Chelsea - You`ve got to Laugh?

Having had Chelsea TV for several years now I have to admit that my favourite features are when events are reported from the training ground.

Whilst coverage may be a little scant as fixtures approach, after all we don`t want to be giving any tactical clues away do we, you can see the camaraderie that exists between both the players and the coaching staff.

Whenever Jose Mourinho was on the training ground, although the work was hard, everybody had a smile on their faces.

With Luiz Felipe Scolari in charge, it was evident the laughter wasn`t so prevalent, just shots of professionals going about their business.

Guus Hiddink, in his brief tenure, changed things whereby mutual respect showed itself with the players appearing to show glimpses of how life had been under Mourinho but the arrival of Carlo Ancelotti seems to have retuned the good ship Chelsea to its true course with everybody seemingly having a whale of a time.

Recently, Chelsea TV showed glimpses of Carlo Ancelotti being presented with an enormous pair of glasses that wouldn`t have looked out of place on his musical hero, Elton John. Seemingly he`d agreed to referee a training match and his decisions, the players thought, left a lot to be desired.

But that clip appears to be only one instance of where joviality has caused the camp to revert to a status that augers well for the future.

Ray Wilkins enlightened those in attendance at the pre-match press conference for the Blackburn Carling Cup tie, remarking,

"I`ve been really impressed since he arrived. He`s a really funny guy, always joke telling."

"I have to translate unfortunately. We converse mainly in English but I speak Italian with him when he`s struggling. If he wants to crack something humorous it`ll be in Italian."

"I`m not giving an example because I`m not prepared to swear in public! And if you deleted the swear words, it would take the fun out of it. But he`s a good guy."

"He tells the players jokes and just enjoys their company. The lads even bought him glasses when he refereed a game in training. He thinks he is very good at refereeing! When things are going well, as they are, then more jokes are told."

Which brings two trains of thought too mind,

• With a multi-national squad, does the humour get lost the more times the joke is translated?

• Has anyone had the balls to transgress the boundary of political correctness and crack a few Italian jokes to the gaffer?

With regards to the second point, if so, who`d end up in stitches?

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