Sports Frog

If you read The London Guardian, there is clearly a source (or sources) at Chelsea that believe that Chelsea Captain John Terry played a central role in the ouster of Jose Mourinho. Terry, who earlier this summer in contract negotiations wanted a clause in his contract that guaranteed that he'd be the best-paid player on the team for the duration of his stay, apparently didn't want to play in a recent Champions League tie. And then refused to speak with or acknowledge his manager at halftime. And that ultimately led to the board determining that Mourinho had lost the backing of the squad.

Seems a bit far-fetched to me. But where there's smoke, there's often fire. And Terry's teammates, who are in the locker room every day, apparently didn't think so:

"On Friday, several first-team regulars apparently took their captain to task during a 50-minute team meeting called by Terry in the aftermath of Mourinho's dismissal. Ashley Cole, Didier Drogba and Florent Malouda are believed to have accused him of not doing enough to keep Mourinho at the club."

And Mourinho blames him as well, as he sent Terry a text message to that extent after leaving by mutual consent. The craziest part about this whole story has got to be Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich doing his best George Steinbrenner In His Prime impression:

"In front of the entire Chelsea team, but while Mourinho was occupied with press conference duties, the Russian billionaire decided to hand out an impromptu tactics lesson to Michael Essien.

Employing striker Andriy Shevchenko as translator, he instructed midfielder Essien, player of the year last season, to hit passes wide rather than through central areas where the Norwegians had compressed play."

The best part about that story might be the fact that Shevchenko is probably the biggest bust in the entire world right now. So Essien not only has to listen to the owner of his team berate him in front of the whole squad, but he gets to hear it through the mouth of one of the worst performers on the team.