How John Terry went from legend to liability

By Patrick Barclay

JT — Captain, Leader, Legend. And Loser. No one at the Matthew Harding end of Stamford Bridge was in any mood to amend the banner that is proudly draped there every match day. But some were posing the near-unthinkable question: if the man next to Ricardo Carvalho in the centre of Chelsea’s defence were anyone other than John Terry, would he be dropped?
That the club captain, until recently one of the English game’s most reliable sources of strength, has turned into a weakness became abundantly clear on Saturday and Carlo Ancelotti faces his trickiest test since arriving in London last summer.

Wayne Bridge ( right) avoids shaking hands with John Terry before the start of the match

Because Terry is rated the most important man in the dressing room — a point emphasised by a pay rise and other forms of reassurance when Manchester City tried to sign him in the summer — the manager will be as patient and supportive as possible. But he admitted on Saturday that the side had lost “balance” and a factor in that is the deterioration in Terry’s form.
It began when his affair with the former girlfriend of Wayne Bridge was revealed. Terry walked out for the next match, away to Burnley, as if nothing much had happened and played reasonably well. But he incurred a yellow card, another in the match after that and another against City as Chelsea’s fortunes plummeted.
Meanwhile Terry has been deprived of the England captaincy by Fabio Capello. Although the Italian was widely praised for doing this, he had done neither Terry nor the country any favours by appointing someone so unsuitable for symbolic duty in the first place.
So regularly have Terry’s mistakes cost goals that Ancelotti felt impelled to protect him by arguing that his display on Saturday had been error-free. He fooled no one, least of all the producers of Match of the Day, whose compilation of gaffes included the sequence in which Carlos Tévez brushed off Terry, left him floundering and, despite being knocked off balance by the now-desperate pursuer, scored.
There was more to the seismic aftermath than the determination of City players, above all the magnificent Tévez but also Craig Bellamy, to do Bridge proud on a problematic return to his old club.
You could see how most of the City side felt about Terry by the way they looked to one side while shaking his hand. But City did not beat the Chelsea we have come to know and admire. Terry and company were not merely hit on the break, as a team can be when chasing the game. They were made to look weaker and more vulnerable than Hilário’s goalkeeping could explain.
The truth is that Manchester United, who appeared to have sustained a significant defeat away to Everton the previous weekend, are back in the title race because of the Terry-induced destabilisation of the erstwhile favourites. Terry used to lead by instruction as well as example and it was noticeable on Saturday that colleagues kept straying out of position.
Bellamy, for instance, must have been almost as thrilled to find himself one-on-one with the leaden-footed John Obi Mikel as he was then to be confronted by Hilário’s bizarre positioning, almost the wrong side of the near post. You could only imagine the mixed feelings of Ross Turnbull as the young English goalkeeper watched from the bench.
In a few weeks Petr Cech will be back from injury, but the condition of Terry is of even greater concern. He is understood to be upset by much of the reporting of his private life, but this ignores reality (as people who pay a reported £800,000 for a woman’s silence are clearly apt to do).
It was extraordinary to note on Saturday that, with so much to focus on during the previous week, he had spent at least part of it devising a new hairstyle — just a couple of razor strokes away from a Travis Bickle-style Mohican. What does that say for his state of mind?
To think that City strove so mightily to sign Terry — and that United must have sighed with relief when they failed. Once again, events are moving in Sir Alex Ferguson’s direction. – [London Times]