Glenn Hoddle has spoken about his time as Chelsea's player manager and has described the facilities at the time as "disgraceful".
The Tottenham Hotspur legend took charge of the west Londoners in 1993 and led the Blues to the FA Cup final in his first year in charge.
Chelsea ended up losing the fixture 4-0 to double-winning Manchester United, but Hoddle helped the Blues to gain a bit of a reputation as a dangerous side in cup competitions.
Plus, as he has now revealed, he did so on limited funds and what he said were "horrible" managerial conditions.
“I never managed a club that had money," Hoddle told the Guardian.
"Tottenham didn’t have money, Southampton didn’t and Chelsea didn’t when I arrived [in 1993]. I wanted Andy Townsend to stay because he was Chelsea’s captain. But Villa were after him and Andy wanted to go.
“The facilities at Chelsea were disgraceful.
"My office was in the staff changing room where there was an old BT phone with the bottom pulled out. They told me to put in a 50p coin and it would drop through to the bottom. You would then put it back into the slot before the call cut out.
"I’ve got everyone walking in and out and Ron Atkinson [the then Villa manager] said: ‘Glenn, what’s them noises?’ I said: ‘Ron, I’m not even going to tell you.’ We were trying to complete a £2.1m deal and, God, it was horrible.”
Nevertheless, Hoddle stayed with Chelsea for three years before parting ways with the club in the summer of 1996.
He then took the England job and later managed Southampton, Tottenham and Wolves.
But Hoddle's revelation about Chelsea shows just how far the club have come in the years since, with the Blues becoming one of the heavyweights of English football under Roman Abramovich in recent times.
