Gronkjaer slams Chelsea

14 April 2012

Chelsea winger Jesper Gronkjaer has described the club's treatment of former manager Claudio Ranieri as "a joke".

The Danish winger is expected to leave Stamford Bridge this summer, with Birmingham hoping he will join them.

Gronkjaer was a regular in Ranieri's teams, and offered his own sympathy to the axed coach, who was told on Tuesday that his contract would be terminated.

The announcement by Chelsea ended months of speculation regarding Ranieri's future, with the Italian having been shown the door despite guiding the west Londoners to second place in the Premiership and a Champions League semi-final.

Former Porto boss Jose Mourinho was confirmed as Ranieri's replacement on Wednesday.

Gronkjaer, speaking in Danish newspaper Ekstra Bladet, said: "It has been a joke for a long time."

Referring to the takeover last summer, when Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich bought the club, Gronkjaer said: "There has been speculation about Ranieri from day two or three after we got new leaders last year.

"Looking at our results, there's no reason to fire the manager.

"The club haven't had better results in the last 50 years. I don't know the motives for firing him."

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in