Young guns key to Ranieri's revolution

Leo Spall13 April 2012

Claudio Ranieri says he needs time to bring through youngsters to make his Chelsea revolution work.

The Italian manager, whose side entertain Fulham tonight, said: "I like to find new young players.

The fans like that too. It's easy to win sometimes with fantastic players like Ruud Gullit, Gianfranco Zola and Gianluca Vialli, but it's also good to find young players and to win with them, even if it's more difficult.

"Young players want to improve. They know a year can change their career and I'm a coach who likes to play youngsters like Joe Keenan, who made his debut at Aston Villa and has a good left foot and a good attitude. That's good for the new Chelsea."

Ranieri was handed the challenge of getting Chelsea into the Champions League on his appointment, something predecessors Gullit and Vialli failed to achieve. But 18 months into the job Ranieri is still in rebuilding mode.

His first task was to lower the average age of a side made up largely of thirtysomethings. Out went Dennis Wise, Gustavo Poyet and Frank Leboeuf and in came younger models Frank Lampard, Sam Dalla Bona and John Terry.

Yet the former Atletico Madrid manager believes his team are still in a development stage and that his improving command of the English language will help Chelsea.

He said: "I'm very happy to live in London and to stay at Chelsea as I live very well and have a lot of quality in my life.

"I'm happy to train these players and to go to Stamford Bridge where the ground is full with a good atmosphere. I want to try and have more English lessons, but I'm always busy with so many games. It's important to communicate with the players when I'm happy with them or when I'm angry. But they do understand the Roman language now when I'm angry!

"I joke with the players. I tell them that I am throwing a dice to see what happens. I don't know whether it'll be Dr Jekyll or Mr Hyde, but the players have a good attitude and I like it."

But with an 11-point gap between Chelsea and Newcastle, occupants of that all-important fourth Champions League place, and finance a pressing issue, Chelsea need a victory over Fulham.

Jesper Gronkjaer upped his fitness levels by playing for more than an hour in the reserve team win over Southampton yesterday, which also featured goalkeeper Mark Bosnich.

Meanwhile, Chelsea have paid former striker Pierluigi Casiraghi £500,000 in compensation after writing him off three months before receiving an official medical report on knee ligament damage from his surgeons in Italy. His career ended after an accidental clash with West Ham keeper Shaka Hislop in 1998. He is now a coach with Monza.

As for tonight, Fulham will be without midfielders Sylvain Legwinski (suspended) and Lee Clark (calf), but Sean Davis is expected to recover from a dead leg.

Fulham go into the derby on the back of three league defeats and having been found guilty of disorderly conduct by the Football Association.

The club is considering appealing against the finding and the £30,000 fine which accompanies it for a brawl during the 2-0 home win against Everton last December.

The Merseysiders were also found guilty and fined £25,000.

Chelsea v Fulham
7.45pm, tonight, Stamford Bridge

Stupid Bates should know better

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in

MORE ABOUT