Sherwood: ‘If you don’t win games you get sacked’
Tim Sherwood has admiited that his job is on the line unless he can reverse Aston Villa’s fading fortunes, starting with the trip to face Chelsea at Stamford Bridge this lunchtime.
His side are 18th in the Barclays Premier League table and have not won since the opening day. The Villa manager insisted yesterday that he is fully aware that, if the situation does not improve, he can expect to find himself out of a job. “If you don’t win games, you get sacked,” he said.
Sherwood is adamant, though that the sale of Christian Benteke this summer was as much of a blow to his club as Liverpool losing Luis Suárez to Barcelona or Tottenham Hotspur letting Gareth Bale decamp to Real Madrid.
He feels that the club’s toil should be “put into perspective” by Villa losing this summer not only Benteke, a player who he claims would not have been sold “for £100 million” had he not had a release clause in his contract, but their captain, Fabian Delph, and Tom Cleverley too. “We lost our three best players,” he said. “It is like Liverpool losing Suárez or Spurs losing Gareth Bale, absolutely. We scraped through last season and were the worst team left in the Premier League. That should put it in perspective.
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“If [Benteke] did not have a clause in his contract, £100 million would not have taken him away from us. He was not worth selling for any amount. No money can guarantee you Premier League survival. That player could. Now we have to find players who can score goals. “You do drop [psychologically] but we cannot afford to. We have to make sure we stay at least where we were, or higher. We knew it was not going to be easy and I think all the decision-makers at the club appreciated that.”
That understanding has done little to ease the mounting pressure on Sherwood. He is adamant that Randy Lerner, Villa’s owner, and Tom Fox, the chief executive, informed him at the start of the season that finishing 17th was “the objective” at the start of the season.
Sherwood insists that was a recognition not only of the losses of Benteke and Delph but acknowledgment, too, that the club’s youth-focused recruitment strategy — driven by Hendrik Almstadt, the technical director, and Paddy Reilly, the director of recruitment — would take time to bear fruit.
“They factored all of those things in,” he said. “[They knew] it was going to be a difficult period for us. As a group, we decided to go with the philosophy of youth so we could build for the future. That is why I am sitting in this seat, because I had a record of developing young players previously.
“They will benefit from a year in the Premier League. It looks like it will be a tough year. But they will grow from that, like the manager will.”
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Sherwood is well aware, though, that he will get the chance to do so only if he can turn results around quickly. “I am not asking to be cut any slack,” he said.
Words by Rory Smith
Mourinho: ‘I’ll still be in charge even if we finish in mid-table’
José Mourinho insisted last night that he will not be sacked even if Chelsea finish the Barclays Premier League season in mid-table. The Chelsea manager was given a public vote of confidence by Roman Abramovich after his side’s 3-1 home defeat by Southampton a fortnight ago and is convinced his job is safe irrespective of how they fare during the campaign.
Mourinho has presided over Chelsea’s worst start to a season since 1978, but the manager is unconcerned. During the Abramovich era, Chelsea have sacked their manager on every occasion on which they have looked like struggling to finish in the top four — with Luiz Felipe Scolari, André Villas-Boas and Roberto Di Matteo all departing in mid-season — but Mourinho is adamant that the club have changed their philosophy and that he will be treated as a special case.
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“I will still be here even if we finish mid-table,” Mourinho said. “It’s different this time for many reasons. I don’t think it’s different just now, but since the moment I came back to the club in 2013. When I had my first conversation with the owner and the board in 2013.”
Mourinho welcomed Abramovich’s vote of confidence after he challenged the Russian to sack him during a seven-minute monologue in the wake of the defeat by Southampton, but was heartened by a private conversation with Chelsea’s owner after the game.
Abramovich left his seat at Stamford Bridge before the final whistle to make sure he was present to greet Mourinho in the dressing room, where he offered him his support before meeting the rest of the club’s board, who decided to make that message public.
“The important thing is the owner and the board’s message to myself, and before the statement came out I was having feedback from the owner and board,” Mourinho said. “So the statement was not something new for me.
“Why did the statement come out? Maybe to close you off. Maybe to stop the rumour that I could be on my way out, because the support to myself was not made by the statement but by a normal conversation that we’ve had many times.
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“I met the owner before dinner, so when I went to dinner I knew. But even before that I knew what brought me here. I know the conversation we had two years ago. I knew what made me sign a new contract, and the reasons the owner and board decided to give me a new contract. They didn’t have to. So what I know is what I know from them.”
Mourinho remains at a loss to explain Chelsea’s poor form, but is adamant that he retains the backing of his players after suggestions of unrest. The Portuguese will risk upsetting more players with his team selection today, as Ruben Loftus-Cheek is expected to start his first league match of the season in central midfield, with Kurt Zouma likely to come in at right back in place of Branislav Ivanovic, who is out for three weeks with a hamstring injury.
Diego Costa returns from suspension to lead the line, with Mourinho praising the striker’s honesty in admitting he was overweight when he reported back for pre-season.
“He’s an honest guy,” Mourinho said. “A guy that says that is not, for sure, the leader of a ‘mutiny’. He’s the kind of guy who assumes his own responsibility. It was a consequence of a bad approach, but also the consequence of a difficult last third of the season: suspension, injury, not playing and not participating in the best period of the season, when you become champions.
“He goes on holiday to Brazil, where the food is much better than here. For a Brazilian, the food in Brazil is divine. He stays there at home and comes back in bad condition. He could use many excuses for our bad moment, but chose himself and his condition as one of the factors. So respect.”
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Words by Matt Hughes
Unlikely sack race rivals
Tim Sherwood
Appointed: February 14, 2015
League position: 18th
Record since appointment:
P26 W10 D2 L14
Win percentage: 38.50
Premier League form: WLLDLLLL
Odds for the sack: 5-4 (Coral)
José Mourinho
Appointed: June 3, 2013
League position: 16th
Record since appointment:
P123 W75 D22 L26
Win percentage: 60.98
Premier League form: DLWLLWDL
Odds for the sack: 6-1 (Coral)