Comment: Ranieri couldn't conquer Britain

He came, he saw, he conked out. Unlike some of his illustrious Roman predecessors who successfully conquered the Britons, Claudio Ranieri never quite managed it.

He got close and made lots of friends in the process. He had a charming smile, an endearing way with the English language and he knew a thing or two about tactics. But he just wasn't a winner.

In four years at Chelsea he tinkered a lot but won absolutely nothing.

But that does not excuse the abominable fashion in which the club has stripped him of his dignity and his job. They have treated a decent man in a manner that is appalling, even by the squalid standards of the modern game.

From the moment last summer when England coach Sven-Goran Eriksson was photographed on his way to tea with Roman Abramovich it has been obvious that Ranieri had no long-term role to play under the new Russian regime.

His departure has been a painful, protracted experience that does the image of professional football no good at all.

It's difficult enough persuading millionaire players to observe the terms of their deals. But it's impossible to expect them to adhere to contracts if their employers, the big clubs, flout them with such indifference.

In the final analysis, Ranieri's contract clearly meant very little to Chelsea. But at least it should guarantee him a sizeable pay-out.

And that, of course is one of the reasons why he has presented such an amiable, benign front to the world in the last few months. He has won the sympathy vote hands down.

Poor old Ranieri! Surely he deserves better. His meek, uncomplaining acceptance of his fate has impressed some in the game but, more than that, has given Chelsea very little room for manoeuvre in negotiating a settlement with him.

For public consumption Ranieri has adopted the face of the angelic martyr, leaving us to draw our own conclusions about the behaviour of Abramovich, Peter Kenyon and the Stamford Bridge henchmen.

Claudio doesn't deserve to be treated in such an unedifying fashion but anyone who worked for Jesus Gil in Spain knows the way of the football world.

Wasn't the Italian telling anyone who would listen, just a couple of years ago, that if Barcelona were really interested in him then, well, who knows what might happen?

He knows too that in the modern game results are what matters. People talk grandly about building clubs and developing young players but for the growing number of foreign investors and coaches in English football results, trophies and big salaries are all that matters.

It's hard to know exactly how much input Ranieri had in last summer's glut of signings but it is a fact that most of Chelsea's best players - Cudicini, Lampard, Terry, Gallas, Desailly, Gudjohnsen - were at the club before he arrived.

He believed he would build a team good enough to win the Premiership title. He didn't. His legacy? One or two outstanding results - 4-0 at Lazio, 2-1 at Highbury - but no trophies.

So, I suspect that Jose Mourinho will need to win just one trophy to consign his Italian predecessor to footnote status in Chelsea history.