You’re right. The Fink Tank thinks you’re right. Listen, enjoy it while it lasts. You are right to think that in a clash between money and the manager, there can only be one winner. You are right to think that even if José is special, Roman is specialer. Is specialer a word? It is now.

Dr Ian Graham and Dr Henry Stott whipped out the Fink Tank calculator the moment we heard about Mourinho’s departure.

It’s no good running away from it, it is the money that has done most of the talking for the Blues, however garrulous José has been. So we’ve been using various statistical tools to try to account for the cash when reviewing the record.

The outcome is a split decision - sometimes we find for Roman, sometimes for José.

It is possible to plot the relationship between points a club win and the size of their wage bill. The line curves, reflecting the fact that at the very top, each pound brings a smaller number of extra points.

Many clubs land exactly or almost exactly on the line, but a few are well below it (showing that the team are giving bad value) and a few above it (good value). So is Mourinho an above-the-line or below-the-line manager? An above-the-line one. Score one to José. He got more bang than Roman might reasonably have expected for his buck.

But there is a twist. So was Claudio Ranieri in the first Abramovich year. José didn’t get better value than the man he replaced. An equaliser for Roman.

Then there’s the attack and defence issue. And I am afraid you can take this any way you want. Chelsea under Mourinho have improved their defence, but have not become more defensive. Using computer models based on goals and shots, it is clear that the former manager boosted his side’s defence without damaging the attack. The other way of looking at it, though, is that he boosted only the defence and not the attack. Although their attack was already pretty good.

The best you can say is that Roman’s description of the style of play is upheld by the statistics, it then being a matter of taste whether you think he is right to move from description to criticism.

What about playing staff? Again you can plot a relationship this time between the points value a player adds to the club and the amount of their transfer fee. Doing this suggests that Mourinho’s obsession about Andriy Shevchenko was not really justified.

Yes, Shevchenko was below the value line for the club, but, really, only just. The figures suggest that giving the striker a bit of time is not a mad suggestion. I think you would have to give that one to Roman.

Finally, there is the question of the Champions League. It cannot be stated too strongly that knockout competitions are very hard to predict. Our work gives Chelsea a 16 per cent chance of winning the trophy this season. This is a huge number, but still means there is an 84 per cent chance of failure.

So how many Champions League trophies could Roman have reasonably expected to win? There was a vanishingly small chance that a team of Chelsea’s standard, a standard even better than Roman paid for, would have won three European Cups, a 6 per cent chance of two, 33 per cent of one.

And the chance that Chelsea would not have won any yet? It is 61 per cent. Give that one to José.

A draw, then. But at least it’s a high-scoring draw.

finktank@thetimes.co.uk

Fink Tank research is fuelled by Lucozade Sport