Was that a monkey gesture Suarez did when he scored yesterday?

I don't know, I turned it off when he scored as I didn't want to see him celebrate. But try to find out, as I'd love to scandalise about that, to the point where the FA were forced to investigate him because of the amount of noise I'd made.

Serious question, do you think the board care about the fans' opinion of Abramovich's chosen manager?

ITV will definitely show Oldham v Everton, with a tea time kick off.

I don't think our board are capable of caring. I don't think they are capable of thinking. They are the club management equivalent of Fernando Torres. TBH each and every member of the board should be booted out in the summer along with Benitez and Torres.

I think the board will care because of the fans continued reaction. Because they are the ****ers who probably offered Benitez up as a decent choice to take over as manager. So at the end of the season, when we've hopefully scraped into the CL places but have won nothing, the end of season review will focus on the absolutely terrible mismanagement of the club that the board are responsible for.

Just thinking about it a little, I obviously hope that we bring Jose back after he wins the CL for Real. But along with Jose coming back I hope that we make huge changes to the way the club is managed. It's pointless bringing in a great manager in if you're going to have a bunch of total ***** tripping him up all the time.

I appreciate everything Abramovich has given to CFC. He's one of my biggest footballing heroes. Without him there would have been, at most, a possible sneaked PL, but more probably we'd have slipped to mid-table and won nothing. An outside possibility was to do a Leeds/Newcastle. So the fact we're reigning CL winners is something I don't take lightly. But if CFC appointed Benitez as full time Chelsea manager, I think that's the moment when I turn my back on football.

Much, much more than a possibility given the rumoured Leeds-esque state of your finances when you made your pact with the devil...

And who exactly do you think you're going to get that's any better than Benitez anyway? There's no way any really top manager would want to enter the Chelsea madhouse and see their career blackened by having to play the owner's pet players every week. Benitez is about the level of manager you're stuck with now.

Ken Bates was running the club. That means that no one knows who actually owned the club. That means that no one outside a small number of people know how bad the situation was.

There was definitely talk of us being in serious trouble if we didn't qualify for the Champions League. But that could have simply been a management ploy to make sure the players were completely focused on qualifying for the CL.

And we did qualify for the CL. So there was the prospect of at least one season of extra CL revenues.

There was also talk of numerous wealthy people who were interested in buying the club. Bernie Ecclestone was rumoured to be in talks with the club at around the same time. But while Ecclestone and others were in long talks about the prospect of the purchase, Roman just turned up with a cash offer and concluded the deal within days.

I think the prospect of us getting a league title were around the same as us collapsing. Far more likely we'd have become another mid-table side.



Based on what?

There's no doubt that there are issues with the Chelsea job. But it's still one of the best jobs in Europe to have. A top manager would be earning as high as the best managers in the world, he'd be working with fantastic players with the prospect of more money to spend. And rather than blackening a manager's career a manager could have 18 months in charge at Chelsea and come through blameless because the club will be blamed for failure. And there's a great chance of getting 4 years pay for 6 months of work.

Benitez is still a high level manager. A lot of the problems he'll suffer at Chelsea are simply because he's the wrong man for the Chelsea job. If he took over with a completely clean slate he might not be struggling as much as he is. But the fact was he came with terrible baggage and he's been having to drag it uphill all the time.

Even if we are limited to a Benitez level manager, that's not that much of a problem. It just can't be Benitez.

So as soon as he scored you turned it off. Did you turn it back on again when Oldham kicked off or not bother watching the rest?

my wife's sister's uncle is Uruguayan, apparently this is a particularly friendly gesture in the part of Uruguay that he is from.

Rafa used to stick Alonso on big forwards and let the defence prepare for flick-ons. No point contesting against people you can't beat in the air, you may as well win the flick on where the chances are probably higher. Used to work pretty well on the occasions he'd use Alonso.

You're kidding, right? Why do you think Pep Guardiola (by all accounts) begged Arsenal for a job and wouldn't return Chelski's phonecalls? Why is he now at Bayern? Because he's a manager who wants full control over team affairs, wants to make his own decisions over recruitment and team selection and wants to know that he'll be allowed at least some time to build a team and maybe even a club in his own image over a length of time. The same as any other top manager in fact. Any manager of Chelsea gets about 12 months (if they're lucky) before your oligarch starts buying Torreses and Ballacks and Shevchenkos off his own back and insisting that the manager plays them every week, and before he starts interfering and starts trying to influence tactics etc. What kind of self-respecting top level manager is going to be prepared to put up with that? Sure, they'll get a massive wad and a guaranteed payoff in 18 months for doing so, but they can do that at Real Madrid, Barcelona, Man City, Bayern, Milan etc. and get little or none of the grief in the meantime. The only managers you're going to be able to attract in future are managers who are coming to you purely for big wads and who aren't good enough to get big wads anywhere else. Like Benitez. Your sinister owner has burned too many bridges with too many managers now to get anything else... I reckon Mancini might be coming your way once he gets booted by City - he's about your level I reckon.