SOCCER: David Hytnerhears how Avram Grant is confident of winning Chelsea fans' hearts with attractive football

Avram Grant does not believe in love at first sight. The new Chelsea manager found himself discussing the notion yesterday, ahead of his first match at Stamford Bridge, and to add weight to his argument he asked one attendant journalist if he had fallen straight away for the woman he would marry.

Grant appeared slightly startled when the journalist replied he had. "Don't tell that to my wife, please," he shot back, to uproarious laughter. The Israeli has a nice line in dry wit.

Grant's point about romance in football management, though, just about held. Grant argued not even Jose Mourinho, his popular predecessor at Stamford Bridge, enjoyed the adulation of the home crowd from the very outset.

"In football, I didn't see even one team love their coach from the first week, the first 10 days, the first month," he said. "You need to show (them) something first, and the players are the same. I don't think (the Chelsea fans) loved Claudio Ranieri from the first week, I don't think they loved Jose from the first week. Jose did something that made them love him, so I will try to do the same.

"I need to show something. I know what Chelsea need, I know where I am going and what I am going to do at Chelsea. I know the future will be very positive and after this, we can speak."

Grant took the team to Manchester United last Sunday and Hull City, in the League Cup, on Wednesday, but the visit of Fulham today, when he will welcome back striker Didier Drogba from injury, will be the first introduction at large to his new public. He is entitled to feel one or two butterflies.

Mourinho will be fondly remembered in song; there has even been talk of protests against his dismissal. Chelsea have not lost a Premier League game at Stamford Bridge since February 2004 - a record run of 66 matches; the last 60 of them under Mourinho. Grant dare not break the sequence.

Yet he seems unfazed. In his understated way, Grant has stressed the need for some degree of patience but he is confident of winning supporters' hearts with an attractive brand of football, signs of which were evident in the 4-0 win over Hull.

The owner, Roman Abramovich, wants more entertainment. Grant intends to fulfil the demand. "What you saw (against Hull) is how I want the team to play," he said. "We want many players in the attack, we want many players to be involved. We want titles, everybody knows that, (but) my target is to make the style of the team a little bit different. I want (the players) to play with a smile. We are happy if we win but for me, the way to be winning is very important.

"I am only here one week. To put the style and the philosophy in one week, I need to be a magician and I am not. You know how long it took Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger. I think it will be quicker than I thought after I saw the reaction of the players."

Grant is growing exasperated at the constant comparisons to Mourinho. He is very much his own man and, after the whirlwind events of the past 10 days, his personality is coming to the fore. The "Normal One" is far from bland and while his critics in Israel would disagree, he claims he has a reputation for producing goalscoring teams.

"In the last World Cup qualification (when he was manager of Israel), we were with France, who had Thierry Henry and David Trezeguet; with Ireland, who had Robbie Keane and other strikers from here, and Switzerland, and we finished with more goals than Ireland and France," he said. "In all my years as a coach in the Israeli league, my team were always first or second in goalscoring."

It is a curiosity that at the age of 52 Grant has leapt from relative obscurity to one of the top jobs in world football. This is what he has waited for, however, and he bristles with conviction. "To get a chance from a small country, when you are a minority and everything, it's not so easy and I know that," he said.

"I have been in England, since 1977, at least 10 times a year, and I saw everything here. I saw when foreign coaches started and foreign players . . . and I think it was good for English football. For me, it's not easy to take. I am happy I am here. I would have been happy if it was before but it's happened now. That's what's important." ...