Fans will think wrong man has gone. They're right

We can only guess what happened last night, because the club, run as it is along traditional Soviet lines, with the peasants told nothing, has confined itself to a single line statement about "mutual consent". Don't they realise we deserve to know more than this? How long can they get away with treating the fans with total contempt?

If you ask me, Mourinho's frustrations were boiling over to such an extent he was in danger of losing the dressing room. There's even talk of a row with John Terry.

But the key question is, why was Mourinho in this state? And the answer is of course the arrival of Avram Grant as Director of Football, for which read Lord High Interferer. This was the last straw, encroaching on Mourinho's right to run the team as he saw fit.

As I have written before, Grant, hailing from football's lower depths, is at Chelsea for one reason. He's an Israeli-Russian in a club owned by an Israel-obsessed Russian, who seems to love institutionalised conflict. Caligula made his horse a consul, and Abramovich made his director of football and now, God help us, manager. Plus ca change...

The hulking Grant's dour presence in the dugout was a sure sign that Abramovich wanted Mourinho out; was willing to wound, but afraid to strike. And now he has struck, in the worst possible circumstances, at the worst possible time, with the team on the edge of freefall, and facing their toughest assignment of this or any season - Sunday's visit to Old Trafford.

Grant will lead them out, and I hope the travelling fans will give him the reception he deserves, because wittingly or unwittingly, he, by his very presence, has destabilised the club.

Though the real author of these misfortunes is of course the organ grinder not the monkey; Abramovich himself. He runs a rackety regime, because he can do no other, which is why I suggested last week it would actually be better if he sold out.

A chronic interferer, he is responsible for the arrival of the two galacticos, Shevchenko and Ballack, who have so damaged the club, not least by disillusioning Mourinho.

Abramovich has made his dissatisfaction with the way the team plays obvious, while in recent months denying the funds to make the necessary acquisitions to allow the club to play more attractively, and more effectively. So Liverpool got £26million Torres while we end up with a donkey like Pizarro, whose only merit is that he was free. And of course you get what you pay for.

In a properly run club the increasing tensions between the owner and the manager would have been the subject of intervention by other senior figures. But this is Chelsea with a chief executivewho, from his recent comments about Chelsea winning the Champions league twice in the next few years, plainly lives in cloudcuckoo-land, and a chairman who is content to be nothing more than a boardroom greeter. They are not the club's servants, but Abramovich's creatures, and won't say boo to this goose under any circumstances, even when the club's best interests demand it.

What a muddle, what a mess, leaving the fans in the dark on the outside looking in, as these prats snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Which only serves to remind me of something the late Tony Banks once said: "Abramovich has bought a football team, not a football club, and he'd be perfectly happy watching the matches with a few mates, and the rest of us locked out." In many ways Mourinho was the author of his own misfortunes. Self-love is a terrible thing, and Jose had it bad.

The club owe us a decent explanation of what happened and why. Until then a lot of Chelsea's most dedicated supporters will think the wrong man has left. And they're right.