Does this sound familiar? Chelsea, trying to keep up with the league leaders, have hit a sticky patch. Then several players upset the manager, who promptly drops them for the next game. The papers are full of rumours about a dressing room revolt and the manager's future is in doubt.

No, this is not André Villas-Boas in 2012 but Tommy Docherty way back in 1965, when eight of his players broke a curfew while the squad were training up at Blackpool. Among them were Terry Venables, John Hollins, Eddie McCreadie and Barry Bridges, the heart of the team.

"I knew I had a serious matter on my hands," Docherty recalled, "and that if I faltered I would never again be able to command any respect or discipline." So he dropped all eight for the match at Burnley the following Saturday and Chelsea lost 6-2.

The defeat ended their chances of becoming league champions, but Docherty was supported by the Chelsea board. The chairman, Joe Mears, was abroad and sent him a telegram saying: "We back your decision 110%." Other clubs congratulated him on taking a stand. "If there were more managers like Tommy Docherty," declared Burnley's Bob Lord, "football would be in much better shape."

Villas-Boas made his point more modestly this week when he left Ashley Cole, Frank Lampard and Michael Essien out of his starting lineup for the Champions League game in Naples following rumours of player discontent with his management. The three eventually appeared off the bench but Chelsea, already weakened by the absence of the injured John Terry, defended chaotically and now face the task of overturning Napoli's 3-1 lead to stay in the tournament.

Far from being feted for holding his ground against reportedly recalcitrant players, Villas-Boas has been widely criticised for fielding a team asking to be taken to the cleaners by Napoli's voracious attack. According to the headlines his relatively short time at Stamford Bridge is fast running out.

Before Tuesday night's match in the Stadio San Paolo Villas-Boas was talking about his long-term plans at Chelsea. "I have the full confidence of the owner," he said. "I am here to do my job, and my job is for this year and the next two years." But he did add, rather more pertinently, that "these words would be more valuable coming from the top".

Maybe the man at the top, Roman Abramovich, has already texted his manager praising him for his principled team selection against Napoli. Maybe not. So far Abramovich's only public contribution to the latest crisis at the Bridge has been the usual one of turning up at training like the figure of Death in a film by Ingmar Bergman. When this happens the manager senses that the ghosts of his predecessors are queueing up to walk over his grave.

Docherty's career as the Chelsea manager never really recovered from the Blackpool incident. The following season his team reached the semi-finals of the FA Cup and the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup and finished fifth in the league but that spring Venables and Bridges left, and Peter Bonetti and Bobby Tambling put in transfer requests.

In 1967 Docherty took Chelsea to the FA Cup final, which they lost to Tottenham, but after an incident with a local referee during the club's summer tour in Bermuda he was suspended for a month by the Football Association and resigned, to be replaced by a manager the players wanted, Dave Sexton. So much for standing on principle.

These dramatic gestures seldom work to a manager's benefit in the long run. At the end of the 60s Tottenham's glory, glory days were beginning to fade. The pure, passing game of the Double side was finding it difficult to cope with the tighter style of containment and counterattack that was starting to dominate English football at that time. Bill Nicholson, the Spurs manager, was becoming disillusioned with the way things were going and when his team were knocked out of the FA Cup by lowly Crystal Palace in a fourth-round replay early in 1970 he dropped Alan Gilzean, Cyril Knowles, Joe Kinnear and, significantly, Jimmy Greaves for the next match at Southampton, which Tottenham also lost.

Greaves never played for Spurs again and while Tottenham still won cups it was years before they once more became a serious force in the league. Nicholson had made his point by leaving out regular players after a bad night but it was more moot than meaningful, as Villas-Boas may soon discover for himself.