And so it came to pass that after 106 days, Chelsea decided to undo one of the biggest mistakes of its modern era as BlueCo parted ways with Liam Rosenior after an abysmal run of losses.
The decision to hire the 41-year-old was as bizarre as his through-the-middle-or-nothing build-up tactics.
Chelsea took him because they worked with him at Strasbourg, and he was the perfect yes-man to whatever nonsense the club’s owners felt they were building, but reality soon caught up with all parties.
The Blues now have to find a fourth permanent head coach since BlueCo took over the West London outfit around four years ago.
However, their managerial shortlist shows that the Todd Boehly/Clearlake Consortium and the club’s sporting hierarchy have not learned their lessons.
Andoni Iraola and Marco Silva are two names that have been going around in the rumour mill. How deflating it must feel for the fans.
Chelsea want to be a big club, but they keep looking at managers who don’t have the CV for the job.
Iraola and Silva’s biggest accomplishment is keeping their respective teams in the top half of the Premier League table.
They struck gold with a barely qualified Enzo Maresca, a brilliant tactical head whose system managed to mitigate Chelsea’s flawed roster. The Blues won’t be so lucky again.
Chelsea’s squad needs a big-name manager with an excellent game plan who can guide this young team to top honours by playing effective positional football.
Even the current interim boss, Calum McFarlane, believes they are better when they play that way rather than the running methods Iraola and Silva preach.
The pair may be destined for bigger stages than Bournemouth and Fulham, but their style does not fit the squad, and it remains unclear if they are ready for the deathly cauldron that is Stamford Bridge.
The Rosenior example should be enough. Neither man has navigated title races, handled a team while playing multiple games per week, nor coached champions.
For all the talk of BlueCo being new to football, they have now been around the block for four years, and should be wiser for it.
In a market where champions like Francesco Farioli and Xabi Alonso are available, Chelsea fans are unsurprisingly repulsed by the idea of mid-table overachievers a la Iraola and Silva.
Big managers make demands, won’t let inept sporting directors sabotage their work, and are not yes men. The sporting executives must learn to live with this.
Chelsea need to start raising their standards or risk slipping out of the big club discourse soon.
They are likely to miss out on Champions League football for the third time in four years following a 3-1 humbling at the hands of Nottingham Forest at Stamford Bridge.
It has now been nine years since the Blues last lifted the Premier League title.
To change that narrative, Chelsea need a manager who turns them into challengers immediately, and neither of the Premier League duo moves the needle in that direction.