There's troubled water threatening to wash away Stamford Bridge. Man over board! Claudio Ranieri couldn't give a stuff about players who don't think the amount of football they are getting is enough and are in a huff. Which should serve as a May Day warning for Damien Duff.
"Unhappy players can damage the atmosphere," Ranieri told the Daily Express. "The players know what can happen if the atmosphere is not good," he added, running his index finger across his throat. "If they don't understand this then I am sorry. If anyone is not happy with us, then they will be out. Those who understand this, rest with us."
It is precisely the "rest" which is making some of the players, erm, restless. "I was gutted to come off against Spurs," said Duff. "It seems like it happens every game. I didn't like coming off at Blackburn either. It was tactical, I suppose. What can I do? It didn't help playing in different positions but I'm big enough and strong enough not to let it bother me."
Man abroad! Duff should quote himself happy. At least he's not being put in the deep freeze like merry old soul Joe Cole, who was within a very heated argument of being sent to Siberia. Or Moscow, anyway. Just hours after Joe "46 minutes of Premiership football" Cole signed from West Ham, he was told he was going to Spartak Moscow for a year on loan, says the Mirror. Cole refused and so everyone else had to hutch up a bit on the Chelsea bench for him.
Man off the board! Chelsea chairman Ken Bates could be about to repeat Trevor Birch's hook-slinging trick, according to the Mirror. He and new chief exec Peter Kenyon don't see eye-to-eye and have had several set-tos at Premier League meetings in the past.
Meanwhile, striker Adrian Mutu might be the one person in the whole of Chelsea to enjoy any sort of job security, but even he has wandering eyes. "I have joined a great club but if you asked me whether there was another club I would like to play for one day, I would have to say Real Madrid," Mutu, who is really happy at Chelsea, told the Mail. "I don't see how anyone could turn them down and I would certainly find it difficult," he said kissing his Chelsea badge and whistling Blue is the Colour. "Being a part of the great Real Madrid has always been a dream. Yes, I would like that one day."
Let the above five paragraphs of misery and pain be a warning to any other club thinking of taking a billionaire's money. Like Aston Venezuela, for example. Although if the Mail's conspiracy theory is to be believed, all those rumours about the second richest man in South America were nothing but hoax, handily timed on the same day as the club's annual general meeting. "A Stock Exchange announcement on possible bids had the double bonus of upping the Villa share price and deflecting attention away from chairman Doug Ellis before he faced shareholders at the AGM unhappy with his longevity at the helm," says the paper.
Yesterday it was Martin O'Neill, now it's Graeme Souness and Harry Redknapp. All three men are rumoured to be putting Glenn Hoddle out of his managerial misery at Tottenham. The Sun claims that a lack of transfer funds at Portsmouth has strained Redknapp's relationship with his chairman Milan Mandaric. Meanwhile the Express thinks that Souness is far more likely to end up at White Hart Lane than at Chelsea, as was reported last week. The blank international week starting October 6 looks the most perilous period for Hoddle because it would give the board 13 days to find a successor.
Finally, Reading chairman John Madejski has called in lawyers to ensure that manager Alan Pardew sees out his contract and rots on 'gardening leave' in his bitter battle for huge compensation from West Ham, says the Mirror.
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