Today’s extemporaneity would like a Geek Pie, please

Just as a bad workman always blames his tools, so a bad rumourmonger always blames his snouts. We’re not passing the buck, it was somebody else’s fault. Despite telling our team of hapless sniffers that we would cattle-prod them to within an inch of their future fatherhood prospects if they did not give us some premium juice this morning – Phil Brown to start an acid-skiffle group with Bez and Courtney Love, say, or Andrés Iniesta to Gillingham – we’re left drinking the same old watered-down rubbish. So let’s get on with it.

Chelsea are going to spend €40m to pip Barcelona and Real Madrid to the signing of the Benfica winger Angel di María, a man whose name sets the Mill in mind of Angel Delight and more innocent, benevolent times. Bananaman on TV, jumpers for goalposts, having our head flushed down the toilet twice a day by “Cropper” McNichol, being forced to sniff paint behind the bikesheds, silently weeping ourselves to sleep at night.

Everton’s manager David Moyes has told anyone who’ll listen that Jack Rodwell is going nowhere this summer. Given that Moyes is one of the hardest men ever to walk the earth, and once gave The Mill a prolonged attack of The Fear by simply making eye contact with us for 1.42 seconds, we’ll take his word for it.

In an attempt to get a greater grasp of the English culture, and having completely failed to understand the point of Loose Women and The One Show, Gianfranco Zola is planning to play a game of pass the “half-decent England goalkeeper” in the summer. If Robert Green decides to leave Upton Park, Zola will replace him with Joe Hart on a year-long loan, it says here.

Harry Redknapp is in the shower. And while he’s firmly scrubbing the luscious bubbles of Original Source Mint Shower Gel into his freshly waxed six-pack, he’s thinking about the 16-year-old Zambian left-back Emmanuel Mbola, who he wants to sign for £1m from Armenian side Yerevan. That actually sounds a bit Didier Baptiste to us, but our crack team of grizzled Armenian snouts assure us otherwise. In fact Mbola has already played 20 times for his country, having won his first cap as a foetus.

Oh, and Ashley Cole nearly swerved off whatever the Chelsea equivalent of the North Circular is when he learned he would be disciplined by Chelsea for reportedly doing extra training in his hotel room bedroom during away trips. He was just keeping fit! Cole may do one to Barcelona or Real Madrid as a consequence. “Ashley is having a rough time at the moment,” said a source. “If he and Cheryl get divorced, why would he want to stay in this country?” Loose Women?

ChelseaTottenham HotspurEvertonHarry RedknappDavid MoyesBenficaRob Smythguardian.co.uk

• Internazionale manager says game is Europe’s biggest
• Portuguese celebrates eight years without a home defeat

José Mourinho has claimed that Chelsea’s clash with his Internazionale team at San Siro on Wednesday in the round of 16 of the Champions League is European club football’s biggest occasion of the season so far.

It is also the first time Mourinho has faced Chelsea since three highly successful years in charge there and he questioned the club’s record under Carlo Ancelotti. Mourinho said a “strong team” would not lose four Premier League games as Chelsea have during the Italian’s opening season at Stamford Bridge.

With regard to Wednesday’s tie Mourinho said: “It’s a big game. It’s a big game for Inter, its a big game for Chelsea. It’s a big game also for Europe because I don’t see in these last 16-round matches another one with two teams of these dimensions. So I think this is the real big game of this last 16.”

Mourinho’s Chelsea tenure ended in September 2007, with the club having claimed every domestic honour. But despite Mourinho’s history at Stamford Bridge he said there would be no extra emotion on Wednesday.

He said: “Not nervous, not excited, I promise you. I have to look at this game with the emotion of any Champions League game, without any extra adrenaline, motivation or extra pressure. “

Mourinho walked out on Chelsea after a disappointing start to the 2007-08 season. But he denied extra pleasure would be gained from removing them from the competition. He said: “It’s the same for me if I knock Real Madrid out or Bayern Munich. And it’s the same for them if they knock out Arsenal or Porto. I think there would be no special pleasure from that. If a Chelsea player is happier to beat me than to beat another manager, I will be very sad because I don’t understand that. If I am happier to beat them than to beat another team I think they have a reason to be very unhappy. The only thing in the game is that we’re all professionals and we want to win. I want to, they want to win, somebody will win, somebody will lose.”

Mourinho refused to single out a match-winner in his former team. “Everybody has great potential, everybody has their strengths,” he said. “If you ask Ancelotti if our danger is [Samuel] Eto’o, Diego Milito, Julio Cesar or Maicon he’ll say the same. He will say the pitch will be full of big players and we have two great teams.”

Mourinho was clear, though, that he will do everything to welcome his former employer, Roman Abramovich. Asked if he would provide the red-carpet treatment for Chelsea’s owner he said: “For sure. I have to text to ask him to see if he needs something from me, if he needs help with tickets, boxes, hotels, something, because when I go to London and other places he’s always available to give me support.”

At the weekend Mourinho celebrated eight years without defeat at home in league and domestic cup competitions, following his team’s goalless draw against Sampdoria. The record was continued despite both Inter’s central defenders being sent off in the first half at San Siro.

Chelsea’s four league defeats under Ancelotti this season, meanwhile, have all come away from home. And Mourinho did express surprise at this. He said: “Of course when a team is strong, strong, strong it doesn’t lose so many matches, so many points. The Premier League is never easy, every game normally is difficult, you can lose every game. But people that know the Premiership know that every game is difficult.”

José MourinhoInternazionaleChelseaChampions LeagueJamie Jacksonguardian.co.uk