Rúben Amorim out but Chelsea ‘likely’ to decide new manager in ‘coming weeks’ — report

Well, the days of taking our sweet time in appointing or at least identifying a new manager have certainly come to a middle, with The Athletic reporting today that we will “likely” make a decision “in the coming weeks”. Of course, every month or year in the future is just a collection of weeks that are coming, but presumably they mean soon. Soonish? Soonish.

We have apparently reduced our pool of candidates from “5-to-10” to just a handful (so five or less, unless you have six fingers or more). That certainly seems like zero progress considering that the search began with no more than a handful of serious candidates, but perhaps we had to give time to token phone calls to the likes of Antonio Conte, José Mourinho, and Carlo Ancelotti.

There was also a phone call, reportedly, to Rúben Amorin, who’s making waves over in Portugal with Sporting Lisbon CP. He apparently was already sounded out in the wake of Tuchel’s sacking, but he said “no” (or “no” but in Portuguese), for which we should be eternally unthankful. And Amorim apparently remains just peachy keen in Lisbon.

The Athletic claim that this search remains “wide open” and “with a favourite yet to emerge from the contenders”. For what it’s worth, the last time we were in a similar situation, with an interim in place and a search ongoing in 2016, we officially named the next manager by early April (Conte), confirming monthslong rumors at that point.