In the end, Chelsea’s American owners lost their nerve.
By Sunday night, for a second time this season, the word of Todd Boehly and Behdad Eghballi counted for nothing.
They’d already sacked Thomas Tuchel, just weeks into the season after he’d spent the summer helping them to sign players without a Director of Football.
Their promise to then stand by his replacement, Graham Potter - a rookie at the top level - even if he didn’t finish in the top four, was eye-catching enough.
But in the end Chelsea’s form was so horrendous they were facing a bottom-half finish for the first time since 1995.
In the end the anger from the fans, the poor form, the inability to win against top-half opponents and the failure in so many of their games to score goals simply became too much.
In the end the sight of Tuchel, back in business at Bayern, crushing Dortmund as Chelsea were losing to Villa, had sobered up more than a few at the Bridge intoxicated by Boehly’s deluded vision.
Tuchel had won three trophies in 20 months including the Champions League. Potter, on a five-year contract, had never managed in the competition.
When Tuchel sacked him the Blues were the reigning Club World Cup champions. Few fans could believe what they were seeing when Potter was named his successor.
Yes, he’d earned a crack at a bigger club for sure. But replacing the serial winning German with a rookie was one of the biggest gambles any top six club had taken for years.
And in the end the ruthlessness of so many other struggling Premier League clubs compared to Chelsea’s fiddling while their reputation burned, was beginning to look like a dereliction of duty.
They now sit 11th in the Premier League table having won just four of their last 19 games. Potter’s Blues had failed to score nine times in his final 22 matches. They’d become one of the easiest sides in the Premier League to play against.
Roman Abramovich would have sacked him four or five times over by now.
Support for Potter had drained away inside Stamford Bridge to such an extent that by the end Boehly is believed to have been the one senior figure still behind him.
Others feared Potter wouldn’t even have been able to beat a Liverpool side whose away form this season is the worst for over a decade.
With Chelsea conceding an average of two goals a game over the past month and Real Madrid shredding Villareal 6-0 on Sunday, the very real concern was that the Blues would have to watch the first leg of their Champions League quarter-final tie through their fingers.
Potter remains a good man and a fine coach who will doubtless find footballing sanctuary from the likes of a Spurs or a Leicester.
But the jump from Brighton was simply too much for him. He’d been backed with an influx of mid-season talent to the tune of nearly half a billion pounds.
The persistent word out of the Bridge was that he’d remain as the new kids on the block bedded in, even if Chelsea missed out on Champions League football.
But such is the quality at the top of the Premier League, that was always going to be fantasy.
Everyone else had been improving past them. Villa, who beat Chelsea on Saturday night, were 12 points behind them going into October’s reverse fixture. Unai Emery now has them sitting two places higher in ninth.
Julien Nagelsmann, recently sacked by Bayern, is now the favourite to take over but his people suggest he’d prefer to wait.
Chelsea have done enough of that, to their cost. They need stability. Fast.
