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John Terry’s bravery has brought him concussion, broken bones and painful wounds, but nothing as painful as the emotional trauma he suffered last night when, having stepped up to take the penalty that would have won the Champions League final, the Chelsea captain slipped and shot wide, off a post. As the tears flowed stronger than the Russian downpour, he looked inconsolable. He was a man in grief.

Avram Grant, the Chelsea first-team coach, has a perspective on life because of the traumas his family suffered in the Holocaust, but even he was struggling to find the words to ease the pain of Terry, who was white with shock.

It is hard enough for any player to miss a penalty, but the pain can only have been heightened for Terry, brought through at Chelsea, their captain, their leader and a man who had been deeply hurt by three semi-final failures in the Champions League.

The sympathy will only heighten at the revelation that Terry was not meant to be among Chelsea’s first five takers and would not have been had Didier Drogba not been sent off for his gentle but idiotic slap of Nemanja Vidic, the Manchester United defender, in the second half of extra time.

“He was not supposed to be in the first five,” Henk ten Cate, the Chelsea assistant manager, said. “John stepped up when he wasn’t supposed to. It’s unbelievable it happens to him. He slipped. We practised penalties so much all last week and he was very confident. We were all very confident. Penalties is a lottery and we got the short straw.”

We associate the English with a woeful lack of nerve when it comes to penalty shoot-outs, but it appears that it is only in the national colours. Liverpool won the Champions League in Istanbul in 2005 from the spot and there was a high quality last night, including from those Englishmen such as Michael Carrick, Lampard, Owen Hargreaves and Ashley Cole.

Indeed, the only miss before Terry’s left ankle turned over, Beckham-style, and he slipped as he took the kick had been, remarkably, from Cristiano Ronaldo with United’s third effort. It was an awful penalty, his stuttering run confusing himself rather than Petr Cech. The Chelsea goalkeeper held his nerve and Ronaldo’s shot was saved by the Czech Republic player, diving to his right.

Edwin van der Sar knew that he had to pull off something special and he thought he had done so with Chelsea’s fourth, from Ashley Cole. “I had been close to one or two, especially that one,” he said. But it was not skill that thwarted Terry. “It is our luck that he slipped,” Van der Sar said. Sir Alex Ferguson, the United manager, felt a rush of good vibes at that moment. “The slip from Terry gave us an opening and I felt from there we were going to win it,” he said.

Anderson scored United’s first in sudden death, Salomon Kalou struck back for Chelsea. Then Ryan Giggs, on the night he broke Sir Bobby Charlton’s record of appearances, stroked his home to leave Nicolas Anelka needing to score to keep his team in it.

Tags: ashley cole, avram grant, broken bones, cate, champion, champions league, champions league final, chelsea, downpour, emotional trauma, englishmen, extra time, henk, john terry, lampard, left ankle, manchester united, michael carrick, national colours, nemanja vidic, owen hargreaves, painful wounds, penalty shoot outs, short straw, sir alex ferguson, team coach, ten cate, traumas

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With two games to go, his team are joint leaders of the Premier League. On top of that, they are only one night’s work away from the Champions League final. Not bad going, that, for any grade of manager, but a doubly impressive achievement for someone still getting to grips with his first big job while being condemned as an imposter, supposedly only given a chance because he is mates with the club’s owner.

Maybe it is time, then, that we gave Avram Grant the benefit of the doubt, embraced the theory that the Chelsea manager might actually have something going for him, even if he does sometimes give the impression of being out of his depth when it comes to rallying the troops or making the right decisions in the heat of battle.

He wasn’t out of his depth on Saturday. On the contrary, everything clicked for the Israeli coach on a day when each of his players rose to the occasion to stop Manchester United leaving Stamford Bridge as certain champions. No question that John Terry, Michael Ballack and everyone else wearing blue had been sent out in the right frame of mind. From start to finish, Chelsea played with poise and purpose, not to mention fire in their belly. So can we give Grant credit for that? Or do we simply assume that any professional worth his salt will be pumped up anyway for such a huge match?

That’s the thing with Grant - the default reaction from us outsiders is to look elsewhere for reasons and heroes, assuming that this mild-mannered character with the hangdog looks couldn’t possibly be responsible for what happened on that pitch.

More likely, we might imagine that Grant’s more vocal and aggressive assistant, Henk ten Cate, had wound up the players with a stirring team talk. It is difficult, after all, to picture Grant in Churchillian mode. Mind you, if Ten Cate did do a lot of the motivating beforehand, what’s wrong with that? That’s what partnerships are about - blending different attributes to cover all the bases.

As for Grant’s attributes, it is difficult from this distance to see exactly what he brings to the party himself. But he must bring something, otherwise his team wouldn’t still be in with a chance of writing their name in the record books.

Tags: avram grant, cate, champion, champions league, champions league final, chelsea, ford, henk, hero, job, john terry, manchester united, ten cate

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The lovestruck Frenchman is patently a hopeless case as, clearly distracted by matters of the boudoir, he suggested during his address to parliament that his country’s ‘entente formidable’ with England was ‘not a one-night stand’ and he still felt they could still ‘go to breakfast as well’. Was he really lying back and thinking about England, or was Petit Nicolas day-dreaming about the fair Carla? The Mill certainly was. As was just about every other newspaper editor who has plastered pictures of the new Jackie O from cover to cover. He just about stopped short of saying: “This isn’t a celebrity marriage, I’m not too short for her and she has changed her views on monogamy.” Le Pauvre …The protective glances Sarkozy was firing in the direction of Gordon Brown as he chatted up his Missus at Windsor Castle, are nothing, though, compared to the hand-grenades of hostility Mark Hughes has been unpinning and hurling towards Anfield this morning. Hughes, who not so long ago found himself jilted by Craig Bellamy in favour of a move to Liverpool, is clearly concerned that lightning might strike twice with David Bentley becoming the latest muse to fall under Rafa Ben韙ez’s spell.”We have contract protection and we don’t have to sell anybody,” fumed Sparky, before U-turning wholly unconvincingly. “We only sell our assets when we’re forced to.” This has not been a good week for Sparky, who might also have to go without star striker Roque Santa Cruz, injured on international duty in midweek by none other than his Blackburn team-mate Aaron Makoena. The defender is known in his homeland as ‘the Axe’ for his tackling prowess; Hughes is calling him the Axe for very different reasons.Hughes’s old team Chelsea are having no such relationship problems, of course, unless you count John Terry’s scrap with Henk Ten Cate or Didier Drogba’s imminent - according to Il Corriere dello Sport - move to Inter next season, where he will team up with his first love Jose Mourinho. To soften that blow, though, Avram Grant intends to pip Barcelona for the services of %26#163;12m-rated Croatia playmaker Luka Modric. “He wanted to go in January but Dinamo [Zagreb] wouldn’t let him leave,” explained international team-mate, Portsmouth agent provocateur Niko Kranjcar. “Now if the money is right he will go.”Another agent doing overtime at the moment is the one and only Pini Zahavi, who met with Barcelona director Txiki Begiristain to discuss his desire to buy a new yacht and the not unconnected matter of Ronaldinho’s future. The Bar鏰 star has been linked with a move for Chelsea but it seems that Tottenham would not be averse to giving the goofy-toothed one a run out or two at the Lane. “Ronaldino would fit into Spurs in every aspect. The truly great players fit into any team, including Tottenham,” said Juande Ramos, who almost said “even Tottenham.”And another Spanish-based player so desperate for first-team football he might actually end up booting a ball in freezing-cold Blighty is none other than Jos?Antonio Reyes. Yes, that’s right, the forward who despised life in England so much that by the end of his stay his only friends were his garden gnomes, could be on his way back to the Premier League, having convinced Kevin Keegan he is the man to solve Newcastle’s goalscoring problems. The fact that Reyes has not scored for Atlé– ico Madrid all season has not dimmed Special K’s enthusiasm.Newcastle meanwhile, have loaned Shola Ameobi to Stoke City in a deal that could become, and you’ll like this, a permanent %26#163;3m move. And after moving on loan to Charlton for first-team experience, Scott Sinclair has not persuaded Alan Pardew that he is any better than Chris Iwelumo. So he’s done one to Crystal Palace.

Tags: avram grant, cate, chelsea, david bentley, henk, john terry, mark hughes, premier league, roque santa cruz, rumours, ten cate, zahavi

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A league flooded with players from every corner of every continent had provided a collision of two sides boasting nine England players between them at the kick-off. Each had cause to hope they would make the Italian’s provisional 30-man squad to be announced this lunchtime. If Capello was wavering on some, keen to assess them first-hand, then this was a timely opportunity for them - although in practice it was no occasion to provide a rational judgment. Rather, as an introduction to the ferocity of a Premier League derby, it must have taken Capello’s breath away.One first-half incident summed up the frenzy. Nearing the interval, Ashley Cole leapt into a challenge on Alan Hutton within feet of the home dugout, the left-back missing the ball as it skipped up off the turf and crunching high into the Scot’s right shinpad. The reaction from Spurs’ coaching staff was instantaneous and livid, Gus Poyet springing from his seat to confront the Chelsea player as Hutton writhed on the turf. In the melee that ensued, with players squaring up to one another, even the normally placid Avram Grant had to be restrained as he remonstrated. The yellow flashed by a panicked Mike Riley provoked howls of disbelief. “That’s a red and you know it,” screamed Poyet at the fourth official, Steve Bennett, who had been within feet of the incident.The Uruguayan sought out Cole as the players departed a few minutes later, berating the full-back with one arm draped threateningly round the Chelsea player’s neck while the left-back blanked him and shook his head. John Terry, having spied that altercation, charged after the pair down the tunnel. Henk ten Cate scurried after them all. Capello, watching in the stand, must have been dumbstruck. Welcome to the Premier League’s crazy world of tunnel scraps and touchline rucks.Cole could count himself fortunate still to be involved in the second half. This was a spiteful helter-skelter, the memory of last month’s Carling Cup final still simmering. Capello is used to club management but will be aware that his England players will be tearing into one another before the World Cup qualifiers in the autumn. Of the nine candidates who started, Jermaine Jenas departed by the interval, possibly as a result of a sliding challenge on the edge of the centre circle - deemed legal - performed by Frank Lampard moments before the Cole controversy.Jenas had set up Tottenham’s first equaliser, taking his time to find his range with a series of free-kicks before finding Jonathan Woodgate at the far post, the centre-half leaping above Didier Drogba yet again to thump in his second for the club. He has a liking for Chelsea’s otherwise stingy defence. Yet if that was a moment of clarity amid the fury, picking out the calm heads was more problematical.Capello will have been worried by Terry’s inability to rise in aerial challenge as Dimitar Berbatov scored the home team’s second, but impressed by the lofted pass sumoned by the centre-half to supply Drogba with his first league goal of the year. Paul Robinson’s absence as that cross looped into the middle will also have raised eyebrows.Then there was Joe Cole’s quick-footed dart through muddled defenders - including English defenders - and slipped pass for Michael Essien to stab a lob over Robinson to restore the lead. It was this Cole who caught the eye most consistently. He was outstanding, his superb goal after skipping across the area and away from Pascal Chimbonda, the ball clipping Robinson’s leg and spinning in, having edged Chelsea further towards a win, and his even better second almost securing it again. The midfielder’s wonderful recent form demands inclusion for club and country.For Robinson this was painful at times. The goalkeeper had been troubled by an ankle injury in the build-up and is aware that Juande Ramos is looking for replacements, and the Chelsea fans were bellowing “England’s No4″ in his direction long before the end. Capello will have made up his own mind. This game will have opened his eyes to the brutal entertainment offered up by the English game.

Tags: ashley cole, avram grant, cate, chelsea, henk, john terry, lampard, premier league, ten cate

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John TerryThere were reports this week of a falling out with Henk Ten Cate that suggests he is at boiling point. This could be born out of frustration over injuries. Terry has played only 18 times for Chelsea this season and finds his starting-place under threat. His England place is also exposed.Frank LampardThe midfielder was left out of the side that played Olympiakos last week, a trend that could continue now Michael Ballack is in form. Should Avram Grant decide to play the German he could end up pushing Lampard out of the door. He has yet to sign a contract extension.Joe ColeThe decision to leave Cole out of Sunday’s starting line-up was strange considering he has openly praised Grant for revitalising his career. The Israeli may have alienated one of the few players who back him.Didier Drogba/Nicolas AnelkaGrant’s insistence on deploying a 4-3-3 formation will mean either Drogba or Anelka playing out of position or not all. Either outcome could harm Chelsea. As shown on Sunday, when Anelka started on the left of a front three, an unbalanced side is an ineffective side, but leaving out one of the two strongest characters in English football may damage morale.Upcoming matchesChelsea’s next three matches are in all the competitions they are still in, with each containing the potential for disaster. They go to West Ham on Saturday in the league before the visit of Olympiakos in the Champions League four days later. Chelsea then travel to Liverpool’s conquerors Barnsley in the FA Cup.Mourinho’s legacyGrant has yet to hear his name sung by Chelsea’s supporters and popularity will be hard to find as he struggles to assert himself while Mourinho’s shadow continues to hang over Stamford Bridge. The Israeli has won 24 out of his first 35 matches in charge but Mourinho won 27 and did not lose to Manchester United or Arsenal in that run. Mourinho also won the Carling Cup last season.

Tags: avram grant, cate, champion, champions league, chelsea, contract extension, ford, henk, john terry, lampard, manchester united, ten cate

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Rather abruptly, Grant finds himself with the glittering array of the owner Roman Abramovich’s riches available to him and he could be forgiven for wondering whether there is a curse contained therein. The Israeli banged the drum for much of January about how his team had coped without John Terry, Frank Lampard, Didier Drogba and Michael Essien, to name but his highest-profile absentees yet with a full hand to play, Grant has been gripped by indecision.His recourse in the ill-fated build-up to Sunday’s Carling Cup final with Tottenham was to clutch his cards so tightly that the tension simmered in the dressing room. Nobody knew who was in or out until the hours before kick-off and if Grant hoped that the ploy would offer his players a beneficial edge, he was wrong.Having refused to train with his starting XI in the days before the final, there was a sense of confusion within his ranks and the ensuing 120 minutes, when Jonathan Woodgate’s extra-time goal gave Tottenham a deserved 2-1 victory, brought it into the public domain. Chelsea were subdued, lacking in direction and inspiration. Once Dimitar Berbatov had equalised for Tottenham in the 70th minute, only one team looked like scoring decisively.Grant stands accused of wanting for strong leadership, of not being able to stamp his authority on a dressing room loaded with self-belief. While he leaves charge of training largely to his assistants, Steve Clarke and Henk Ten Cate, it was startling to see him transfixed on the periphery as Clarke and the captain, Terry, rallied the team in the huddle before extra-time at Wembley. Grant is engaging company, blessed with dry wit, but his personality cannot be described as forceful. He is struggling to keep the gal%26aacute;cticos of his squad in check.Grant has been backed into a corner, in one respect, by his run of results from December 29, when Newcastle were beaten at Stamford Bridge. There were precious few selection teasers for him over those weeks, save for the Ashley Cole/Wayne Bridge conundrum at left-back, and he even had to ask Shaun Wright-Phillips, nominally a winger, to play in central midfield to cover absences. Wright-Phillips rose superbly to the challenge.As his squad has been replenished, Grant has been torn between showing loyalty to the players who served him well, notably Alex, Claude Makelele, Wright-Phillips, Joe Cole and Michael Ballack, and attempting to reintegrate the returning stars. He was at pains last Friday to recognise the efforts of the former group. “When you speak about John Terry and Lampard being available to play, I think you need to respect the players that played without them,” he said. “The players have shown until now great attitude when it was a very difficult time and I will not forget it.”He started with Alex and Makelele in the first leg of the Champions League last-16 tie at Olympiakos last Tuesday, which finished 0-0 but recalled Terry and Lampard for the Carling Cup final. Ballack was the surprise omission.Grant has also found it difficult to deviate from the 4-3-3 formation which brought him results but this does not enable the strikers Drogba and Nicolas Anelka to thrive in tandem. Against Tottenham, Anelka was shunted to the left and cut an isolated figure. Cue more frustration and the square pegs/round holes discussion.It is in midfield where Grant’s options are the most bewildering. He has six quality central players and three for the flanks (four, if Salomon Kalou is classed as a wide man, rather than a striker). Disappointment, such as that scarcely concealed by Ballack on Sunday, is inevitable. Others, though, have axes to grind. Ashley Cole was upset to be omitted - although Bridge had played in the quarter-final and both semi-final legs - and so were Makelele and Andriy Shevchenko.Lampard has urged Grant to arrive at a settled team but the Israeli says that his plans for each game have the fixtures which follow in mind. He hopes that gentle rotation will keep the players fresh and the squad happy; appeasement, though, is not the policy of the bold. It does not engender respect.Grant is in a defining period. He needs victory at West Ham on Saturday to fire a Premier League challenge, which was knocked by the insipid 0-0 draw with Liverpool; then comes the second leg against Olympiakos and an FA Cup quarter-final at Barnsley. Form is not in his corner. Since the Portsmouth draw, the team have won just one of four, against Huddersfield of League One in the FA Cup.Grant failed his big test on Sunday, in his first English cup final. He requires a confident response.

Tags: appointment, ashley cole, attitude, cate, champion, champions league, chelsea, disappointment, ford, henk, john terry, lampard, premier league, roman abramovich, spira, steve clarke, ten cate, ups

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Avram Grant’s decision to delay naming his team until just before Sunday’s match is believed to have increased tension at the club to such an extent that skipper John Terry had a blazing row with coach Henk ten Cate 24 hours before Sunday’s Carling Cup Final defeat by Tottenham.

%26bull; More Premier League news club by club

The pair reportedly had to be pulled apart on the training ground after squaring up to each other.

The speculation surrounding Terry’s inclusion, or otherwise, is believed to have caused the Chelsea captain to press for assurances that led to the flare-up as well as concerns over the club’s final preparations.

Tags: avram grant, cate, chelsea, henk, john terry, premier league, ten cate

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Chelsea have played down suggestions of an alleged bust-up between coach Henk ten Cate and captain John Terry prior to Sunday’s Carling Cup Final defeat by Tottenham.

The pair were reported to have been pulled apart by other players after a
training ground row.

The confrontation was understood to have been seen by the club’s billionaire owner Roman Abramovich who was visiting the training ground.

Tags: cate, chelsea, henk, john terry, roman abramovich, ten cate

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Chelsea coach Henk ten Cate has admitted he and John Terry had a huge row the day before the Carling Cup Final defeat by Tottenham.

%26bull; More Premier League news club by club

Ten Cate insisted he and skipper Terry still got on well despite the “emotional” exchange. Both took a full part in yesterday’s training session at Cobham which was watched by billionaire Russian owner Roman Abramovich.

Ten Cate said: “John and I are both kind of emotional but we respect each other fully. We just had a discussion about the intensity of the training session. That is a normal part of the game. There have been a few F-words, no doubt. But that is common in England.

Tags: cate, chelsea, henk, john terry, premier league, roman abramovich, ten cate

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John Terry has quashed rumours that he is ready
to quit Stamford Bridge this summer by insisting he
cannot see himself ever leaving the club.

Bookmakers are offering odds of 9-4 that Terry
will no longer be in west London by the end of
August following his infamous training ground
bust-up with coach Henk ten Cate.

Tags: cate, chelsea, ford, henk, john terry, rumours, ten cate

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