Managers and players come and go, fans remain. However I’ve always had a sense as a Chelsea fan that we are somehow more sentimental and attached to our former beaus than other clubs. Sure, Liverpool have their ‘istoree, Tottenham their tradition of stylish football (and limited success). Arsenal have the invincibles and an uncanny knack of turning fan culture into cringeworthy unknowing social media parodies. I confess to a little admiration for the core support of United. While they attract more than their fair share of hangers on and the dreaded modern fans, I lived with two of them (from Chorlton and Wythenshawe respectively) and you couldn’t have met two people more steeped in the culture and history of the game than them. Of all the supporters of other clubs I’ve known over the years, they came closest to my perception of what a proper fan is.

Chelsea has always felt like a deeply loyal and for want of a better phrase, old school kind of support. This manifests in how players and managers are treated. It has equal resonance in how the upper echelons of the club are regarded.

The fans of all clubs reserve a special place in their heart for those who try. Not necessarily the most talented, but those whose commitment can never be questioned. With Chelsea it’s always felt slightly different. Give your heart to Chelsea and that love is returned unconditionally. No ritual burnings of shirts to be seen in SW6.

It’s never more obvious than in the talismanic status bestowed on the manager (for manager read also Head Coach for the pedants out there). Again, it’s not an uncommon theme in English football. We have a history of demagogic football managers. Eras of football in England tend to be defined by the manager. From Herbert Chapman to Sir Matt Busby to Alf Ramsey, Shankly to Paisley to Don Revie and via Brian Clough to Alex Ferguson. In more modern times, we’ve arrived at a juncture where arguably the three best managers in the game are all operating in a league where perhaps only one player can guarantee himself a place in the top twenty players in the game.

It’s clear; managers are a big deal in England in a way that doesn’t really resonate with our continental cousins. Only the most learned followers of the game can tell you the manager of the great continental sides of the past. Real in the 50’s and 60’s, Benfica in the 60’s, Ajax in the 70’s, Bayern, Hamburg and later Juventus. Milan in the 80s and early 90s. The truth of these great dynasties is that often those great teams were managed by more than one manager during their period of dominance. Only in England were dynasties formed on a single unifying managerial figure (Liverpool in some way being the exception though Shankly rightly gets the lions share of credit).

In a rather complicating way, Chelsea has always been a little different. While we’ve always been steadfast in our loyalty and affection, it’s always been framed within the club. We’ve had relatively successful managers (Drake, Sexton), we’ve had popular managers (John Neal certainly fits that description, Gullit and Vialli latterly), but never a manager universally proclaimed as the ‘one’. However the day Jose Mourinho walked into the club and proclaimed himself the special one, you get the sense that all of that changed. Maybe we’d finally found our man, our Shankly, our Clough, our Ferguson.

And for the majority of fans we had. Success followed success, some of the character flaws that would eventually become his trademark started to show through, but Jose belonged to us. His sacking by the club, an unsatisfying lack of closure from both fans and managers’s perspective allowed that candle to keep a steady glow. He might be the darling of the Inter fans, bring success to Real after a barren spell, but he still belonged to the Chelsea fans, his affection was only on loan.

And so it came to pass that Mourinho ‘came home’. He was a little jaded, a little worn but like the adventurer returned, with his feet up in front of a roaring fire he was back where he belonged. We’d flirted with a cuddly Italian, been disappointed by an anachronistic Brazilian, taken in and then kicked out Mourinho’s Portuguese bastard son, had a wonderful but brief affair with a sexy Swiss/Italian piece and had repeated booty calls with a willing but ultimately unlovable Dutchman but Jose was the collective one true love. But he wasn’t quite the same, the magic briefly resurrected, had gone. As it turned out, he didn’t come back for us, he came back for him. While it never soured the memory of what had gone before, it soured the memory of the man in the eyes of many (and yet reinforced it in the eyes of many more).

Partially rejected we stumbled into a relationship with Antonio Conte while Mourinho took up with one of our worst enemies (I’m taking this metaphor too far now). We projected that affection for Mourinho onto Conte. The similarities in style (or lack of it, depending on your tastes) outnumbered the differences. There was a sense that this was our Jose, only without the downsides. Confrontational and adversarial but with a degree of humility and respect that the special one never quite managed. Those who always strove for Chelsea to show a bit more class had found their comfort point. Conte jumped into the crowd, celebrated like a fan, delivered a title. What more could you ask for?

However like Jose, the club under Conte was only heading in one direction. Neither were the joyous, experimental, progressive kind of managers supposedly sought after by the board, and by a section of the support. Both tend towards the conservative, reactive position. Rather than define others by their own force of style, they preferred to define their tactics by the style of others. Both gradually and inevitably descended into a methodology based on fear. It’s successful, in the short term, but it has a shelf life. In an era where football hipsters like Klopp and Guardiola are at the fore and even old football hippies like Wenger remain dedicated to an altogether more proactive style of football, Mourinho and Conte can seem a little out of their time. By now though, Chelsea fans had latched onto the idea of having their own messiah and if Jose was no longer the special one then Conte was the next best thing.

It’s admirable. Loyalty is a rare commodity in football these days, its often a one way street, from fans to players. Whilst I’ve never been one for hero worship, I think I’m probably sub-consciously jealous that others can have that sort of emotional connection with a manager. I’ve never really been able to let go of the image of managers as mercenaries. They come and go.

The days of managerial dynasties are over. We’re in the era of strategy now. It’s no longer possible to assemble a ragtag group of footballers and craft them into something more than the sum of their parts. Its now about commercialism, marketability and revenue production. Players are investments, traded around like the products. Managers too. In an era of such astronomical figures and investments, clubs have to be so much more diligent with how they control their finances. Managers, who by their nature have become much shorter term investments than players, simply cannot be allowed to assert that level of control over a club. They can’t be allowed to decide where and on whom investments are made. Simply put, the likelihood that they will still be manager more than two or three years into a players contract is so low that it wouldn’t be prudent to rely solely on their judgement. Medium and long term strategy are written by the clubs, its simply not possible to overhaul a playing staff as John Neal once did. The value of footballers within the industry has grown exponentially. To rebuild from scratch or even to have an overhaul and still compete for trophies is beyond the reach of all but PSG and Manchester City. The role of the manager hasn’t expanded to fill this remit. We aren’t appointing men with accountancy qualifications, marketing degrees and project management experience. We’re appointing men with a lifetime’s experience of playing football and a few years experience of leading a team. In days of old, that was all they had, a team, fronting a multi-billion dollar investment vehicle is beyond any of their skill sets.

Perhaps it’s time to realise that the game has changed, maybe not for the better, but irreversibly none the less. Players and especially managers have become commodities, the emotional connection has for the most part gone. It’s time to realise that the character of the manager is no longer intertwined with the character of the club. At the very least, it will make the inevitable break up much easier to bear.