[Bagor]

A decent read. Shameful that they even go so far as to replace a picture of their CL victory with one that excludes RDM.

Brutal, you might think, but so is the fact that just inside Stamford Bridge's boundaries the huge picture that used to adorn the wall behind the West Stand, where supporters could have photographs taken beside the image of Roberto Di Matteo and his players and assorted trophies, has been replaced with another picture of the Champions League celebrations – excluding, with some precision, the manager of the time. A small ignominy, perhaps, compared with the other indignities heaped on Di Matteo. In another sense it feels like a pretty accurate snapshot of the way the modern-day Chelsea go about their business.

Everyone knows the routine by now: appoint, marginalise, isolate and sack. Then comes the pay-off – in total, £86m so far since 2004 – and then the moments when they give the impression they would happily airbrush the last manager out of the club's history. Rafael Benítez, as a politician, might not be as clever as he would like to believe but he was smart in one respect: at least Chelsea's interim manager got his retaliation in first before the lawyers became involved.

That word again: "interim". Until a few years ago people in this position always tended to be known as the "caretaker" manager. Before it became the word of choice at Stamford Bridge, "interim" felt more like office jargon. It was the name of an album by The Fall. One thing it was not was a football term. Now it is the one word by which Benítez's short, joyless reign will be associated. "A temporary or provisional arrangement; stopgap; makeshift," is the dictionary definition. It will be there on Saturday in the match-day programme against West Bromwich Albion, just as it is for every home match. It will be on the team-sheets. It is on the letterheads of official Chelsea paper. The club could hardly have done more to promote the idea Benítez was merely passing through and it is almost bizarre that Abramovich and his nomenklatura expected the team to thrive from such a position.

Sir Alex Ferguson always said the first reason Manchester United finished third in the 2001-02 season was because the players thought he was retiring in the summer and started to think beyond him. A manager counting down the months is inevitably going to struggle to exert full authority and, when the dressing room is as hard-faced and unflinching as Chelsea's, the players were always going to look at Benítez as just a short-term measure, not even good enough to get a proper title. These are basic facts of football life. They really should not need to be explained to a club of serious ambition.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/b...nitez-chelsea1

And most damning.

It is not an exact science but a "good dressing room" can generally be gauged by how watertight it is against the outside world. Manchester United, Arsenal and Liverpool all understand that and Manchester City are slowly getting there. Chelsea operate in a different way. It is a culture of leaks, strategic positioning, undermining others. Not everyone but a concerted number, nonetheless. One of the players – his identity would be a grave disappointment to Chelsea's supporters – has been behind a lot of it.

I'm guessing Lampard, or to a lesser extent Cole. Terry is too obvious a scumbag to garner disappointment.

Good times, going to be strange if he's still around for the trip to Anfield. The opposition cheering him whilst his own supporters boo him.