Liam Rosenior has highlighted how media perceptions of him as a “joke” really affected him and his short stint at Chelsea.

After the surprise decision to part ways with Enzo Maresca on New Year’s Day last season, Chelsea were scrambling to find a new head coach.

It has been revealed that Maresca was in talks with Manchester City over succeeding Pep Guardiola, who was expected to leave the club at the end of the season, so the Italian’s position at Chelsea was understandably untenable.

Academy head coach Calum McFarlane was in charge as a caretaker for two games before Chelsea appointed Rosenior as the new head coach.

Rosenior had no Premier League experience at the time, but his impressive spell at Chelsea’s sister club, Strasbourg, in Ligue 1 convinced the Blues hierarchy to trust him with the post.

Rosenior had a quite impressive start at Stamford Bridge, with six wins from his first seven games in charge, including a five-game winning streak.

However, the honeymoon period soon faded. The wins became more sporadic, as Chelsea suffered three consecutive defeats to Arsenal under Rosenior and were knocked out of the Champions League by PSG on a humiliating 8-2 aggregate score in the Round of 16.

Rosenior, who signed a five-and-a-half-year deal with Chelsea, lasted just 106 days at the club before getting sacked in late April. He had managed just 11 wins in 23 matches across all competitions, and at the time, Chelsea were on a five-game losing run in the league without scoring after the 3-0 defeat to Brighton & Hove Albion. It is the club’s worst goalless streak since 1912.

McFarlane was again in charge of Chelsea as an interim until the end of the season, but he could only lead the team to two wins in the six games of his second interim spell.

Chelsea had just one win in their final nine Premier League matches last season and ended up finishing 10th in the table. Additionally, the Blues failed to secure silverware after a 1-0 defeat to Manchester City in the FA Cup final.

Chelsea appointed Xabi Alonso as the new manager for the 2026/27 season in late May, while Rosenior returned to football management with Paris FC in July.

The two parties are doing relatively well this season. Both Alonso's Chelsea and Rosenior's Paris FC sit fourth in the Premier League and Ligue 1, respectively.

However, Rosenior has clearly held some grudges, not particularly against Chelsea, but for how the media portrayed his time at the club.

“I don’t want to go into details now; I’ll talk about it one day, when the time is right,” the former Blues head coach told French outlet So Foot, as quoted by Sport Witness, when asked about his underwhelming spell at Chelsea.

“But in a country where tolerance is an important value, what happened there has nothing to do with football.

“Actually, the moment that worried me the most was at the beginning, when we went through that five-game winning streak.

“Any club would have been happy with such a run, but not Chelsea. You get good results, and you’re in the spotlight. Then, there was a kind of snowball effect in the media. 

“They made fun of those instructions I gave (Alejandro) Garnacho on a scrap of paper when we were down to 10 men against PSG. The clothes I wore became a joke; the way I spoke did, too. 

“I’m not a joke! You’re the first people I’m talking to about this, and probably the last for a long time, but one day, I’ll tell you what really happened.”

Rosenior, however, argued that he has now learned a valuable lesson. He now understands how big an effect the media can have on football.

“In England, there’s this preconceived notion of what a Premier League coach should be, how he should behave,” he explained. 

“You have to conform to that standard. People who know me know that I’m someone who tries to be sincere and authentic.

“But I don’t have control over how the media describes me or talks about me. What I’ve understood now, and this is important for all coaches worldwide, is that social media, or the media in general, can dictate public opinion about the quality of a player or a coach.”

“This isn’t new, of course, but the biggest lesson from my time at Chelsea is knowing that they are also capable of constructing the entire narrative around a club’s trajectory.”