Ancelotti realistic about prospects

Soccer: Carlo Ancelotti has insisted he would not care if Roman Abramovich failed to tell him to his face that he had been sacked as Chelsea manager. Ancelotti appears set to lose his job next week at a meeting with the club's hierarchy.

Despite the ultimate decision over his fate resting with billionaire owner Abramovich, the Russian is unlikely to deliver the news himself but rather let that fall to either chief executive Ron Gourlay or chairman Bruce Buck.

Having masterminded Chelsea’s first ever double last season, Ancelotti could be forgiven for thinking he is owed an explanation from Abramovich himself if he is given the boot.

But he said yesterday: “It doesn’t matter.”

The double win is unlikely to spare Ancelotti the chop, with the Italian having followed it up by overseeing the Blues’ worst season of the Abramovich era. He has still managed to guide them to second place in the Premier League after their worst league run for almost 15 years threatened to see them fail to finish in the top four.

At almost any other club, finishing runners up would be considered a success but the lack of public backing for Ancelotti since Chelsea crashed out of the Champions League last month appears the latest demonstration of how failure to win silverware is simply not tolerated at Stamford Bridge.

Yet, Ancelotti had no complaints about the support he has had from above.

“Until the last day I work here, the club have given me the support,” he said. “Also in this moment, when things were not so good, this is enough for me. If they want to change, it’s their decision.”

But he also hinted that expecting Chelsea to win a trophy every season was unrealistic.

He said: “To win here every year is not easy because it’s a very competitive competition, the Premier League. There are a lot of teams involved, Manchester United, City, Arsenal, Tottenham, Liverpool — so it’s not easy to win every year.”

As well as being tasked with ending Chelsea’s long wait for Champions League glory when he was appointed two years ago, Ancelotti was challenged by Abramovich to give Chelsea a new “identity”.

While that would appear a slightly nebulous directive, it is well known Abramovich has long wanted to see Chelsea playing in a more cavalier fashion. Ancelotti certainly fulfilled that objective last season as Chelsea scored a record 103 Premier League goals, but this season?

“This season was a little bit different,” Ancelotti said. “I changed the shape sometimes, 4-4-2 sometimes and other times 4-3-3. Last year, the identity was very clear. This year, too, in my opinion.

“Though maybe, sometimes, when I changed the shape to play more defensively in some periods of the season, we lost a little bit of possession, control of the game. That was our choice.

“To change and play more defensively because it was a period of the season when our possession was not so efficient, so I wanted to play more on the counter attack — when we played against Copenhagen in the last 16 of the Champions League, for example.”