Warnock: AVB was doomed from the start

Leeds United manager Neil Warnock believes Andre Villas-Boas’ reign at Chelsea was never going to work.

The Portuguese boss was sacked by owner Roman Abramovich on Sunday after a 1-0 defeat to West Brom saw the Blues fall three points behind fourth-placed Arsenal.

And Warnock, who was dismissed by QPR in January, believes somebody with more experience was needed following Carlo Ancelotti’s exit last summer.

“He’s (Abramovich) a great businessman to amass the fortune that he has done but management is not like that,” he said.

“It’s like the Warwick University course, no disrespect for example to Stuart Pearce, who has done all the courses and got the qualifications – there’s a lot of young managers like that.”

“But at the end of the day it’s the experiences you need to look back on when things go wrong – ‘how did I cope with that problem?’, ‘how did I get a response?’, ‘how did we turn it around?’.”

“When you’re a young manager you don’t get that by looking at qualifications, by doing coaching courses or whatever you do, you get that with experience and by coming up against those problems.”

“AVB, no disrespect to him, he’s never had problems like that. So it was never going to work from day one.”

“I think the idea was right – they need somebody in there for three or four years because the squad is ageing and it does need a bit of a turnaround but somebody with the experience has got to come in to do that overnight. You can’t just do it in a few weeks or put somebody in and tell them we’ve got a project.”

“I really felt sorry for AVB because it was like being thrown into the lion’s den.”