Less than a week after seeing his side come agonisingly close to winning the Champions League, Avram Grant has lost his job as coach of Chelsea.
The Israeli’s contract was terminated after just eight months in charge and comes after 2 days of talks between Grant and Chelsea’s chief executive Peter Kenyon.
After taking over from Jose Mourinho, Grant led the team to runners up spot in the Premier League as well as the Carling Cup final, which they lost to Spurs, and the Champions League final in Moscow.
Chelsea said in a statement on their website that the search for a new coach would now begin and that the club will make no further comment.
The statement said: “Chelsea Football Club can confirm that Avram Grant has had his contract as manager terminated today. This follows meetings over the last two days.
“Everybody at Chelsea FC would like to thank Avram for his contribution since taking over as manager last September.
“We will now be concentrating all our efforts on identifying a new manager for Chelsea and there will be no further comment until that appointment is made.”
Russia coach Guus Hiddink, fellow Dutchman Frank Rijkaard and Manchester City boss Sven-Goran Eriksson are among the early favourites to replace Grant.
Both Kenyon and chairman Bruce Buck paved the way for change by insisting that Chelsea’s performance this season was simply “not good enough”.
Buck said: “We have very high expectations at Chelsea and a couple of second place finishes is just not good enough for us.
“So although we never would have thought in September when Jose Mourinho left that we would be able to make it into a Champions League final as we did – and that is fantastic – Chelsea are here to win trophies.
“So although it was an excellent season, we are still disappointed.”
I feel sorry for Avram. He inherited a bad start to the season and some players that did not want to play for him, yet he still managed a Champions League final and a runners up spot in the Premier League.
The Chelsea board will be frightening managers off, they are becoming a Real Madrid!
Chelsea is becoming a sorry football team. Who fires the person who leads you to the Champions League final? To make it all even they’ll have to start firing their top players.