Matt Hughes Q&A: Hiddink the right man for Chelsea I Poll: vote for the new Chelsea manager | Debate: were Chelsea right to sack Scolari? | Matt Dickinson: Ghostbuster wanted for London address | Simon Barnes: Chelsea's quick-fix culture | Scolari sacked after meeting Abramovich | Who's next for poisoned chalice? | Divided dressing-room led to difficulties in the boardroom | Joys from Brazil fail to materialise | Giles Smith: Mourinho back at Chelsea? We can but dream | Chelsea's timeline to disaster

The arrival of the three men at Chelsea’s training ground was not, in itself, a cause for alarm. It was the expressions on their faces that suggested something was amiss. Roman Abramovich was wearing the look that his associates call “the death mask”. It was a look that would very soon wipe the smile off the face of Luiz Felipe Scolari, albeit only briefly.

Flanked by Eugene Tenenbaum, his right-hand man, and Bruce Buck, the chairman, Abramovich marched towards the £20 million training complex that was built to his specification. On the three walked, past the pot plants, through the sliding doors and into the immaculate foyer, where the receptionists instinctively sat up even straighter than usual. The death mask continued on its way, heading for one of the meeting rooms, and an ominous message was sent out to Scolari to join the visiting party as a matter of urgency.

Scolari had not seen it coming, but, the moment he entered the room, at 3pm, he knew it was over. “This isn’t working,” he was told, the trusty expression that people use when they wish to terminate a moribund relationship.

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They told Scolari that they appreciated everything he had done, but that, only seven months into a two-year contract with a year’s option to extend it, his position had become untenable. They told him that they had seen alarming signs of deterioration in the team and that the dire 0-0 draw at home to Hull City on Saturday had been the last straw.

Scolari smiled that Gene Hackman smile and accepted his fate. There were none of the fireworks that had accompanied José Mourinho’s dramatic departure 17 months earlier, when the Portuguese sealed his fate by walking out of an acrimonious meeting with Abramovich while challenging him to find someone who could do the job better. This time, the meeting ended with apologetic smiles and conciliatory handshakes all round, with Scolari accepting not only the decision but also the club’s remarkable offer to pay up the remaining 17 months of his contract. They thanked him and he thanked them.

As these things go, it was all remarkably civilised.

The executioners left Scolari behind at the training ground, where, as the news began to spread, he responded to the obvious questions with characteristic smiles and shrugs. In the meantime, Abramovich rang John Terry, the captain, to tell him the news.

Terry, 30 miles away at the England team hotel near Watford, could barely believe what he was hearing. Nor could Frank Lampard, who received the same call. Both players had been concerned by the dip in form and, privately, both had begun to have the odd concern about the direction that the team was taking under Scolari. But neither had been expecting this. At the end of the season, perhaps, if things did not pick up, but not now.

One thing that Terry, Lampard and everyone else at Stamford Bridge knows, though, is that what Abramovich says goes. In recent times he has said very little, his lack of visibility around the club and his lack of spending in the transfer market raising questions about his commitment to Chelsea at a time when his business interests have been hit by the global financial crisis. Both inside and outside the club, people had been waiting for some kind of sign that Abramovich was still interested in Chelsea, that he still cared. After the dramatic events of yesterday, he has, for better or worse, proved that he cares a lot.

Tenenbaum and Buck were both involved in the discussions that preceded Scolari’s dismissal — as was Peter Kenyon, the chief executive, who is on holiday in Barbados — but this was not a decision that was reached by committee. Abramovich simply decided that enough was enough. From the moment that his doubts about Scolari crystallised, the Brazilian’s tenure was over. There would be no reprieve, no stay of execution, no waiting until Kenyon returned from holiday. Even had anyone been inclined to give it a try, there was no chance that Abramovich could be talked around.

Five-and-a-half years after he bought Chelsea, Abramovich remains an enigma, but we do know that he is extravagant, capricious and ruthless in equal measure. Whether it was snapping up players in those early flurries of transfer activity, hiring and firing coaches or even his combined £61 million outlay on two pieces of art, Francis Bacon’s Triptych and Lucien Freud’s Benefits Supervisor Sleeping in the space of 48 hours last May, he has always gone about his business in the unflinching manner of someone who knows that he is right — and that, in the unlikely event that he is proved wrong, he has the one thing that can rectify any mistake: money.