Chelsea sacked Liam Rosenior after 106 days as head coach, and former England midfielder Joe Cole said the club’s owners must shoulder the blame for a pattern that is choking the job’s appeal.
The sources say Rosenior managed 11 wins in 23 matches across all competitions before his dismissal, that Chelsea were seventh in the Premier League table at the time of the report, and that Tuesday’s 3-0 defeat at Brighton became the fifth consecutive league loss in which the club failed to score — their worst such run since 1912.
Calum McFarlane has taken up the role of interim head coach for the rest of the season and was due to begin on Sunday in Chelsea’s FA Cup semi-final against Leeds, the sources say, while the club’s next permanent head coach is now being discussed amid concern over whether top managers will be willing to join.
Cole put the responsibility squarely on ownership. "The owners (BlueCo) are the ones who need to shoulder the blame because they’re appointing the managers and they’re putting the system in place that’s not allowing the managers to thrive," he said.
He went on to voice frustration at the absence of any apparent internal reckoning. "The sad thing is there doesn’t seem to be any kind of appraisal or genuine enquiry into why this isn’t working at the football club," Cole said.
Those comments came alongside praise for Xabi Alonso, the Spaniard who was sacked by Real Madrid after 34 games in charge following a spell at Bayer Leverkusen in which he unexpectedly won the Bundesliga. "I’d love to see Xabi Alonso at the club. I loved watching his [Bayer] Leverkusen team. I think he was hard done by at Real Madrid. He understands massive clubs. He’s a winner," Cole said, though he added bluntly: "The sad thing is, I don’t think Xabi Alonso would even consider Chelsea."
The contrast is stark: Alonso left Real Madrid after 34 games despite winning more than 70 percent of his matches in charge, and his Leverkusen success underlines why Cole would like him at Stamford Bridge — yet Cole thinks the current state of the Chelsea job makes that unlikely.
Cole said the chaos around the club is visible to prospective candidates. "You see all the news coming out of Chelsea of people pulling in different directions so what’s the easiest thing to do? Just sack the manager, and it’s sad. I feel sorry for Liam. He’s been thrown to the wolves," he said. He warned that the churn is self-defeating: "Top managers worth their salt will not want to come into the job."
For now Chelsea’s hierarchy must decide between candidates while the interim coach prepares for the FA Cup semi-final, and supporters will be watching whether ownership follows Cole’s prescription to examine structure and accountability rather than defaulting to another short-term fix.
Cole has also named Carlo Ancelotti and Pep Guardiola among the managers he would like to see at Chelsea, but he acknowledged realism limits the pool; his broader point is clear: unless BlueCo changes course, elite candidates — including Alonso — are unlikely to accept a role that, by Cole’s account, is not set up for them to thrive.
