Striking Off: Leeds United vs Chelsea, 28th April 2001
Dennis Wise told David O'Leary to calm down. David Batty found a plastic carrier bag on the pitch and threw it in Wise's face. Wise caught it and started following Batty, trying to throw it back. In keeping with the game, it was all more silly than vicious.
All was not well with Ken Bates' Chelsea, or with his status in football. With him as chair, the Wembley Stadium project was beset with delays and cost overruns, and it was time for a change. He didn't go quietly: "Even Jesus only had one Pontius Pilate," he wrote in his resignation letter, "I had a whole team of them."
Now the FA board had voted 9-2 that they had no confidence in him as a member, and a ballot of Premier League clubs was expected to confirm his removal. He could at least count on those two votes of support: one from Dave Richards, chairman of the Premier League, the other from Peter Ridsdale, chairman of Leeds United.
Bates was chairman of Chelsea and he couldn't find much peace there. With four games left to get into Europe, midfielder Gus Poyet was warning that manager Claudio Ranieri's job could be on the line if Chelsea didn't make it. Key to making it, in Poyet's view, was for Ranieri to stop tinkering with line-ups and put him back in the team. Gianfranco Zola wasn't happy either, and Poyet was pleading with him to stay, while Marcel Desailly was complaining that the training ground was "nasty" and "disgusting".
Striker Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, top scorer with nineteen goals, was frustrated that only a couple of players around him had double figures, that Dennis Wise was one of the leading scorers with two. Hasselbaink said he wasn't having much luck with the clubs he chose to play for — the season before, Atletico Madrid had been relegated with him as top scorer. "I came to Chelsea to win the league," he said.
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