A love letter to Jose Mourinho as he starts his new job at Manchester United, from a gutted Chelsea fan

A lifelong Chelsea supporter, Sally Ann Lasson can’t bear the new season without Mourinho at the helm of her club – and nor can she fathom the fickleness of male fans

Sally Ann and her cut-out hero in her Chelsea home

I have a life-size cut-out of Jose Mourinho at my house in Chelsea. I usually erect him in my hallway at Christmas but he can get moved randomly, from room to room, at any time. I got him for 30 quid in the Chelsea Megastore a couple of years ago. He looks both gorgeous and very annoyed, so it is incredibly lifelike. It’s as if he’s saying: “Why you ’ave me like this in your sitting room? Why? Why?”

As the football season kicks off again, this particular fan has been forced to take radical evasive action to avoid the repugnant sight of The Special One (my Special One) on the pitch at Old Trafford with his new team, our hated rivals, Manchester United. I’m emigrating for two years. It’s the only logical response.

On 17 December last year, I was, fortunately, already at my shrink’s office. She had just written me a prescription for some industrial-strength antidepressants when a text message pinged on my phone at 3pm. “He’s gone,” it said starkly, the news that I had been dreading for months: my beloved had been fired by Chelsea for the second time. How could they do this to him? To me? To us? No wonder Roman Abramovich has to pay someone to sample his sashimi, to check if it’s spiked with polonium. It should be.

To say that I took my football team, and in recent years, my manager, seriously might be a bit of an understatement. When I’m between husbands, I rely heavily on the support of eleven men, plus a few substitutions. But when Jose was sacked this time, something inside me died.

A well-meaning friend tried to console me with the controversial suggestion that I ditch my useless club and follow the manager instead, wherever he went. I tossed it around: it would be unprecedented, but maybe I should try and get my head round it. Maybe if he went to a foreign club it would be okay. Or an English club, so long as they didn’t wear red…?

I wanted it to work. But I have been a Chelsea supporter since 1969. I was born at the back of Stamford Bridge and I had been beguiled as a small child by the roar of the home crowd. On Saturdays, when I got home from my ballet classes and sat down to practice my painting, I would listen, intrigued, to the sound of testosterone. By the time we won the FA Cup in 1970, we were already a “we” (28 million people watched that final replay on TV). No. It would be easier to change countries than to change clubs.

Of course, I hadn’t known in 1970 that Chelsea wouldn’t win anything again for 27 years. Or that when we did, we would begin an historic tradition of immediately sacking the manager responsible.(Starting with Ruud Gullit: He asked for a fee of £2m netto. Pennies!)

Chelsea has had 13 managers since then. I had to check because it is a Chelsea supporter’s lot in life to ward off dementia by recounting their names. Some we liked (Claudio Ranieri, Guus Hiddink, Carlo Ancelloti). Some we loved (Gullit, Gianluca Vialli, Roberto di Matteo). Many we hated (Avram Grant, Luiz Felipe Scolari, Andre Villas-Boas, Rafael Benitez). But only one Cinderella fit perfectly.

Women football fans are not like male football fans. I am constantly amazed by the male supporter’s awful combination of ingratitude and amnesia. They seem to exist in a kind of continuous present, neither caring to think about or remember the past. They are blasé or sanguine when a manager or a favourite player is sacked. (Frank Lampard? He was past it, mate!)

Everything I’ve learned about dating – and it isn’t much – I’ve gleaned via football. It is this continuous present that makes going out with men so tricky. Why didn’t your “boyfriend” call you for a week? Not because he’s dead, I’m afraid: He’s forgotten you even exist.

Never underestimate a man’s lack of interest in or memory for detail. Personal history, like that of CFC, has to be constantly rewritten. (I think I was the last man standing on the 16th minute at Stamford Bridge in memory of Di Matteo, fired for winning the Champion’s League.) If a man has cheated on you, there’s usually a point where he’ll say something like “Get over it” or “Why do you live in the past?” Er... because it only happened last week.

I’ve been at Stamford Bridge when a new player has made his debut. The crowd start shouting their approval or derision almost immediately, often making up spontaneous little songs. But when you turn to your neighbour and say, “Who’s that?”, they’ll say, “No idea.” You could probably field 11 totally different players and by the end of the 90 minutes the crowd will consider these interlopers to be Their Team.

‘I suppose that Mourinho being so very good-looking counts against him with other men’ (Getty)

I had a few spiteful spats on Twitter about Jose Mourinho when he was fired. (“Wot about the doctor?” They’d repeat gormlessly.) I have fallen out with my friend Marek, my regular football companion of 30 years. He said he wasn’t particularly bothered about the sacking. He said we have a difference of opinion, that’s all. But since Mourinho’s statistics as the "Most Successful Manager of All Time" speak for themselves, to me he is confusing opinion with fact.

I suppose that Mourinho being so very good-looking counts against him with other men, more used to the ruddy faces of Ferguson et al. It used to drive Marek mad that I spent quite a lot of the (admittedly, sometimes dreary) matches staring at my beloved through my binoculars. Or that I always got seats in the Matthew Harding or the West Stand so that I could see him properly. But I have been in a room with both George Clooney and Jose Mourinho; and let me tell you, Jose is the handsomer.

I will miss so many things about my football life. I will miss the walk up the Fulham Road to the ground. (Once, memorably, with Maradona; everyone was taking pictures and telling their mates on the phone: “Not Madonna. Maradona!”) I will miss all the rituals: buying the programme from the same “lucky” vendor; setting the video to watch the match again and, more importantly, to see Jose Mourinho’s riveting and often hilarious press conferences. (The way he ran rings around the journalists took your breath away.) The post-match suppers and analysis; the 6am scramble for tickets; the joyful victory parades; the affectionate jokes about John Terry’s dodgy relatives.

When I was packing up the contents of my house last month, I found my cut-out Mourinho under the bed. While I have thrown out or sold or given away most of my possessions, I’m keeping that cut-out for life. It’s part of who I am. Or who I was.

Every Premiership football club and supporter in the land will be dreading the thought of Jose Mourinho making his debut at Man United this month.

Luckily, I won’t be one of them.