Who should replace Andre Villas-Boas as Chelsea manager?

Yesterday Chelsea sacked Andre Villas-Boas, a classic joke-move, and now it turns out that they’ve met with Rafael Benitez about filling the post, another classic joke-move. If Benitez does get the job, though, there will be a lingering sense of disappointment: “could they not have gone for an even more sarcastic appointment?” we’ll all think. Here are five better men for making us all laugh.

1. Dr Pepper. 

Not even a real doctor, Dr Pepper has no Premier League experience and in fact no experience in football management – or any other kind of management, actually. He’s a soft drink, which is real comedic genius. It’s absurdist, which as we know is Roman Abramovich’s speciality, and visually, I think we can all agree that Dr Pepper (ostensibly a bottle) would look almost as funny as when you see Benitez sitting on the bench. If Abramovich has any sense, he’ll at least insist that Dr Pepper is Benitez’s number two, and that the two are to sit alone on the Chelsea bench together at all times. Furthermore, all photos of the two on the bench should be captioned: “Benitez consults Dr Pepper.”

2. Fabio Capello.

This one might be too far, but just imagine: you’ve just spent £12million paying off a manager it cost you £28million to bring in, then you bring in a man who’s just come off the back of a ludicrous contract from the FA and is looking for another one. I don’t always find escalation comedy funny – start with a small hammer, then a bigger one, then a bigger one, then a bigger one, etc – because it gets a bit monotonous, but the scale of this would have to make you laugh. Laugh into the night, until you got up and did a murder, which is, for me, what all good comedy is about.

3.  Dennis Wise. 

4.  The other Dennis Wise.

5. Christine Bleakley.

Frank Lampard’s wife has a small chance of creating a Chelsea team that he might accept – being, as Christine Bleakley is, remember, his wife. The best joke of them all. Imagine the team that Frank Lampard wants: him and JT, obviously; Didier, for sure; Ashley, can’t leave out Ashley; Paolo [Ferreira] and anyone else that Mourinho bought. Obviously Frank would be in his old box-to-box midfield role, which would just be ace.

Photo by http://www.welloffside.com