Chelsea fans have and probably always will have a soft spot for Jose Mourinho despite topping off his disastrous final season at the club by taking the reins at Manchester United.
The Portuguese won three Premier League titles, an FA Cup and three League Cups across his two spells at Stamford Bridge before his legacy took a battering during the first half of the 2015-16 campaign.
He left west London for the second time after watching his league champions lose nine of 16 league matches, though his status as a club legend and one of the top managers in world football was never under any serious threat.
While it certainly hurt Chelsea fans to see the back of Mourinho so soon after it seemed he could lead the Blues for years to come, the club simply had to step in and stop the rot.
The decision is unlikely to have been one Roman Abramovich and rest of the Stamford Bridge hierarchy made lightly – not least due to the eye-watering cost of replacing him.
The Sun reports Chelsea were forced to pay Mourinho and his backroom staff a stunning £8 million to force them out the door in December 2015 just months after tying the Portuguese to a bumper four-year contract extension.
But his second dismissal was far less expensive than the first, which set the club back an amount that would’ve been more than enough to sign a world-class player.
Chelsea forked out a whopping £23.1 million to part ways with the Portuguese and his coaching team in 2007, meaning the club has thrown away £31.4 million on sacking the same manager twice in a decade.
The Blues comfortably boast the financial resources to cope with such heavy losses but they’re no less likely to stir up fans who would’ve preferred to see that kind of money invested elsewhere.
In addition to the cost of axing coaches, the club’s official accounts also reveal £67 million was spent in the same season on buying out their contract with Adidas in order to strike a new £900 million agreement with Nike.
While Chelsea are no strangers to throwing cash around, surely leaking millions upon millions so carelessly isn’t something they want to make a habit.