• ‘I have improved as a manager from last season’
• ‘We plan to do better in the Champions League’

Carlo Ancelotti has delivered a warning to his rivals at home and abroad by claiming he is a better manager a year on from taking over at Chelsea and, as such, can steer the club to the first Premier League, FA Cup and Champions League Treble in their history.

The Italian enjoyed a hugely successful first season at Stamford Bridge, winning the title and the FA Cup, and ahead of the new campaign, which begins with tomorrow’s Community Shield contest against Manchester United at Wembley, feels sure there is more to come – not only from his squad, but also himself.

“I had doubts last year, when I started, but now I have more knowledge about the team and club and about the atmosphere in England and the teams here and so I think we will start the season in a different situation,” said Ancelotti, who had managed in Italy for 14 years before his arrival in England last June, most notably at Milan where he won the Champions League twice and Serie A once. “I think so [that he is a better manager]. Last year was a fantastic experience for me and I have improved because of it.”

Being holders will, Ancelotti believes, make retaining the league and FA Cup “more difficult” for Chelsea, but he sees no reason why they cannot. He has also backed his team to end their long pursuit of the Champions League, which last season ended at the first knockout stage with defeat to the eventual winners, Internazionale.

“Last year every player did their best and we want to do the same again,” he said. “We plan to be competitive and do better in the Champions League.”

Chelsea’s preparation for the new campaign has hardly been ideal, with the team having lost their last three pre-season fixtures, most recently Wednesday’s 2-1 defeat at Hamburg.

Ancelotti is not overly concerned, however, and has instead put the poor run of form down to lack of sharpness among his players, especially those who only returned to the club at end of last month having featured at the World Cup.

To that end, the 51-year-old has broken rank with many of his fellow Premier League managers, in particular Harry Redknapp, by claiming next week’s international friendlies can be a benefit ahead of the opening weekend of the season.

“It’s not a problem,” he insisted. “The players who came back on 26 July need to play more and if they have the possibility then that is good. These games can improve their condition.”

One player who looks set to be part of Chelsea’s squad when the begin the defence of their title against West Bromwich Albion next Saturday is Ramires. The Brazil midfielder is believed to have passed a medical at the club’s Cobham base on Thursday ahead of a £18.3m move from Benfica. The 23-year-old last night described a move to Chelsea as a “proposition that was impossible to reject”.

Ancelotti declined to discuss the Ramires transfer yesterday and instead focused on the Community Shield, which Chelsea won last season on penalties against United in what was his first competitive match in charge of the Londoners. “For both teams it’s an important game,” said Ancelotti. “Also, United could again be our most important opponents this season so need to beat them when we can.”

Ancelotti is to make one change to the team that started against Hamburg, with Hilario replacing Ross Turnbull in goal. That means Didier Drogba will again start on the bench as he continues his recovery from groin surgery.

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But Sir Alex Ferguson could manage a surprise for manager of the year

Since the Premier League began, only one manager-of-the-year award has been bestowed on an individual whose team did not finish top. In 2001 George Burley was honoured for qualifying for the Uefa Cup with an Ipswich team in their first season back in the top flight, leaving Sir Alex Ferguson scantly rewarded for a then unprecedented third successive title.

The Manchester United manager would not have minded the award going to a fellow Scot. He had already won five of the gongs by that stage, has gone on to pick up another four, and probably felt like everyone else that distinctions handed out by sponsors are of comparatively little merit next to honours won on the pitch. Yet Ferguson is currently chief cheerleader for Roy Hodgson as manager of the year. Even if an official award did not exist, the managerial achievement of the season would still be a topic keenly discussed at every level of the game, precisely because the game has so many levels.

If it is a little disappointing that the official award tracks the destination of the title so closely it is hardly surprising, because any other course would be fiendishly difficult as well as endlessly controversial. David Moyes, for instance, has never won a trophy at Everton, yet there have been several seasons when the results and consistency he has produced on a limited budget have been little short of astonishing. Then there are all the relegation firefighters and the managers down through the divisions who produce small-scale miracles against all expectation. Ian Holloway at Blackpool this season comes to mind, as well as Chris Hughton at Newcastle, Steve Cotterill at Notts County and Keith Hill at Rochdale.

Sticking to the Premier League to simplify the argument, this season alone there have been claims made on behalf of Moyes, Harry Redknapp, Martin O’Neill and Tony Pulis, yet realistically, with their present clubs at least, none of those is” going to get close to a title. Rafael Benítez, on the other hand, has been agonisingly close to a title. In addition to a major miracle in Istanbul and a thrilling FA Cup final win in previous years, his Liverpool side of last season suffered only two league defeats, positively parsimonious compared to the present situation where everyone has lost at least half a dozen, yet manager of the year passed him by. Benítez ultimately had to face the fact that even beating United home and away could not prevent his rival and adversary picking up a third successive title for the second time in his career. It is hard to argue against success on that scale.

So while Hodgson would be a wonderfully romantic and completely deserving choice as manager of the season for his magnificent feat in guiding Fulham to the Europa League final, logic and precedent are not on his side. Carlo Ancelotti is on course to win a league and Cup Double in his first season in England, and no one has ever done that before. Arsène Wenger managed it in his first full season in England, which was a considerable achievement in its own way and earned him the manager-of-the-year award in 1998, though it felt much more like his second season here as he arrived in September of 1996. José Mourinho won just the league in his first season with Chelsea, repeated the achievement the following year, and was manager of the year both times. So Ancelotti could feel aggrieved, to say the least, were a double in his first season to count for nothing.

Manchester United could still derail Chelsea’s title bid today, or to be more exact Liverpool could, and were the title to end up at Old Trafford it would be United’s fourth in a row, and no one has done that in the entire history of English football. Were Ferguson to claim such a success at the age of 68, breaking Liverpool’s record of 18 titles to boot, Hodgson might have to get on the pitch and score the winning goal in Hamburg to wrest the award from its most regular recipient.

The way Fulham’s fairytale has been panning out, however, you wouldn’t bet against him doing that. Even Ferguson is behind him, describing Fulham’s run to the final as one of the best British performances of all time, though he could simply be playing down Chelsea claims. It amounts to little in the scheme of things: it is only a talking point, a matter of opinion. But Fulham’s success is unexpected, Chelsea’s more or less demanded. And Hodgson has built a squad, with the help of considerable funds from his owner, whereas Ancelotti inherited an already capable one.

Here’s the weird bit, though. Hodgson is definitely getting younger. No one else in football management has ever managed to pull off that trick. Hodgson has not just reinvented the glory game, he appears to have stumbled on an antidote to stress as well as the secret of eternal youth. Why stop at manager of the year? Based on his Thursday performances there is still time to be the next prime minister.

And Mourinho to get an award for his own special skills?
Still no back-to-back European Cup winners in the Champions League era. Oh dear, what a pity, never mind. I’m not sure how much more beautiful-game drooling from grown men I could have taken in any case had Barcelona made it to Madrid. And splendidly though they performed in Rome, Barcelona were lucky to reach last year’s final, so it is perhaps as well that history is not going to be made through the inadvertent assistance of Tom

• Chelsea’s former Milan manager Ancelotti to give evidence
• Trial of Luciano Moggi concerns 2006 match-fixing scandal

Carlo Ancelotti has been called to appear as a witness at the next hearing of the criminal trial into Italy’s 2006 match-fixing scandal, which is set to start in Naples on 20 April.

The Chelsea manager’s former club Milan were deducted points by a sporting tribunal for involvement in the scandal, which led to their rivals Juventus being relegated and stripped of two Serie A titles.

Lawyers defending Luciano Moggi, the former Juve director at the centre of the affair, have caused a stir by presenting wiretaps which allegedly dragged in the previously untainted club Internazionale, who were awarded the second of the titles taken from the Turin club.

Criminal prosecutors, however, said the contents of the new wiretaps did not indicate any wrongdoing by Inter executives.

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