He may have been a decent person, but he wasn’t a quality manager. He inherited a team that Mourinho had built into a hugely successful team that had leaders all over the pitch. Mourinho may have been there a few months too long but the core of both the on field and off field team he left was incredibly strong. You can’t compare Grant’s time in charge of Chelsea with Fergie, Pep or Klopp’s first seasons in charge as they were either having to build a club virtually from the bottom up or were implementing a completely different style of play

For me it’s entirely down to his spell at West Ham in 10-11, remember them being hopeless with the exception of Scott Parker and Demba Ba from January onwards

Good mananger, good person

There was a bit of snobbery going around because he wasn’t a well known name. When Chelsea sacked there was a bit of a feeling he was harshly treated, but his spells at Pompey and West Ham seemed to see that go away (although, I don’t think even Sir Alex Ferguson could have saved Pompey that year)

Taking that team to second wasn’t hard.

I think there’s an interesting counterfactual in what happens if Chelsea win the penalty shootout in the '08 Champions League final. Like a few people have said, Grant’s record at Chelsea was pretty excellent that season, even if he did have a strong platform left by Jose Mourinho to build on. Ultimately, Grant wasn’t very charismatic and had little reputation as a coach outside of Israel to fall back on, so he was always going to be judged harshly at Chelsea. What really did for him was back to back relegations in 2010/2011 - Portsmouth he actually left with his reputation enhanced because he conducted himself with a lot of dignity at a club in absolute meltdown, and steered them to the FA Cup Final, but his West Ham team were absolutely dreadful. Since then he’s bounced around the world and obviously had a more than respectable career, but he’s probably never going to be anywhere close to one of Europe’s big five leagues again.

Basically it was sheer dumb luck. The players and existing coaching staff did all the work, it’s well documented if you give it a google.

“Ahead of last Wednesday’s League Cup victory at Hull, Terry elected to hold a team meeting in which he called on team-mates to rally behind the new manager. Terry’s message was ill-received, however, with several players insisting Grant was not good enough to coach them. One respected international spoke with team-mates after Terry’s words, complaining: ‘Chelsea deserve a bigger coach than him. Grant does not have the quality to coach a team like this. When we play big opponents we will suffer because of him.’
There are many at the club who agree. Abramovich is understood to have received unfavourable reports on Grant’s coaching methods from club staff, one of whom describes them as ‘25 years behind the times’. The Israeli has not helped his cause by using training drills that many players believe to be outdated when compared to the cutting-edge methods they had become accustomed to under Mourinho. According to a source, at least one member of Grant’s coaching staff has told friends that he will consider leaving the club if there is no further change in management.”

At West Ham he was known as ‘the Imposter’.