Brian Kidd is fond of telling the story of the first time he and Sir Alex Ferguson saw Ryan Giggs. “We were watching a game involving Manchester United juniors,” the former assistant manager said. “Giggs was exceptional, head and shoulders above the rest. We looked at each other and agreed that if we couldn’t make this one a player, we’d give the game up.”

So it should be at Chelsea right now. Take the world’s most financially benevolent owner and put him with the outstanding young coach in European football. Anybody who cannot make a success of that might wish to rethink his career in sports administration. Yet, somehow, Peter Kenyon is managing it. There seems to be a confusion of priorities at Stamford Bridge. Right now, Kenyon’s prime task should not be to promote the Chelsea brand on the global market, make it bigger than David Beckham in Beijing or achieve world domination by 2014.

It should be to ensure that Roman Abramovich and José Mourinho are best mates for ever. In the film This Is Spinal Tap, the bass player, Derek Smalls, played by the wonderful Harry Shearer, explains his supporting role to the group’s songwriters, David St Hubbins and Nigel Tufnel. “David and Nigel are like poets,” he says, “two totally distinct visionaries, like fire and ice. My role in the band is to be kind of in the middle of that. Like lukewarm water.”

Kenyon’s, too. The ice of Abramovich, the fire of Mourinho and in the middle good old Pete, the lukewarm water. What has gone wrong? Kenyon stated in November that the critical part of Chelsea’s future success involved keeping the manager, yet every murmur through the grapevine since seems to regard the issue of Mourinho’s departure as a case of when, not if. This would seem a greater problem for the employer than the employee. Mourinho has proved that he can be successful elsewhere by lifting the European Cup at the comparatively impoverished FC Porto.

There is, however, as yet no evidence that Chelsea can thrive without a single-minded managerial vision to accompany Abramovich’s wealth. The cynics crow that anybody could win the league with Chelsea’s money, yet Claudio Ranieri did not. It took Mourinho’s wit, pragmatism, bravado and skill to make sense of the numbers and if Chelsea are prepared to take his significance lightly, they did not deserve him in the first place. Mourinho is high-maintenance and must be infuriating to handle, but the most talented performers often are. Ferguson did not become the greatest manager of his generation by not creating the occasional fuss.

What happens when resources and accomplishment differ greatly is well documented. At the weekend, before Cardiff City’s match with Tottenham Hotspur, Peter Ridsdale, the former Leeds United chairman, was busy rewriting history. Now at Ninian Park, Ridsdale claimed to have been made the scapegoat for the turmoil at his previous club. “They blame me for relegation, yet I’d been out of the club 15 months when it happened,” he said.

This is an economical version of events that saw Ridsdale overstretch the finances by gambling that huge transfer expenditure would bring consistent success. The manager, David O’Leary, however, was no Mourinho. The chequebook did not buy a single trophy and when Leeds failed to qualify for the Champions League in his final season, catastrophe loomed and a hasty fire-sale of players resulted in relegation two years later. Yes, Ridsdale had also gone by that time but just as the bloke who steered the Titanic into the iceberg might not have been at the wheel the moment it sunk, he sure as hell had something to do with it.

Nobody is suggesting that Chelsea would have faced financial oblivion without Mourinho, but the only reason Abramovich is looking like a smarter investor, the only reason Kenyon can swan off east and west to promote the brand, is because Mourinho has put the owner’s money to good use and the club is now on the map. Leeds under O’Leary and Ridsdale were the nearly men: nearly won the league, nearly reached the Champions League final, then nearly went skint. Now Leeds are nearly in the third tier of English football. Unsurprisingly, the club are nearly without profile in Beijing.

Kenyon’s duty on returning from China, where the club have launched a website in Mandarin, is to ensure that owner and manager remain united. There is a presumption that Mourinho was less than enthusiastic about the arrival of Andriy Shevchenko and Michael Ballack. This is not entirely credible. Mourinho has stated on many occasions that at the first sign of interference he would walk, which would mean that as the Ballack deal was completed on May 15, 2006, and mooted for considerably longer, had the player been arriving against the wishes of the manager, Abramovich would have foolishly risked losing Mourinho before Chelsea’s second title had even been won. Unlikely.

As for Shevchenko, nobody, not even Mourinho, could have thought Didier Drogba would be transformed into the most potent striker in Europe, having scored only 14 goals in all competitions for Chelsea in 2005-06. Drogba was expected to leave, then changed his mind. He was expected to play second fiddle to Shevchenko, but has outstripped him in every way this season.

It may look as if the new men are surplus to requirements now, but the fact remains that at the time of their arrival, nobody would have predicted that Chelsea’s best performers this season would be Drogba and Michael Essien, two players who had failed to convince in the previous campaign. When the signings were made, it seemed most likely that Drogba would be Shevchenko’s understudy with Joe Cole and Arjen Robben wide, and Ballack would play alongside Frank Lampard with Claude Makelele behind and Essien as cover for all three.

There is no reason why Mourinho’s view would have differed greatly from the common perception. The manager did not leave because at the time he probably wanted the players and, like the rest of us, has been surprised at the way the season has unfolded.

He did not want to sell William Gallas so late in the summer transfer window and that much is clear; but this is an annoyance that can be rectified with a promise that the error will not be repeated, not grounds for divorce and if Kenyon fails to smooth over any lingering problem from September, he is not the skilled negotiator he would have us believe.

There is another conspiracy theory, denied but gaining momentum, that the club would not be troubled by Mourinho’s departure. This is based, not just on wild speculation resulting from an inferior league position as Kenyon claims, but on Mourinho’s limitations as the public face of a company wishing to ingratiate itself around the world.

There has been private disquiet at the club over two incidents this season. Already apprehensive about Mourinho’s attack on Stephen Hunt, the Reading midfield player, after his collision with Petr Cech, some club officials were mortified when the manager escalated the controversy by pointing out the inadequacy of the ambulance service. A lesser confrontation, in which he as good as called Andrew Johnson, the Everton striker, a cheat before being forced to retract his comments, was also unhelpful.

Yet, on other occasions, Mourinho makes astute and valid contributions to a debate; he is always eloquent, with a fantastic sense of theatre and is, by a mile, the most compelling manager in English football. His personality and success has done more to make Chelsea the centre of attention than a month of press conferences in Mandarin and once the final whistle has blown the only event guaranteed to make a neutral armchair viewer stay with the coverage is the announcement: “

And after the break, we’ll hear from José Mourinho . . .” You love him, you hate him, but you always want to watch him. And if Chelsea’s marketing men are happy to give up on that recognition for their product they must be barmy.

Yes, Chelsea are unpopular these days; but if the club want to change that, they only have to start losing. Manchester United are well regarded now, having failed to land a title since 2003. Do it this year, and the next, and the public will go back to despising them.

When Chelsea won the league the first time it was a refreshing change. Then it wasn’t. If Chelsea win a third time, Mourinho could teach the world to sing and furnish it with love and he would still get booed all the way to his seat at every ground beyond SW6. Mourinho is a winner with attitude; he is therefore never going to win the public vote. Bambi in a blue shirt would not get a sympathetic “aah” these days.

So if we presume that Kenyon told the truth in November and his top priority is to keep Mourinho happy, then one thought remains: that the rumours of a summer split are gaining ground because the manager has a sense of destiny, which involves lifting the European Cup in Portugal, England, Italy and Spain. The José Slam. Leave it in the trophy cabinet, as he did at Porto, and move on. That is what Chelsea should fear most of all. If Mourinho achieves his ambition with them this season maybe nothing will persuade him to stay. Not Abramovich’s millions. Not the soothing words of Lukewarm Pete. Not all the tea in China, baby.