Professional football is a results game and always will be
Profit and losses won’t do it for any owners
Managers come and managers go but one constant remains the same in football no matter what the latest trend is - normally managers do not get sacked for winning matches.
The word ‘normally’ is important here because so much of what passes for conventional wisdom in professional football these days is not normal.
It’s certainly not normal behaviour to light fires in the four corners of your training ground at the start of the biggest week of the season - as Arsenal did recently.
It’s hardly normal for a manager to effectively bait his employers and dare his club to sack him - as Rueben Amorim did with Manchester United back in January.
Likewise circling the ball and the referee before kick-off, a mark of respect to the ball on the part of his players apparently, was one of the peculiarities allowed by Liam Rosenior not long after his appointment as Chelsea manager.
And it’s off the wall to internally suspend one of your own stars for two games - after he allegedly made a remark that may have been lost in translation back in Argentina - when you are fighting for your own future just weeks into your job.
They’re just two of the reasons why Rosenior’s exit as Blues boss on Wednesday afternoon hardly came as the biggest surprise of an English season full of managerial surprises.
And for all the talk from Chelsea’s BlueCo owners of a six year project when they brought Rosenior to Stamford Bridge from Strasbourg, another one of their clubs, their loyalty didn’t last long. Not surprisingly.
There are many Chelsea fans out there who are convinced that their American owners know little or nothing about soccer and even less about how to run one of the biggest clubs in England.
BlueCo’s clear policy of buying young players and tying them to long contracts before selling at a profit comes straight from their venture capital playbook but it has come back to haunt them in terms of losses in recent weeks when their team has clearly lacked experience and leadership.
That’s partly why those owners need to look in the mirror during their ‘process of self-reflection’ following the decision to part ways with Rosenior.
Choosing an inexperienced manager and signing inexperienced players has now come with a real cost to their Champions League aspirations, even if the FA Cup could still offer the Blues some silverware this season.
So one reality needs to come to the fore when they look for that lightbulb moment in the coming days and weeks - football is still a results business and always will be.
Chelsea have lost their last five games without scoring a goal, their worst such run since 1912. Rosenior lost 10 times in 23 games as boss, the fifth manager of the BlueCo era.
If he had won his last five games, he would still be the manager and the fans wouldn’t have turned on him as they did at Brighton on Tuesday night.
As Mick McCarthy regularly says, he’s never been sacked for winning matches. That tends not to happen - even if your owners are clueless Americans!