They kicked out Mourinho for a lot less

After this weekend’s disappointing performance against Barnsley (no disrespect to them) and the Carling Cup final loss, it seems that even a Champions League victory won’t keep Mr Expressionless at the Bridge now.

The bookies fancy Guus Hiddink to fill his boring shoes, but somehow names like Zola and Klinsmann are also in the mix. So who do you think will take the role? Have a vote below, or leave a fresh suggestion in the comments area.

Ronaldinho treats press to a display of world-class idleness

Ronaldinho, the player who seems to have had Roman Abramovich reaching for his biggest wallet recently yesterday showed his prospective buyer the kind of half-hearted approach to the game they can expect if they are stupid enough to pay him a vast fortune each week.

At the end of his training session with the Barcelona first team, Ronaldinho, perhaps looking forward to eating an apple through a letterbox, was walking off with Lionel Messi. Coach Frank Rijkaard, aware that his number one star hadn’t bothered doing his exercises called him back, yet the Brazilian had the brass neck to keep on walking.

When Ronaldinho finally turned round, Rijkaard made him repeat the exercises, which Ronaldinho did like a sulking child with minimum effort, at which point Rijkaard grabbed his arm and told him to try harder, which he did with as much bad grace as he could muster.

Mr Abramovich will no doubt be delighted to learn his prospective new player shows all the all the petulance, contempt for authority and sense of entitlement appropriate to a Chelsea player.

Top La Liga boss combines childlike artistic talent with vision of a lunatic

After Barcelona’s 1-1 draw at the weekend against local irritants Espanyol, the daily Sport newspaper came across some very interesting sketches, containing Barcelona manager Frank Rijkaard’s scribblings as to how to win the derby.

One document (pictured) seemed to involve Barcelona defending a corner by herding the entire Espanyol side over to the touchline while Yaya Toure ran in from the corner flag to chase the ball out of his six yard area. “Gudjonshen”, presumably less than delighted to discover his boss only had the most passing familiarity with the correct spelling of his name, would meanwhile run unmarked in a little dotted line across the D.

Disappointingly, this tactical hallucination failed to materialise during the game, although whether it was due to Barcelona’s poor herding technique or Espanyol’s turning a deaf ear to the Catalan translations of “come by” and “good bitch” is not clear. Either way, the dark art of management has acquired a fresh cloak of mystery with the discovery of the “the Rijkaard configuration”. Perhaps those gigantic managerial salaries are no coincidence after all.