Luiz Felipe Scolari's shock departure means there are now two holes to fill on the Chelsea bench.
Whether it is Carlo Ancelotti, Frank Rijkaard, Roberto Mancini or Guus Hiddink who fills one of them, it is who the Brazilian's successor chooses to plug the other gap that may be more significant.
Of the myriad factors which combined to bring Scolari's tenure at Stamford Bridge to an end, the loss of Steve Clarke as assistant manager may have been the most important. Clarke was the last survivor of the heady days of Jose Mourinho, a trusted confidante of the players and the man credited with fine-tuning the minutiae of the system that made Chelsea great.
Players complained Scolari's training regime was not sufficiently intensive. Clarke's domain. Chelsea leaked goals from set-pieces, with Scolari flitting between zonal and man marking. Clarke's domain. Their full-backs negated by blanket defences at Stamford Bridge, Chelsea looked guileless and shapeless. Clarke's domain.
Allowing the Scot to team up with Gianfranco Zola at West Ham may have been a bigger mistake than Roman Abramovich not opening up his chequebook to rejuvenate the squad or Peter Kenyon's failure to land Robinho. West Ham, resurgent under the Italian, look compact, solid, sharp and well-drilled. All the things Scolari's Chelsea were not.
Most managers would bear witness to the importance of the right-hand man. Ask Sir Alex Ferguson, who missed out on the Premier League title in 2002 after losing lieutenant Steve McClaren and failing to replace him.
When Carlos Queiroz was brought in, the championship returned to Old Trafford. When the Portuguese left for Real Madrid, United slumped again. Ferguson returned Queiroz as soon as he could.
Or perhaps Rafa Benitez could provide testimony. His long-time associate, Pako Ayesteran, was the link between training ground and boot room, the man who knew the players inside out. When he left the club in 2007, Liverpool's form dipped, and it was small wonder that Benitez acted as quickly as he could to replace him as soon as his contract expired last summer.
Arsene Wenger has Pat Rice, Martin O'Neill has John Robertson. Aside from Clarke, Mourinho took all of his staff with him from Porto to Chelsea and from there to Inter.
The assistants are sounding boards, critics and friends. They handle the details managers cannot. They are the men players complain to, tasked with quieting unrest.
In Clarke, Chelsea had a man imbued with the spirit of the club, who explained to the world-class mercenaries brought to west London by Abramovich's billions what it meant to play in blue. It would never have been easy to replace him. Chelsea's error was getting into a position where they had to.
Chelsea kingmakers:
Eugene TenenbaumRoman Abramovich's trusted deputy, a director at the club and a former head of corporate finance at Sibneft, the oil company which made Abramovich his fortune. Tenenbaum was head of Millhouse Finance, Abramovich's advisors, and has now become the Russian's man on the ground in London. It is Tenenbaum who reports to Abramovich on the state of affairs at Chelsea and whose opinion was key in deciding to dispense with Scolari.
Bruce Buck Chelsea's chairman, American Bruce Buck, is the only other investor in the club apart from Abramovich. Buck, a season ticket holder at Stamford Bridge since the early 1990s, owns one share to the Russian's 84 million. He met Abramovich through working on takeovers for Sibneft, and prefers to keep a low profile, allowing Peter Kenyon to be the public face of the club.
Clarke became assistant to new manager José Mourinho in the summer of 2004 and was a part of the coaching set-up which saw Chelsea win two Premier League titles, an FA Cup and two League Cups over three seasons. When Mourinho departed from Chelsea in September 2007, Clarke's services were retained by new manager Avram Grant, although Henk ten Cate was brought in as co-assistant. Following Avram Grant's departure in May 2008 there was increasing speculation where Clarke's future lay. There were rumours that Clarke would be installed as assistant manager to David Moyes at Everton FC. Further speculation arose when co-assistant, Henk ten Cate had his contract terminated on the 29 May, five days after Grant was sacked. On May 31st 2008, he was linked to the Leicester job vacated by Ian Holloway, who was sacked after guiding the club to relegation to League 1 for the first time in their history. He was also linked with the job after Gary Megson left to join Chelsea's Premiership rivals Bolton. However new Chelsea manager Luiz Felipe Scolari decided to retain Clarke citing his 'importance to the club's history'.
