Do you remember when you heard that José Mourinho had parted ways with Chelsea?

It was with great surprise that I received the sudden departure of “the special” from Chelsea football club, this morning.

He had predicted that he would not last the season when he was anticipating the premiership, but it still came as a surprise.

The reason I thought he was leaving was football related because I couldn’t think of why Chelsea ever thought they were even remotely close to Manchester United last season but decided not to make significant signings this season.

I was flabbergasted that they only brought in Claudio Pizarro, Steve Sidwell for free, and Tal Ben-Haim. In my humble opinion, none of those players are likely to add anything really significant to a championship-chasing team. They even managed to lose Arjen Robben in the process to make them worse.

I’ve never been a fan of the way Chelsea played Mourinho with the emphasis on Drogba working his way through defenders and Lampard coming from deep. Mourinho may have become even more irritated by his constant nagging that, after a while, became tedious.

But there is no escaping the fact that he was the best tactician in the prime ministerial office by far and possibly in the world. Some myopic people would say that he succeeded thanks to Abramovich’s money. Having money helps but it doesn’t give you success, as Real Madrid and Inter Milan attest.

Barcelona won the champions league and La Liga title 2 seasons ago and saw fit to spend money on Gianluca Zambrotta, Lilian Thuram and Eidur Gudjohnssen to make them even stronger, but they didn’t win anything last season.

Newcastle have spent money over the years and only have 2 FA Cup Final appearances to prove it. Mourinho, in just 3 seasons, had won the Prime Ministership twice, the Coca Cola Cup twice and the FA Cup. His Chelsea have gone from soft away away from home to the most feared ruthless machine in Premiership history and are unbeaten at home in 64 games, which is an English record.

They have twice reached the Champions League semi-final only to be beaten by Liverpool via a controversial goal and on penalties that everyone knows is a lottery. What some of his critics don’t understand is that many of his purchases are seriously overpriced, like £12 at Paolo Ferreira, for example.

Again, it’s not like Chelsea are the only big spenders, Manchester United have spent £30m twice on Wayne Rooney and Rio Ferdinand, £18m on Michael Carrick and £17m on Owen Hargreaves. You have to be rich to spend those sums on players who aren’t worth that much money.

In fact, the only manager who hasn’t spent a lot to be successful is Arsene Wenger and that’s mainly because he doesn’t have that much money to spend and when he does spend, it tends to be a waste of £8m. Francis Jeffers!

It doesn’t matter how much money you spend, but whether you spend it wisely.

Not necessarily getting the best and most skilled players, but also getting players that are related to each other, players that are ready to fight for you and you should be able to create an atmosphere that is liked by most players.

I think Mourinho did that to great effect at Chelsea. My only big problem with him was his favoritism of some players over others.

I don’t agree with treating people differently and I didn’t like the way he always put people like Lampard, Terry, Cech, Essien and especially Drogba above others.

His treatment of Shevchenko was extremely regrettable as he should have shown her more respect and understanding instead of continually undermining a great player. But Chelsea, in my opinion, have made a huge mistake and only time will tell how big it was to get rid of the most successful manager in their history. The winners are Rafa Benitez and Arsene Wenger because they now know that instead of two teams standing in their way, it’s now just Manchester United as I don’t really see Chelsea posing a serious challenge with their current generation of players.

On a side note, many women would be very upset not to get their usual dose of admiring Mourinho. I have never come across any other manager with his effect on the ladies.