Steve Sidwell has revealed just how devastated his Chelsea team-mates were in 2007 when Jose Mourinho told them he had been sacked.
In an interview with Liquid Football, the former Blues midfielder admitted Didier Drogba was reduced to tears when the Portuguese announced he would be leaving.
Despite winning back-to-back Premier League titles in his first two seasons in England and lifting the FA Cup the following year, Mourinho was dismissed by Roman Abramovich in September 2007.
Sidwell recalls how none of the players agreed with a decision which destroyed the "family culture" in the Chelsea dressing room.
"I've been at a lot of clubs where the manager's gone," Sidwell said.
"The hardest one I had was at Chelsea when Jose left. A lot of the players had been with him for a long time and it was a real family culture.
"We played Rosenborg in the Champions League. We drew or lost at home and then we got called in the next day. We knew that something wasn't right and Jose got sacked that day.
"We were all in the dressing room. The meeting was going on upstairs and it filtered down that Jose was going to go.
"He came down. I'd only been there a couple of months and he was going round one-by-on saying his goodbyes, there was people crying. Drogba was in absolute pieces, like tears.
"I think everyone was taken aback by it. He went round to every individual and everyone was sort of broken by it."