Lunch with Jürgen Klinsmann last week was intended to clarify recent events at Stamford Bridge, but it made them as clear as mud. The workings of Roman Abramovich’s mind, and the spell seemingly cast over it by Avram Grant, grow ever more mysterious.

Klinsmann was open-minded to the idea of managing Chelsea or he would not have met Eugene Tenenbaum, the director, or Peter Kenyon, the chief executive, in California. It was not house prices in Cobham that put him off, or fear of red-top scrutiny.

As he pointed out in a roundabout way in the interview – but made perfectly plain to Chelsea at the time, according to sources at Stamford Bridge - it was the idea of being answerable to Avram Grant.

Klinsmann wanted to know who Grant was, why he should be taking orders from him and why Chelsea were seeking to recruit a high-profile new manager only to have someone else interfering in first-team matters? It was him or Grant, in other words. So who do you choose?

On the one hand you have a legend of football who can mark a bold break from the José Mourinho era. He even speaks more languages than the Portuguese, if you include fluency in the beautiful game.

A coach who is hot property after an impressive World Cup in charge of Germany and whose motivation is not money but making a mark in management. The fans are going to love him, the marketing men will be thrilled. You can already hear them saying “José who?” And then you have Grant (who travelled to America to meet Klinsmann even though he was actually employed by Portsmouth at the time, but we will pass over that and expect the Premier League to turn a blind eye). He has never coached outside Israel, has barely skimmed the surface of European football and, if he is equipped to be a Champions League winner, has managed to disguise it well, considering his age, 52, and the holes in his CV.

That Abramovich should not only opt for Grant but also make him the foundation stone of the second phase of his Chelsea construction grows ever more bizarre. In doing so, the Russian not only made the Chelsea job unacceptable for Klinsmann but for any manager of repute.

It was the start of a hole and now they are going at it with a JCB judging by latest events. Unless the recruitment of Henk ten Cate is some elaborate plot to lure Frank Rijkaard, his former boss at Barcelona, his arrival as first-team coach indicates that Grant really is manager for the long haul. And, for Chelsea fans, that is very scary, even after two victories in a row. This is the club who have promised to lift two European Cups in the next six years while playing like Brazil.

A penny for your thoughts, Roman. In fact, I know newspapers who will pay a lot more than that to understand why the Russian is so hooked on Grant. Just about all we can detect is that Abramovich once promised the running of a club to his friend. We know that because the Israeli has said so.

He once told a journalist of the dinner he had with Abramovich in 2005. “We talked about many things and then turned to football,” Grant confided. “After 15 minutes, he said to me, ‘Coach, which team do you want to manage? I’ll sort it out for you.’ I just smiled.

“An hour later, we each went our own ways and one of his guys chased me down into the parking lot and told me off. ‘Mr Grant, what is wrong with you?’ he said. ‘I don’t get it. Roman Abramovich offers you a team and you just smile like nothing happened? How many opportunities like that are you going to have?’ ” In the end, Abramovich gave him Chelsea and he is unlikely to take it away any time soon if past record is anything to go by. History suggests that the Russian is slow to oust those he does not particularly favour, so he will surely show infinite patience to a buddy. He was willing to give Claudio Ranieri a reprieve if he had reached the European Cup final in 2004, and he was not exactly trigger-happy with Mourinho given the provocation.

Andriy Shevchenko has been given the benefit of the doubt through dozens of lacklustre performances. It has taken months for patience to expire with the £30 million has-been.

Chelsea fans imagined that they were getting a ruthless oligarch, a Blofeld figure shoving failed managers down the chute, but, in his football dealings, Abramovich has proved the white pussy cat. Instead of relying on the experts, he has made decisions based on friendship and sentimentality.

So, given that Grant appears to have convinced his boss that he is the one indispensable member of the staff, the supporters had better settle down for the long haul. There is not much alternative bar a blast of “Jürgen’s blue and white army”.

Half-truths deserve a full stop

The last time Steve McClaren set about dropping Frank Lampard, it led to all sorts of unnecessary problems and half-truths. A tale was spun that the Chelsea player was injured rather than omitted against Andorra. Lampard blustered that he was happy with the decision when, as all of his teammates were very aware, he was anything but.

McClaren was simply trying to protect his player, but, when the real story leaked, it left the impression that the head coach was bending over backwards to soothe a star’s ego and that Lampard was thin-skinned.

At the start of a week when McClaren must be tempted to stick to the central partnership of Gareth Barry and Steven Gerrard, at least against Estonia, straight-talking would be better for everybody. “You can’t handle the truth,” Jack Nicholson says in a A Few Good Men. Surely Frank is big enough to handle the bench for a game or two.

Lewis Hamilton may not have done much for his chances of securing the World Championship in Shanghai but, if it is any consolation, he did the sport of Formula One a service when he slid into the gravel. As well as setting up a gripping climax in Brazil a week on Sunday, Hamilton reminded us that there are men in those machines. In this season of scandal, it has been easy to forget that driving skills are as important as espionage or engineering in determining who will be champion. Some of my colleagues disparagingly refer to F1 as Scalextric, but I dare them to miss what is sure to be a thrilling finale at Interlagos.