Thomas Tuchel is the ONLY good thing at toxic Chelsea amid Roman Abramovich saga

There’s not a lot of class around Chelsea at the moment. 

To go with the execrable chants of Roman Abramovich’s name by the boneheads at Norwich City on Thursday night, we have the prospect of Newcastle United, whose Saudi state owners sanction the murder of journalists and the abduction of women who seek an independent life, visiting Stamford Bridge this weekend.

Fortunately, this toxified club has a manager who stands on a higher plain and in a different class. Quite simply, Thomas Tuchel is the only good thing about Chelsea at this moment.

Tuchel, pictured with Abramovich on the pitch after their Champions League win last May, is intelligent, doesn’t duck the big issues and has been speaking his mind

It would have been easy for him to drift into the lazy, tedious sense of victimhood and self-pity which seems to be afflicting every Chelsea fan you currently hear on the radio phone-ins.

On Nick Ferrarl’s LBC show on Friday morning, one fan was bellyaching about dragging ‘football into politics’, blind, ignorant – or both – to how Abramovich has worked the levers of political power in Vladimir Putin’s rogue state, thus procuring the money that has bought Chelsea 19 years of trophies. Blood money, now.

Tuchel is so financially constricted by the sanctioning of his club’s owner that when he says ‘finding enough shirts to play in’ this weekend could be a challenge, he really is not joking.

Yet his response to what has befallen Chelsea is still written through the intelligence, values and transparency of an individual who speaks his mind and is not afraid who he upsets in the process of doing so. All of the above are pitifully rare in football.

Chelsea fans ruined a minute’s applause for the victims of the Ukraine invasion by chanting Abramovich’s name ahead of last weekend’s game at Burnley

Abramovich, Chelsea’s owner since 2003, has been heavily sanctioned for his links to the Russian president Vladimir Putin

Abramovich’s wealth to fund Chelsea was boosted by tax breaks from Vladimir Putin (right)

When Chelsea fans drowned out a Ukraine tribute with their intellectually-challenged Abramovich singing at Burnley last weekend, Tuchel called it out for what is was. ‘It is not the moment to give other messages. It’s the moment to show respect.’

Compare this to the tone-deaf sycophant John Terry, who lavished blue love hearts on Abramovich when posting an image of the two of them with the European Cup on Twitter last week. 

And who then invited a pile-on of MP Chris Bryant, whose rigorous work has been integral to Abramovich being called to account.

‘100 per cent mate, Terry replied, with another blue heart, to an anonymous no-mark who attacked Bryant on Twitter. Terry then proceeded to add his own lines of vitriol for the Rhondda Valley MP.

Former Chelsea captain John Terry has proved himself tone-deaf in supporting Abramovich

Terry described the outgoing owner as ‘the best’ on Twitter as the club was put up for sale

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has brought misery, death and suffering. In the picture,a  pregnant woman is carried away from a bombed maternity hospital in the city of Mariupol 

A destroyed Russian tank is seen after battles on a main road near Brovary, north of Kyiv

The contrast between Tuchel and dismal Chelsea people like Terry is extraordinary. 

Abramovich did not even afford this manager the respect of meeting him when signing him to Chelsea but Tuchel is not cowed by him. His experience of managing upwards with the Qataris at PSG has perhaps taught him not to fear.

What we needed from Chelsea these past few weeks was an act of fraternity with the Ukrainians so bold that it might actually surprise the wider world. An announcement that they would play in blue and yellow kit in the Carabao Cup final. 

An agreement with their main kit sponsor that the name of one of the Ukraine conflict’s humanitarian charities would be carried on their shirt fronts instead. Nothing has come.

So it has been left to the manager to convey the kind of humanity and wisdom that can earn Chelsea a little respect. 

Chelsea have been forced to close their club shop at Stamford Bridge after sanctions hit

Graffiti was daubed on a wall close to Stamford Bridge as fans react to the sanctions imposed

Regardless of his faceless paymaster, Tuchel’s discussion on Ukraine has been articulate and considered, though delivered with a modesty which shows he is embarrassed to lay any claim of authority on events way beyond football.

When Tuchel halted a press conversation on the subject of Ukraine a few weeks back, it was not one of those cynical acts of news management that some managers are so skilled at, but a sense that such talk was becoming inappropriate.

‘Listen, listen, listen – you have to stop,’ Tuchel said. ‘I am not a politician. You have to stop. Honestly. I never experienced war.’

When the dust settles on this now benighted season of Chelsea’s, you suspect Tuchel will move on somewhere else, because the course of his few years managing here have revealed he belongs somewhere far better.

Tuchel has had little choice but to front up to difficult questions about Chelsea’s future 

The German coach celebrates with the travelling Chelsea fans after their victory at Norwich

But heading into a weekend the likes of which Chelsea have never known, there was the same quiet and steadfast authority. 

A balancing of concern for those club employees and players who carry no responsibility for all of this with a deep sense of perspective, as life in Mariupol and Kharkiv descends into an unimaginable kind of hell.

Yes, he said enthusiastically, it would be wonderful if his players carried a message of peace on their shirts on Sunday. 

‘We did not cause the situation and we cannot solve the situation,’ he continued. ‘When it’s a big storm you dig in, you hold together, you stay strong and go through it. But a message for peace can never be wrong.’