It might just be the insatiable speed of the modern managerial churn that brought it to mind, but for a lot of people Liam Rosenior was toast the moment he mentioned being a “man-ager” during his unveiling as Chelsea head coach.
Brentism aside, the slightly hunched posture, the youthful looks, and the bold glasses (that look a bit too much like someone cosplaying as an Intellectual Football Manager) have combined to give the impression that the Chelsea machine will chew him up and spit him out.
Which is of course completely unfair. Nobody should be judged on their appearance and there is enough contradictory evidence out there - from videos of inspirational team talks to a decent record at Strasbourg - to dismiss the surface-level analysis.
More seriously, we might ask why it is so often a person of colour who commits the sin of playing the role incorrectly; who doesn’t fit our preconceived notions of how a manager ought to look or behave.
So we can dismiss the logic of these early judgements - but not their impact.
The football industry is obsessed with optics, be it tactical aesthetics or how sophisticated a manager comes across in press conferences, and, sadly, believing in the value of appearances makes them valuable. It does not help that Rosenior already stands out as Chelsea’s flawed business model in microcosm.
Chelsea are stuck in a loop of profitable stasis and their supporters have long since cottoned on to the cynicism of BlueCo’s strategy. Exclusively buying young players with growth potential and hovering in the Champions League places is how you turn a football club into a business as vacuous as any sheet-glass tower in Canary Wharf, and indeed the concept of this Chelsea consciously mirrors the financial sector: trading on speculation, spin, the illusion of value over genuine substance.
That’s why Rosenior is already in danger of being a lightning rod for the BlueCo project. His youthful bounce is already starting to feel like a smokescreen for the lack of ambition above him; his willingness to rotate the squad and integrate young players – per well-publicised instructions from on high – already giving yes-man energy.
But most importantly he is the managerial version of the squad dynamics: a fresh face with growth potential but not yet mature enough to take the club up to the next level.
Again, that’s entirely unfair. There is no evidence he is the wrong person, no evidence he is not the next Jose Mourinho. Rosenior has won eight of his first 12 matches in charge and was furious that old flaws from the Enzo Maresca era – sloppy red cards, poor defending from set-pieces, losing concentration when leading – “set fire” to a further four points in their last two home games. He knows what’s wrong and he’s already banging heads together to fix it.
Yet those familiar Chelsea failings are a product of the youth and inexperience of the squad, a problem that will only be exacerbated by hiring a manager in the same mould as his players.
Rosenior made two strangely defensive substitutions when 1-0 up against Burnley, replacing Reece James and Pedro Neto for Josh Acheampong and Mamadou Sarr, highlighting not only Rosenior’s own naivety but his conformity to the principles of the BlueCo rotational churn.
If that vibe is already beginning to take hold and Rosenior has barely got started then it’s difficult to see how he breaks out of a cycle that, over four fruitless years, has come to define Chelsea.
The optimistic take is that if Rosenior can sort out the club’s set-piece problems (Chelsea top the charts for xG conceded this season, with 14.05), instil some real discipline, and sign just a couple of high-quality senior players in the summer he can put together a title charge in 2026/27.
We have no evidence to reject that take, other than a nagging dread in the pit of the stomach. And football is an anxious and tetchy industry that tends to let itself be led by that feeling.
It should be a golden rule of journalism not to pay attention to the warped and insufferable world of social media, particularly not to the dead zone of X, but we can make an exception for a post with 8.3 million views (at the time of writing) that shows Rosenior innocently drinking a pint alone in the bar of the team hotel.
The caption suggests Rosenior has no “aura”, a ridiculous Gen Z term that seems to have gained traction precisely because it requires no analysis, capturing a feeling its proponents have no inclination to explore; lazy jargon for a superficial age. But alas it seems Rosenior lacks aura, meaning he doesn’t look like a high-performance winner when he’s quietly minding his own business with a post-work pint.
That kind of empty-headed opinion shouldn’t matter, but in an increasingly vacuous world – one not quite led by social media, but subtly defined by it - it just might nudge us towards a consensus that buries Rosenior before he’s even begun.
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