AS CHELSEA fans chanted the name of their former manager on Saturday and booed the players that were singing about just a couple of months ago, I began to realise that some football supporters really are fickle.

 

Although, it’s pretty obvious, so maybe I’ve always known it but just refused to accept it.

 

Here are adults, myself included, who will love a player when they play for the team they support but the moment they leave will wish death upon them. 

 

The player hasn’t changed. They still do the same things they did before, just in a different colour shirt. I’m not that bad — football is a game where players come and go so I won’t hate someone who was no longer wanted by the club I support. I just won’t chant their name.

 

But it goes beyond that. Fans turn on their favourite players while they are still at the club. Look at the reception Cesc Fabregas, Diego Costa and Eden Hazard received on Saturday against Sunderland.

 

These are three players who just a few weeks ago were being defended to the high heavens. Supporters with Hazard shirts were booing him. How does that make sense?

 

Yet they chanted for a manager who was sacked and could be working for their rivals in a matter of days or weeks if the stories are to be believed.

 

And if they are, then Jose Mourinho would have preferred to join Manchester United when Alex Ferguson retired in 2013. Instead, he “reluctantly” returned to Chelsea and denied crying when he found out David Moyes was to succeed Ferguson.

 

Will Chelsea fans continue to chant Mourinho’s name on December 28  when they face United at Old Trafford? Will the “special one” banners at Stamford Bridge be ripped down in disgust? Will United fans join them as they continue to voice their displeasure at Louis van Gaal?

 

Guess we won’t know unless the United board decide enough is enough and sack one manager that plays “boring football” to replace him with another one.

 

While on the topic of the Red Devils, it is interesting to see the changing attitudes of United fans, as they wake up to the harsh realities of being a football fan.

 

The chants of: “Attack, attack, attack” continue to grow and 1-0 victories are met with anger and disappointment. I always thought fans wanted their team to win and that it made them happy but clearly I was wrong.

 

A team must win and play beautiful, attractive football for 90 minutes or else the players and managers will hear a chorus of boos at the final whistle.

 

And those same fans will call for the manager’s head. This is a manager who  has the 20-time Premier League champions in fifth place, joint with Tottenham in fourth. 

 

Yes, they are nine points off league leaders Leicester, but with just over half a season to go there is no reason why he can’t have United lifting the trophy in May.

 

But Van Gaal can no longer do anything right. The calm and methodical way he sat in the dugout, analysing what was going on in front of him, is now seen as him being lazy and a sign that he doesn’t care about the club.

 

Exactly the same person, in the exact same place, doing the exact same thing. 

 

Yet it draws a completely different reaction from the same people.

 

These two clubs aren’t the only ones with fans who change their opinion on a game by game basis. And it isn’t a modern phenomenon. 

 

We all know Ferguson was a game away from getting the sack before guiding United to unparalleled levels of success over a management career spanning two decades.

 

Had he taken over in the Premier League and not the First Division, as it was then called, he wouldn’t have lasted two seasons. He would have been chased out of the Theatre of Dreams by fans holding up bedsheets calling for his head.

 

There will always be a number of fans that are fickle. I guess it is part of the game.