Gourlay: Chelsea won't appoint Di Matteo before end of season

Posted Thursday, April 26, 2012 by YAHOO Sport

Chelsea chief executive Ron Gourlay has re-established the stance that the club will not appoint Roberto Di Matteo or any other manager until the end of the season.

The Italian was given the role of interim boss at Stamford Bridge after the March sacking of Andre Villas-Boas, and Gourlay insisted that will remain the case, despite his masterminding of a triumph over Barcelona in the Champions League semifinal, to avoid disrupting the team ahead of its upcoming cup finals.

"It's very important that we follow out what we said originally. W appointed Robbie [Di Matteo] as an interim manager until the end of the season," he told talkSPORT.

"We decided that we wouldn't start any speculation during the period that we have between now and the end of the season where we have some very important games to play and we have agreed that we would leave that until the end of the season."

Di Matteo has coached Chelsea for 15 matches in all competitions and has tallied 11 victories, four draws and just one defeat.

"We just went through a period where performances and results weren’t very good and we've managed to turn that around with the same team of players," Gourlay said.

"We've got to focus on the remaining six games that we have between now and the end of the season and I know it’s the old cliche, 'one game at a time', but honestly that’s the way that we've set ourselves up since Robbie took over and it's working very, very well."