pressure Sarri deserves more credit for finishing third, getting Champions League football and reaching two major finals in his debut year, and that the “once in a lifetime” success of the early days of Roman Abramovich’s reign with the likes of Didier Drogba, John Terry and Frank Lampard has left Chelsea supporters always demanding more.
Ahead of Wednesday's Europa League Final against Arsenal, the former Chelsea and Scotland winger turned pundit said: “I know most Chelsea fans would disagree, but I think this has been a brilliant season. Most fans of a certain age, who remember the hard times of the 1970s and the fallow years, understand what’s happening.
“They know they have lived through a golden era in the last 15 years and that teams with a spine of Cech, Terry, Lampard and Drogba only come round once in a lifetime. That was one amazing team and one golden era. If you are fortunate enough to see a team as good as that once in 100 years of following a club, you don’t know how lucky you are.
“Even if all those players have gone now, the club has still enjoyed a good amount of success – the title one year, the FA Cup the next – and even in a season of transition, they have come third in the Premier League and reached two major finals.
“They came within the width of a goalpost of beating Manchester City, arguably the finest team we’ve ever seen in the Premier League, in the League Cup Final – and City had hit them for six only a couple of weeks earlier.
“Sometimes you need a year or two in the Premier League to find your feet, find your range.
"Sarri went out to play Man City at their own game at the Etihad – bad mistake, but he needed to learn from that mistake and he did. He learned his lesson and the League Cup Final was almost a tactical triumph.”
Nevin also believes Chelsea’s revolving-door policy on managers is wrong and they should stick with Sarri, with the Italian fully aware the Europa League Final could be his last game in charge.
“I like him (Sarri), I like what he’s done and, to be honest, this idea of changing the manager every year or two is something I’m not entirely comfortable with,” he said. “You can’t argue that it hasn’t worked, because Chelsea keep winning trophies – but I don’t think they can keep doing it much longer.
“There will always be good managers out there, but the bigger problem is finance: If you pay off a manager, you have to pay off his staff as well. And when a new man comes in, he will always want to bring in half a dozen players to put his stamp on the team.
“It’s not like it was in Roman’s early days, although having said that, if Sarri does go and they brought in Frank or JT, I’m sure they would be given ample backing in the market and they would probably bring even more trophies to Stamford Bridge.”
Nevin, 55, who had five years at Stamford Bridge in the 1980s, admits he is jealous of the Abramovich era as extra finance would have allowed them to be closer challengers to the dominance of Liverpool and Everton in those days.
That, in itself, should be a reminder to modern-day Chelsea fans just how lucky they are.
He added: “When I look back to the days when I was a Chelsea player, I do wish – now and again – that we’d had a wee bit more money. Not necessarily an oligarch’s fortune, but just that little bit of spending power which could have made a difference.
“There were a couple of seasons, one in particular, when we were challenging. We were right in the mix. For the title. We were right in it.
“We were good enough to chase Liverpool all the way, Everton were up there as well, and we were an attacking side with so much to offer – but it only took a couple of injuries for it to fall apart.
“If we’d had any real depth of quality — and you could buy players quite late into the season because the transfer window was open until March — we might have made our own bit of history. But from challenging for three or four years, we fell away again, culminating in relegation in 1988, with police horses on the pitch and all sorts.
“I look back on those days as a fantastic time, when Chelsea had a really entertaining team, which is why I played the game: It was never about money, it was never just about winning – I wanted to be an entertainer.
“Maybe it’s just as well we didn’t have an oligarch in charge 30 years ago – otherwise he would have gone out and signed a player of Eden Hazard’s quality and I’d never have got a game!”
