Guus Hiddink has barely taken his first Chelsea training session and already the media attention is focused on who will be the Blues manager next season.
The news over the weekend Carlo Ancelotti will replace Pep Guardiola at Bayern Munich next season, with the former Barcelona boss heading to the Premier League and Manchester City las left Manchester United and Chelsea scrambling to line up their coach for next season before all the good ones are taken.
Heading into this season the consensus was that the best three managers in world football were Jose Mourinho, Ancelotti and Guardiola. With none of those three options available to Chelsea, who is in the next group of managers that could be available?
The best one would be Atletico Madrid manager Diego Simeone, who has done a brilliant job in Spain. But he has a contract in Madrid until 2020 that would cost a reported £15m to get out off. With Roman Abramovich already on the hook for £30m to pay off Jose Mourinho does he really want to spend another £15m to get another coach, especially one who has a poor grasp of English?
Simeone is very much in the Mourinho mold of us against the world mentality and I am not sure Chelsea want to go back down that path again. Which is why the name of Manuel Pellegrini is being floated about,
The current Manchester City boss is expected to be fired at the end of the season to make way for Guardiola, but if he wins the league again this season then his three-year spell at City will be counted as a success. Plus he has the Premier League experience that Simeone currently lacks and his calm demeanour is the opposite to that of Mourinho and Simeone.
What do you think of Manuel Pellegrini being the next Chelsea boss?
