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Inside Lines: Mourinho gets the Blues pencil treatment

Alan Hubbard, Sports Diarist of the Year

Sunday, 24 February 2008

Roman Abramovich may be a product of New Russia but the regime he runs at Chelsea seems a throwback to the bad old days of the Politburo. Ex-manager Jose Mourinho apparently has been declared a non-person, as our chief sportswriter Nick Townsend discovered, when invited to contribute an interview with Avram Grant for today's Carling Cup final programme. Chelsea insisted on vetting the piece which was returned with references to Mourinho obliterated. Such is the paranoia at Stamford Bridge, even the revelation that in his younger days Grant was a Liverpool fan got the Blues pencil treatment from the control commissars in the communications department. The football correspondent of another newspaper was so incensed by the way an article he penned on Joe Cole was censored by Chelsea that he asked for his name to be removed. Wembley punters who fork out their fivers today should know that what they see is not what they should have got.