Scholes: Chelsea owners were 'crazy' to appoint Rosenior

Former Manchester United midfielder Paul Scholes said Chelsea's owners were "crazy" to think that Liam Rosenior was the right person to take the club forward. 

Rosenior was sacked just 107 days into his Stamford Bridge tenure following a 3-0 defeat away to Brighton last week, a club he represented for over three years as a player. 

That result saw Chelsea lose five successive league games without scoring for the first time since November 1912, while their overall five-game losing streak is their longest in the Premier League since November 1993 (a run of six).

Chelsea are now up against it in their quest to qualify for the Champions League, with the Blues eighth in the Premier League and 10 points behind Aston Villa in fifth place. 

The 41-year-old was appointed on a six-and-a-half-year deal; Rosenior is the fifth permanent manager to be sacked since BlueCo completed their takeover at Chelsea in 2022.

In announcing Rosenior's sacking, a club statement said there would be "a process of self-reflection to make the right long-term appointment", though Scholes believes that he was the wrong person to succeed Enzo Maresca. 

Speaking on The Overlap Fan Debate, Scholes said: "I don't see what the Chelsea owners are trying to do. Develop young players, is that a way of doing it? I don't know.

"The owners will take blame for a lot of it, of course they will. Other than the owners, nobody else in and around football thought Liam Rosenior was the right person for Chelsea.

"It was just crazy for me. Once you make that decision, what is Liam going to do? He is not going to say no to a Chelsea job from where he was.

"But once the owners make that decision, then they have to factor in that there's going to be times when it's not going that well.

"Now, losing five Premier League games and not scoring a goal is a big problem, and you are not going to survive that, and he hasn't."

Chelsea confirmed that Calum McFarlane, who was also in interim charge when Maresca was dismissed, would oversee the remainder of the Blues' 2025-26 campaign. 

He got off to a winning start last weekend, booking Chelsea's place in next month's FA Cup final against Manchester City thanks to a 1-0 victory over Leeds United. 

Further reports have suggested that former Real Madrid boss Xabi Alonso, Fulham's Marco Silva and Andoni Iraola, who announced he would be leaving Bournemouth at the end of the season, are among the top contenders for the Stamford Bridge hot seat. 

McFarlane's first Premier League test of his second interim spell comes this Monday when Chelsea welcome relegation-threatened Nottingham Forest to the capital. 

Chelsea have not lost six Premier League games in a row since November 1993, while they have never lost six in succession without scoring in their league history.