Chelsea’s recent freebies haven’t had much success at the Bridge

Chelsea’s decision to bring in Ross Turnbull on a free transfer makes sense: they get to fill the squad place vacated last January by Carlo Cudicini on the cheap and if a year or two down the line they want to upgrade, he’s young enough for them to make a profit on him.

But is the former Middlesbrough keeper going to stay the duration of his four-year contract and prove a shrewd acquisition or will he be swiftly written of as a failure? Chelsea’s recent record at signing out-of-contract players suggest that the latter is more likely.

The last four players that the Blues have picked up for nothing - Steve Sidwell, Tal Ben Haim, Claudio Pizarro and Mineiro - started a combined 21 league

Chairman Peter Buck plans departures and up to five new arrivals

Roman Abramovich’s wallet doesn’t open quite as often as it used to, but that won’t stop Chelsea playing a major role in the transfer market in the summer. Blues chairman Bruce Buck has today said the club will sign up to five new players for 2009/10, preferably using “internally generated cash”. Said cash will be generated by offloading some of their current stars:

We haven’t properly got together to talk about summer transfers yet, but I think that we could expect that several players will leave and that several players will come in.”"I don’t know whether that is three, four or five, but something in that kind of neighbourhood, so we can expect a handful to leave.

With Buck’s comments in mind, The Spoiler has compiled a list of the five players we expect Chelsea to part with, and five fresh faces that could soon call Stamford Bridge home…

Florent Malouda
Most Chelsea fans hate the Frenchman, and he has said he will move if he doesn’t regain his place. He has also expressed an interest in joining Juventus.

Branislav Ivanovic
The defender has made just six league starts in almost fourteen months and the emergence of Michael Mancienne means Chelsea have four other centre-backs to choose from.

Michael Ballack
The German is out of contract in the summer and could struggle

Beckenbauer and Lehmann fail to see eye to eye over dissent issue

After seeing yellow for protesting over an opponent’s feigned injury in a 2-2 draw with Eintracht Frankfurt at the weekend, Stuttgart keeper and perennial complainer Jens Lehmann said the standard of refereeing is so bad he may retire from the Bundesliga:

“There was a situation in which a Frankfurt player feigned an injury so we could not launch a counter-attack.”

“The referee said he had to stop play for the injury and then the man stands up and doesn’t even leave the field to be treated. I told the referee, ‘Look! There he goes!’ and he shows me a yellow card - incredible.

“That was so bad that I may as well not bother playing in future. I did not even say anything nasty to the referee.

“Surely there are better ones. I am sorry, but things cannot go on like this. This is sad for the whole of the Bundesliga.”

Jens is clearly outraged for receiving his third yellow card of the season for dissent, but if Franz Beckenbauer had his way, those cards would have been a different colour. The German legend has told Bild that the Bundesliga

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Yesterday evening, The Spoiler correctly predicted that Valencia’s refusal to sell David Silva to Man United would force Sir Alex Ferguson to up his Dimitar Berbatov bid. Reports today suggest that the Red Devils have thrust £28 million in Spurs’ direction. Will Spurs cave in and leave themselves open to ‘feeder club’ jibes again this close to kick-off? The latest whispers suggest Juande Ramos will be desperately trying to fill the gaping Bulgarian-shaped hole in his strikeforce within the next 24 hours.

James Milner to Aston Villa
A week ago Aston Villa looked to be in trouble. Martin O’Neill had all but conceded defeat in the Gareth Barry saga and nobody new was arriving. With Nicky Shorey, Luke Young and Carlos Cuellar, however, the skies are blue, the sun is shining, Barry is still there and Milner is ready to join.

The Spoiler Truth-o-meter: Villa are signalling their intent to improve further on last season

Anton’s off again
Despite Anton Ferdinand saying he has no desire to leave

Lamps and Shevchenko clearly didn’t read the memo

Yes, it’s the time of year when the overpaid megastars of the Premiership wear even stupider clothes than usual, and it was Chelsea’s turn to ring in the festive season in London last night.

While some players got in the spirit by donning fancy dress (see JT and Pizarro below), others treated it like a casual night out. Princess Frank wore his normal Princess attire, with socks rolled all the way up in order to please Fabio Capello.

Andriy Shevchenko is under the impression it’s still 1994, and wore a baggy rollneck accordingly.

John Terry had a tough time picking between

Tis the season for sportsmen all over the country to behave like idiots

Great, it’s Christmas, everyone will be full of cheer. The only downer is that when the free grog is flowing, easily-led sportsmen tend to come unstuck and morph into animals. Welcome to shaming season - Henson, Pizarro and Cattermole are up first.

The Accused: Gavin Henson (rugby player)

The Crime: Boarding a train from Reading to Wales with three of his gruesome rugger mates and horrifying fellow passengers (including tiny little children) with blue language and outrageous antics. Antics that included thumping each other, spewing all over the place, then weeing in a carriage. The final outrage came when Henson called a special needs teacher a “fat cunt”.

The Spoiler Verdict: An utterly loathesome rugby oik, such obnoxious behaviour should see him chained to rocks and punched in the face by the offended children. As things stand, his club apologised instead.

The Accused: Claudio Pizarro (footballer)

The Crime: Allegedly the Peru skipper/ Chelsea sub spent an evening in a luxury South American hotel, Las Inkas, making passionate sex with prostitutes whilst extremely high on alcohol. This came but days before his side was thrashed 5-1 by the little people of Ecuador.

The Spoiler Verdict: Perhaps Pizarro is spending too much time with Coley and JT over at Chelsea? He could do with having a night in with the quieter/more mature players, like Makelele. His national coach says that if it’s true he won’t be playing for Peru ever again.

The Accused: Lee Cattermole (footballer)

The Crime: The Sun reports that Middlesbrough midfield thug Cattermole is facing a three-year ban from his favourite pubs in Yarm, Teeside, after him and his mates spent an entire day smashed out of their brains, being sickeningly abusive to anyone within earshot. He managed to get thrown out of four pubs in one day.

The Spoiler Verdict: Cleveland Police took it upon themselves to have a strong word with the 19-year-old thug. The Spoiler would advise a harder line - cut off his hands!