Such a bright start for Luiz Felipe Scolari before the wheels came off but was it really the end of the world if you watch football through blue tinted glasses?
The so called big four have created a climate of fear which tends to turn a mini crisis into a trauma at the first sign of trouble which in Chelsea’s case occurred in the Champions League encounter on a rainy night in Rome.
I would have preferred to see Scolari’s finished Chelsea model and see how it ran before making a decision on his future, but instant mash potato is the order of the day in the English top flight and twitchy fingers pull triggers.
If Scolari was going to go, we expected this to happen in the summer after the season had been defined. The Brazilian received his P45 with Chelsea fourth in The Premier League, in the knockout stages of the Champions League and still going strong in the FA Cup.
These facts would normally lead to a cosy managerial existence but the benchmark at Chelsea is extremely high now and the mere thought of failure on all fronts - come the end of the season – was unimaginable on the Fulham Road.
The desire to be their own men with the Chelsea hierarchy played substantial roles in the demise of Jose Mourinho and Ruud Guillit in the managerial hot-seat but this trait was not a factor in the dismissals of Avram Grant and Scolari.
Player power is huge in the modern day game and any criticisms that do find their way from the shop floor to the boardroom in the way a manager is going about his business can be fatal to their wellbeing.
We hear reports that Scolari’s training methods were antiquated and he was even late for some sessions, but surely if these rumours were true, they would have found their way into the media before Big Phil’s demise.
So what can we hold against Scolari to justify his hasty departure? He did not appear to have the knack of thinking quickly on his feet to turn the course of a match which Mourinho showed in spades.
Finding a solution to the Nicolas Anelka or Didier Drogba debate seemed to be handled clumsily with many observers feeling he should have switched to 4-4-2 and played them as a conventional strike duo and not stick rigidly to 4-3-3 with Anelka out wide, when they did appear on the same pitch.
In Scolari’ defence, he did not have the millions to spend that were bestowed on Mourinho and he was openly hurt by Chelsea’s decision not to go the extra mile to sign Robinho.
Did Big Phil have all the facts when he arrived at Stamford Bridge over the spending power at his disposal? He was brutally unlucky with injuries to lose such pivotal players as Michael Essien and Joe Cole which cannot be ignored.
It was always going to be a difficult transition from many years of international management to the day to day rigours of club football and kidney stones did not help his cause.
The 60-year-old is all heart though and he released a statement which held no malice against Chelsea and he will not hightail it out of London but remain in the city and, who knows, with some reflection and the licking of a few wounds, we could see him back in charge of an English club sooner rather than later.