Peter Kenyon’s successor at Stamford Bridge wants to lead the club to new heights

On the face of it, Ron Gourlay has taken on one of the cushiest jobs in English football. Chelsea are top of the Premier League, having entranced with a scintillating style, sweeping all-comers aside. The new manager is winning allies, the club’s ambitious owner is enthused, and on a summer tour of the United States games were played in crammed stadiums in a country apparently still sceptical of all things soccer.

Yet, as Peter Kenyon’s successor settled into his new office this week, the clutter in the chief executive’s in-tray will have served as a reminder that everything at Chelsea remains a work in progress. The perception of this as a flashy club, prone to “brashness”, lingers. Neither of the two European Cups targeted for the first decade of the Roman Abramovich era have been secured, with Manchester City usurping the London club in the nouveaux riches of the modern era. Manchester United remain the trailblazers all pursue, while the potential of a 12-month transfer ban over the Gaël Kakuta affair looms large. Gourlay is braced to work seven-day weeks. Daunted? Apparently not.

The Dundee fan who shivered on the terraces at Dens Park from the age of seven and followed Kenyon from United to south-west London five years ago, initially joining as chief operating officer, is in contact with Abramovich “two or three times a week”. The discussions touch upon various aspects of a business whose turnover swelled to £213.1m in the most recent accounts, for the financial year ending 30 June 2008. “Roman wants Chelsea to be the best, and we all do,” Gourlay says. “He wants to win games playing exciting football. He would like us to continue identifying good, home-grown players and nurturing them through our academy.”

Ideally he would also like this business to be self-sufficient, though that will have to wait. That target has, for now, been put back and, rather than make bold predictions of a financial future free of reliance upon the oligarch, the CEO is preaching realism. “It would be nice to go to the owner and say we don’t need any more cash, but that’s not where we are today,” he says. “I like to operate honestly but realistically. Self-sufficiency is still the goal. That’s what we’re trying to attain. Is it going to happen this year? No. I’m not going to make any claim on that front because, realistically, it isn’t going to happen this year but we’re not that far away. But there’s probably more pressure from ourselves as a board of directors [to achieve self-sufficiency] than from the owner.

“You get what you see with me. I like to manage people and I like them to get on with their jobs. I don’t like to do their jobs for them. Brashness? Everybody has a different style. People always say to me: ‘You worked with Peter Kenyon for a long time,’ but we’re two completely different personalities and I do things different. Hopefully, if there was brashness there then maybe you won’t see as much brashness going forward. You’ll still see as much energy, you’ll probably see more will to win with realistic goals.

“We’ve learned a lot in the last five years. And I know exactly what I’ve got to achieve in the next three years. The challenge has always been the cost of running the business. It’s no secret about our wage bill and that isn’t going to go away, so we will be looking to drive up revenue.” Wages made up 70.6% of turnover in 2008 before “exceptional items” – the £23.1m of compensation payments made to José Mourinho, Avram Grant and five coaching staff – were taken into account. The figures to be announced next year will include the pay-offs since forked out to Luiz Felipe Scolari and his backroom team. There is confidence such costly mistakes will not be repeated in the foreseeable future.

“When you look at Carlo [(Ancelotti] and what he’s done in his career, there’s always been stability. He’s been at the same club, Milan, a long time and he’s delivered the top trophy twice. His background is slightly different to where we’ve been in the past. Carlo will be given the time. Of course, we will all feel the pressure if we don’t win any trophies. Not only will there be pressure on Carlo, there will be pressure on me. That doesn’t mean to say we’re going to sack the manager. I don’t think I’ll find myself in that position.

“The goal is to win the Champions League and that does take you up another bar: your sponsorship ability and your commercial ability just rise to another level. The impact on your merchandising sales alone is huge overnight. You can start to generate licensing fees for different products in different parts of the world, the awareness of the football club grows. I witnessed that in a past life [at Manchester United] and I’ve seen just exactly what you can do. In the 10-year plan [drawn up in 2004] there were two Champions Leagues and we’ve been very unlucky. Over the next five years we’ve still got to shoot for the stars. I’d still like to think we can win the Champions League twice in the next five years. That might sound aggressive but I think we can still do it.”

The Kakuta issue could yet have implications on that ambition. Chelsea expect to discover next week whether the Court of Arbitration for Sport is willing to freeze Fifa’s 12-month ban from registering players pending an appeal hearing early next year. Should that be confirmed then the league leaders would have an opportunity to strengthen their squad – potentially for the last time until the summer of 2011 – in January. “But we already have one of the strongest pools of players out there, undoubtedly the most experienced in the Premier League,” Gourlay says. “We have the ability to be in the market if we feel we need it. At the present time, I don’t think we need it.”

The reality is that transfer policy is in limbo while CAS deliberates. “We feel we’ve got a strong case, but who knows? We didn’t expect the ban in the first place. For it to be so severe was very much a shock, but we’ll deal with it whatever way it goes. We won’t go around feeling sorry for ourselves if the ban stands. We still have a top squad and, at times like that, you’ve got to buckle down and get on with it.”

That squad is as settled as it has ever been. Joe Cole should follow the recent trend by signing extended terms imminently. The futures of Nicolas Anelka and Michael Ballack may be revisited over the course of the season, with Chelsea confident they will be able to ward off the likes of City in an increasingly distorted wage market. “We’re setting ourselves goals that will see the percentage of wages of our turnover will remain static,” said Gourlay. “That is still one hell of a lot of money to play with.”

Are Manchester City will be active in the transfer window. Are they yet a threat? “I’m not really sure they’ve signed anybody recently that we were interested in,” he says, glossing over the unsettling interest in John Terry last summer. “It’s a competitive marketplace. That’s something that we’ve got to deal with going forward. With the players they have, they’re certainly going to try and push their way into the top five. Commercially, it’s not that easy. They’re very much a Manchester-centric club. To break into the ‘big world’ and start developing your business in Asia and the US, you need to really start winning some trophies, and not just one Premier League. They can attain it with consistency over the next few years. But there are one or two other clubs out there who may have something to say about that.”

For now, it is Manchester United who focus minds at Stamford Bridge. The champions visit on Sunday trailing their hosts by two points in the Premier League but braced to confront a team that has won all nine home games under Ancelotti. “Anybody who finishes above United will win the league, so I do see them as our biggest rivals,” says Gourlayadds of his former employers. “But we look forward to it. For me, this job is a great challenge. This business is growing. I think I’m the correct person to build on the hard work of the last five years and take it on to the next level.”
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Steven Gerrard has been ruled out of Liverpool’s Champions League trip to Lyon, but striker Fernando Torres will be on the plane that heads for France tomorrow.

Although Gerrard has now played just 25 minutes of five matches since he sustained a groin injury while on England duty, manager Rafael Benitez has delayed any decision on whether his captain needs an operation.

Club sources suggest that Benitez is happy that Gerrard’s treatment is progressing well and that the player’s injury problem is improving.

If Gerrard does have an operation on his groin, it will rule him out for a month and he would be unlikely to play again until mid-December.

Liverpool are trying to avoid that eventuality, and Benitez will assess the midfielder’s fitness levels again when the Anfield men return from Wednesday’s match.

Gerrard will then have more intensive treatment ahead of the club’s next league match, at home to Birmingham on Monday.

Torres will travel with the party, having been taken off at Fulham on Saturday after a hour to protect his adductor muscle injury.

Albert Riera (hamstring), Martin Kelly (ankle) and Martin Skrtel (muscle and virus), are also definitely out of the Group E match that Liverpool must win if they want to retain any serious hopes of qualifying for the last 16.

But £20 million Italian midfielder Alberto Aquilani will be available for selection after recovering from a virus.

Benitez said: ”Aquilani trained today but was a little bit weak. Hopefully in two days’ time he will be better.

”Gerrard won’t travel to Lyon. He has no chance. He is improving but we have to wait. He has had an injection but we have to wait two or three days and see how he reacts.

”Skrtel has no chance. He has a small muscle problem. It’s not too big but he is feeling something.”

Meanwhile, the Liverpool manager will make late fitness calls on the recovering Daniel Agger (back), Glen Johnson (calf), Fabio Aurelio (calf) and David Ngog (ankle), none of whom travelled to Craven Cottage.

Benitez said: ”Agger is improving – he will travel and we will then decide. He felt something in his back but it’s much better now. We have to wait and see how he reacts.

”Fabio is improving but he still has a small problem in his calf, so we will have to wait. Ngog is much better, so he could be available.

”Johnson is training and working with the physios but he is a doubt at this moment. He will travel to Lyon and we will see.”

Benitez again explained his decision to substitute Torres at Fulham, saying: ”I was surprised with the criticism after the game because Fernando has had problems in the last month after the international games.

”We are trying to manage because he was close to having an operation. Still this morning, two days after the game, he is feeling something.

”He is not comfortable. He has not got the power he had before, so we have to manage and try to protect him. He cannot play well if you keep pushing him. Maybe if you push him he will be injured for a long time.

”So, I am really surprised with the critics. When you talk about big names, people just analyse the names and not how the player is when he is on the pitch. He was not 100% fit.

”We have to take Fernando to Lyon because we don’t have too many options. We have to keep working with him and the rest of the players.”
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The body language said it all. As a grim-faced Rafael Benítez made the uncomfortable walk from the dug-out to the dressing rooms in the cottage that lends its name to the stadium, he looked like a condemned man.

Fumbling to put his glasses in their case, he appeared to be cursing under his breath.

They were probably words of disapproval aimed at the referee and his injury problems. He will have been better served aiming his disapproval at the players who, once again, let him down.

A sixth defeat in seven games and, most importantly, the fifth loss in just 11 Premier League games, leaves Liverpool and Benítez at crisis point. The manager can complain all he likes about his missing players and the rights or wrongs of the two red cards that reduced his side to nine men, but the facts outweigh the excuses.

Fact: Liverpool have seven points fewer than at this stage last season.

Fact: Liverpool have conceded 22 goals, 10 more than last year.

Fact: This is their worst start for 16 years; in 1993 they lost five of their first nine.

Fact: No team has won the Premier League with more than six defeats in a 38-game season.

So when Roy Hodgson, the Fulham manager who so sensibly orchestrated the visitors’ demise, suggests that Liverpool can still win the title, he is being polite. Benítez’s squad is too short on talent and when key players are missing, the rest are not good enough.

That point was highlighted by the sight of Fernando Torres scoring a goal then coming off early ahead of Wednesday’s crucial trip to Lyon, a game Liverpool must win. And Benítez admitted that a player troubled by a hamstring problem is having to be handled with kid gloves.

“The question is, if you don’t play Torres from the beginning you will be talking about why he is not playing, so it’s a difficult decision,” said Benítez. “We decided to start with him because he can do a proper warm-up but after we knew we needed to take him out at certain moments so we decided it was 60 minutes because the last time with 80 minutes he needed four days to be fit.”

The score was 1-1 when Benítez replaced Torres with Ryan Babel. Against the run of play, Bobby Zamora had given Fulham a 24th-minute lead but Torres responded just before the interval with his 10th goal in 12 starts this season. In the knowledge that anything less than a win in France could end Liverpool’s Champions League aspirations, Torres was rested – and Fulham took control.

“I think it was clear we needed to do something because always you think about protecting the player, and in this case we were more or less in control of the game, but we had some chances in attack with [Andrei] Voronin, [Dirk] Kuyt, Yossi [Benayoun] and Babel, so to keep the player on the pitch could be a problem and maybe you lose the player for one month.

“We were analysing before the game what to do. So we decided to play him; that was the most difficult decision. And after, you have to manage during the game.”

Benítez remains hopeful that Gerrard could return in Lyon and will hope his gamble will deliver Torres against the French. But there is more to this crisis than just a half-fit Torres. Javier Mascherano looked like a player going through the motions, while too many others are just not good enough.

Fulham impressed in the second half and were ahead again, through Erik Nevland, when Philipp Degen’s lunge on Clint Dempsey reduced Liverpool’s numbers. Ten became nine when Jamie Carragher, who had already survived a questionable challenge on Bobby Zamora, halted the striker again and walked, albeit reluctantly.

So with Torres off and Gerrard, Glen Johnson, Albert Riera, Alberto Aquilani, Fabio Aurelio, Martin Skrtel, Daniel Agger and David Ngog all missing, this was a second-string Liverpool and, not surprisingly, a third goal came easily for Dempsey.

Carragher defended himself when he said: “The referee was not in the greatest position and it’s always a dead giveaway when the player you are tackling [Zamora] says at the time that I won the ball.” He also admitted that the players were baffled by this run. “We have come away with another defeat which has left us scratching our heads a little bit. We have got to get back on track with Lyon on Wednesday which is another massive game. These are tough times at the moment and it hurts, it is hurting a lot.”
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