Thomas Tuchel sacking shows ruthlessness still going strong at Chelsea despite new owners

For anybody who imagined a ruthlessness towards Chelsea managers had been consigned to the past with the departure of Roman Abramovich as the club’s owner, think again.

Under Abramovich, the club acquired a notoriety for impatience with the main man on the touchline, a job which changed hands 16 times in 19 years.

But the Russian-born owner at least kept his first manager, Claudio Ranieri, in situ for a full season. Thomas Tuchel, sacked on Wednesday morning, lasted just 100 days under the consortium, headed by US businessman Todd Boehly, that purchased the club in June. Brighton manager Graham Potter is their preferred replacement.

The decision to part ways with Tuchel was accelerated by Chelsea’s shock defeat at Dinamo Zagreb in Tuesday’s opening match of their Champions League campaign, a third away loss on the trot.

When Boehly and the Clearlake Capital Group committed over £4 billion to buying a club put suddenly on the market because of sanctions against Abramovich for his perceived links to the Russian government they anticipated a better start – not least after buying more than €270m worth of new players this summer.

It is not simply the inconsistent form that pushed Tuchel to the exit. There had been moments of discomfort as the co-controllers of Chelsea, Boehly and Behdad Eghbali, who were both in Zagreb, established their working relationship with Tuchel over a frenetic transfer window.

Boehly was hands-on in transfer negotiations and initially encouraging Tuchel to assume a different role in re-shaping the squad than the German had during the previous season and a half. In the Abramovich era, the job of manager had been more narrowly defined.

But over the last two months, Tuchel and Boehly disagreed over some