That’s what it’s all been about this year and what the manager said at the beginning of the year: we want to build a team. That is probably on the way now.”The irony is that no sooner have the manager’s lavish assortment started to gel as a unit than Ranieri is on his way out. The Italian is sure to be replaced come the end of the season, even if Chelsea manage to overturn the 3-1 deficit from their disastrous semi-final first leg at the Stade Louis II. Gudjohnsen is just the latest player to lend his support to the doomed manager.

“Probably, yes, he should stay,” the 25-year-old said, “because he knows the players that are here He knows this team. I think we’ve learned a lot from each other as players and as a team this year. Even though our results have not been so good recently, we seem to be getting to know each other We have to take that forward. But it’s not up to me to say whether he’ll be here next season or not.

I think we’ve all backed the manager, and we’ll continue to do that until something different happens.”That “something different” became inevitable after Ranieri’s bizarre tactical decisions contributed to Chelsea’s downfall in Monte Carlo two weeks ago. Drawing 1-1 at half-time and in complete control following Andreas Zikos’s 53rd-minute expulsion, Chelsea were destabilised by the Italian’s multiple substitutions. So far as the board are concerned, the blame lies squarely with Ranieri. But what of the players? “I don’t want to criticise the manager solely, for arguably strange substitutions,” a diplomatic Gudjohnsen suggested “We lost our shape as a team. We stopped playing the football we’d played in the first half and we all seemed to forget our jobs on the pitch.”Was that not due, at least in part, to Ranieri’s tinkering? “The manager can be criticised by the media for doing this or doing that,” Gudjohnsen said, “but it’s all a matter of opinions.

The fact we still had 11 players on the pitch, one more than them, says a lot about us as players We need to take the blame as a unit. We’re in it together, we’re a team.”So how would the players rate their season if Chelsea finished second in the Premiership and went out of the Champions’ League on Wednesday? “We might all feel that if we’d taken our chances we could have gone one better,” Gudjohnsen said. “For a team with so many new players to adapt into the squad, it would be a good season But not an amazing one.” Cue the Abramovich chequebook.. London’s upmarket estate agents, a breed never slow to pick up the scent of a lucrative deal on the distant wind, are on 24-hour, all-cars, polished-smiles-at-the-ready alert this weekend. A Very Wealthy and Famous Client is said to be toying with the idea of a pad in town. The legendary performer at set-pieces and apologies to wives is reliably said to be about to leave his temporary, if socially stimulating, berth in Madrid and return to his native London to play for Chelsea.Not, of course, that he will be house-hunting in person – at least not yet.