Rosenior Says 106-Day Chelsea Spell Had “Nothing to Do With Football”

• Liam Rosenior says the way his 106 days as Chelsea head coach ended had nothing to do with football, per Daily Mail.
• Chelsea lost five consecutive games without scoring before he was relieved of his duties, the last a 3-0 defeat at Brighton with no shot on target.
• Rosenior singles out the media, and the jokes about his clothes, his speech and a note to Alejandro Garnacho.

Rosenior Blames a Media Snowball for How His Chelsea Exit Played Out

Liam Rosenior has given his first account of his 106 days as Chelsea head coach. The 42-year-old Englishman, now in charge of Paris FC, says the way it ended was not about football:

“It was the best experience of my life, and the hardest, too. It was fantastic, even though it only lasted four months. I don’t want to go into details now. I’ll talk about it one day, when the time is right. But in a country where tolerance is an important value, what happened there has nothing to do with football.”

He declined to go into details on the remark about tolerance. Pressed on it, he did say where he believes the trouble started.

What He Says Worried Him Most

Rosenior was relieved of his duties after Chelsea lost five consecutive games without scoring. The fifth defeat, a 3-0 loss at Brighton in which the team did not manage a shot on target, saw the players accused of downing tools to get rid of their head coach. Rosenior, who managed Strasbourg before Chelsea, now coaches Paris FC in Ligue 1.

Asked to explain his comment, he went back to the start of his time at Stamford Bridge, to a five-game winning streak:

“I know, I answered without answering it. Actually, the moment that worried me the most was at the beginning, when we went through that five-game winning streak.”

“Any club would have been happy with such a run, but not Chelsea. You get good results and you’re in the spotlight. Then, there was a kind of snowball effect in the media.”

“They made fun of those instructions I gave (Alejandro) Garnacho on a scrap of paper when we were down to 10 men against PSG (during the second leg in March as they lost 8-2 on aggregate).”

“The clothes I wore became a joke, the way I spoke, too. I’m not a joke! You’re the first people I’m talking to about this, and probably the last for a long time, but one day, I’ll tell you what really happened.”

Online, Rosenior was compared to David Brent from The Office and routinely mocked as “LinkedIn Liam”. He did not say whether “the media” meant the reporters who covered Chelsea or social media.

The Moments That Drew Ridicule

One of them came before a Premier League loss to Newcastle, when Chelsea’s players huddled around the referee Paul Tierney in the centre circle. Rosenior defended the routine and described it as a way to “respect the ball”. The words were ridiculed on social media. The idea came from Willie Isa, Chelsea’s hire from rugby league.

Rosenior also spoke about the standard he feels is applied to coaches in England:

“In England, there’s this preconceived notion of what a Premier League coach should be, how he should behave. You have to conform to that standard. People who know me know that I’m someone who tries to be sincere and authentic.”

“But I don’t have control over how the media describes me or talks about me. What I’ve understood now, and this is important for all coaches worldwide, is that social media, or the media in general, can dictate public opinion about the quality of a player or a coach.”

“This isn’t new, of course, but the biggest lesson from my time at Chelsea is knowing that they are also capable of constructing the entire narrative around a club’s trajectory.”

What Reporters at Chelsea Saw

Reporters who attended Rosenior’s press conferences believe he was treated kindly, but he did not always help himself. His decision to suddenly drop Robert Sanchez for Filip Jorgensen backfired, most of all in the Champions League last-16 first-leg loss away at PSG. Rosenior defended Jørgensen after an error in a Champions League defeat, but when Jorgensen was injured, Sanchez returned to the starting line-up with his confidence dented.

He also created a stir in the Arsenal warm-up row, when he argued with a member of Arsenal’s support staff for encroaching in Chelsea’s half in their warm-up before the second leg of the Carabao Cup semi-final. Afterwards he accused his opponents of breaking the “etiquettes in football”.

What Comes Next

For now Rosenior has given his side without the details. Gary Neville criticised Chelsea’s owners after the sacking, and Rosenior has moved on to Paris FC. He has said the full story is still to come, once the time is right.