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{ ANALYSIS
By Wayne Veysey | Chief Correspondent

As the weeks roll by, expectations at Chelsea recede. From nailed-on Premier League champions in the autumn to title hopefuls in the winter to mere fourth place aspirants before we have even turned off our central heating.

The descent of Carlo Ancelotti’s team in the last three months has been remarkable, and prolonged enough to put the future of the manager and the club’s most celebrated players in doubt.

The mainstays of the team for the past seven seasons have been given notice they are no longer ‘untouchable’, to borrow one of Jose Mourinho’s best soundbites.

Didier Drogba was the fall guy against Fulham on Monday night to accommodate new £50 million man Fernando Torres up front; John Terry has been told that he might have to prepare for a future of rotation to ease the pain on his creaking body; Michael Essien and Frank Lampard have suffered severe dips in form and fitness this season.

Only Ashley Cole and Petr Cech of Mourinho’s original nine ‘untouchables’ (the other three – Ricardo Carvalho, Michael Ballack and Claude Makelele – are no longer at the club) are operating at anything like full throttle as the Champions League knockout stages begin and the domestic competitions enter the home straight.

The question for Chelsea’s owner Roman Abramovich is whether Ancelotti is the man to break up the cartel of elite players who have dominated the club for so long. Can he establish a dynasty rather than simply maintain one?

Ancelotti can always point to the magnificent league and FA Cup double in his first season in England as proof of his ability to get the best out of a group of players at his disposal.

But as one Chelsea source pointed out to Goal.com UK, he was completing a task initiated by interim boss Guus Hiddink following the dismissal of Luiz Felipe Scolari the previous season.

“When Scolari was sacked, Guus quickly rebuilt the whole thing over there,” the source said. “Ancelotti has taken advantage of that but it was always short term. Ancelotti is a really nice man but Guus works harder than he does.

Feeling blue | Drogba's future is in doubt after he was dropped for Fulham game

“Guus rebuilt the team and Ancelotti didn’t change it last year, so they went on being successful. But the natural life of that team has ended and if you don’t put anything else in, the team stops improving and everything falls down.”

There were strong rumours in late December that Abramovich’s finger was hovering over the trigger and that Ancelotti would have been sacked had Chelsea lost to Bolton Wanderers after failing to win their previous six league games.

But the former AC Milan manager, a popular figure in the dressing room, with the club's backroom staff and among the media, dodged the bullet and insiders say his position will now be reviewed at the end of the season.

Securing the fourth Champions League spot – worth £40m to the club in terms of broadcasting, sponsorship and match-day revenue – might not be enough.

“There were strong rumours that Abramovich's finger was hovering over the trigger in December, but insiders now say that Ancelotti's future will be reviewed at the end of the season”

It is believed that Abramovich and his coterie of advisers need to be convinced that Ancelotti is the man to rebuild Roman’s empire.

The squad has already been radically shaken up by the £71m combined outlay on Torres and David Luiz last month and more changes are anticipated in the summer.

Europe’s elite clubs have been put on alert about the potential availability of Drogba, who turns 33 next month, in the summer.

The Ivorian continued playing despite contracting malaria earlier in the season - an illness that prompted a drop in Kolo Toure’s standards two years ago and his subsequent departure from Arsenal - but there is still likely to be a stampede, led by his former club Marseille, to Chelsea’s door to secure his services for one final swansong.

The long-term futures of Nicolas Anelka and Florent Malouda, both now in their 30s, are also in doubt, which explains why Chelsea have been monitoring Anderlecht’s 17-year-old Drogba-esque striker Romelu Lukaku so closely in recent months. Even Essien, a titan of the Abramovich era, suddenly looks vulnerable.

There are question marks within the club about Ancelotti’s willingness and ability to overhaul the team.

Although he quickly abandoned the 4-3-1-2 formation that had failed against Liverpool and reverted back to the Mourinho 4-3-3 prototype last night against Fulham by dropping Drobga, there is a feeling that he is afraid of upsetting the strong personalities that have dominated the dressing room for so long.

A priority will be establishing a system that brings the best out of Torres. One theory is that Chelsea need a deep-lying playmaker in the Xabi Alonso mould to get the best out of the Spaniard’s ability to cause havoc in the space behind and between the centre-backs.

Essien, Ramires and Jon Obi Mikel are not that player, nor even is Lampard, so sorely missed during his absence but whose potency comes from his ability at making late, surging runs from midfield to get on the end of passes and loose balls on the edge of the penalty area.

Luiz looks like a Rolls-Royce of a centre-back and, although he foolishly conceded the penalty in added time that was subsequently saved by Cech on Monday, the defence could conceivably be built around the gifted Brazilian over the next five years.

The next three months will give Ancelotti the opportunity to prove that he can make the tough decisions necessary to usher in the new era of dominance that Abramovich demands.

Agences de presses

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