Is ‘Big Phil’ feeling the strain?

IT WAS a strange appointment in the first place.

In getting rid of the affable but inexperienced Avram Grant, who failed to live up to the expectations of the Chelsea board even though he was only a John Terry slip away from winning the Champions League, those in charge at Stamford Bridge were presumably looking for something different.

Which made the appointment of Luiz Felipe Scolari — affable but inexperienced, in terms of the English game, at least — a little puzzling.

True, the Brazilian had a terrific pedigree at international level. Winning the World Cup in 2002 with Brazil may strike some as being no more difficult than opening a packet of cream crackers, but it takes skill to manage a collective group of egos that would rival a small army of Elton John clones.

His achievements while with Portugal weren’t mean feats either. It could be argued that Scolari was only a top-class striker away from winning both Euro 2004 and the 2006 World Cup.

Big Phil’s long managerial career, which has spanned three continents, has also taken in trophies by the cabinet-load in his native Brazil.

So why has the gentle giant’s time at Chelsea been so underwhelming so far?

There’s a clue in the fact that the 60-year-old hadn’t been in charge of a club side for seven years prior to arriving at Stamford Bridge.

Domestic league football is a very different animal to the tournament play he has been so used to lately. And the world is a very different place to how it was when Scolari was last faced with the mundane, day-after-day duties of club football.

In 2001, Cristiano Ronaldo was but a 16-year-old with crooked teeth and a dream, Kerry Katona didn’t need a nip of the hard stuff to make her feel Whole Again when topping the charts with Atomic Kitten, and UK homes were still being flogged with lunatic 125-per-cent mortgages.

The Premier League has also changed beyond all recognition, with congested midfield battles meaning that tactical nuances come more to the fore than ever before.

On that score Scolari, who has reportedly had difficulty getting ideas across to his players, has struggled.

He still doesn’t seem to have worked out if Didier Drogba and Nicolas Anelka can be paired successfully — probably not, in a team minus wingers — and with goalkeeper Petr Cech and his defence looking increasingly vulnerable, advantages have been regularly wiped out. Five times, sides have recovered deficits to at least draw with the Stamford Bridge outfit with Arsenal and Burnley, on penalties, going on to beat them.

Maybe it isn’t quite time to worry for the Chelsea boss’s future just yet. Despite a tough period, they are still only three points adrift of Premier League leaders Liverpool and could easily go on to claim the title again.

Lucky for Scolari that this is the year nobody seems to want to win it.

But the tantrum thrown at his own men after a late equaliser gained Fulham a point in the West London derby at the weekend shows that the difficulties he is facing are fast becoming very public.

For a boss renowned as a protective, father figure to his players, that can’t be good news.