Avram Grant’s Chelsea Ship Taking on Water

Has Avram Grant lost the reins at Chelsea? Sunday’s Carling Cup loss to Tottenham is the 10 percent of iceberg showing above the surface of a simmering ocean of discontent (how’s that for prose?)

There’s plenty of evidence swirling that Grant is over his head, that he cannot lead the most expensive team on the globe, and more importantly, that he cannot manage these men.

Where was Michael Ballack during the Carling Cup final? The German has been a flop for the most part at The Bridge, but of late, he’s been in good form. Yet, he play fewer than 15 minutes in a cup final? Why was Anelka playing wide? Why was Lampard playing at all?

Then the John Terry row: It’s no secret the captain and first-team coach Henk ten Cate had a blowout apparently over Terry’s insistence to train harder the day before the Carling Cup final. The two were in each other’s face and had to be pulled apart.

Ten Cate is trying to turn down the heat in today’s Times of London:

"We are both emotional guys, but we do respect each other fully. On Saturday the distance between me and him was nowhere less than five metres. So that we were with our heads against each other, as they wrote, is total nonsense. The discussion was about the sharpness of the training, as we have more often. That is part of top football. At Chelsea we have a group of 27 players and three goalkeepers. Half of them were allowed to go to the final so you understand that things went sharp. John found that we should train even more fanatically, I didn't agree on that with my eyes on the final. We had an argument about that. That is all."

101 Great Goals also reports Roman Abromovich isn’t pleasant to be around following Tottenham taking its first silverware in nearly a decade at his team’s expense.

Luvfooty has more on Grant’s impending doom.