Chelsea have rubbished speculation manager Carlo Ancelotti wants to quit Stamford Bridge.
Saturday’s 1-0 defeat to Birmingham was their third in four games, and came at the end of a week when the club surprisingly parted company with assistant first-team coach Ray Wilkins.
Wilkins is now seeking legal advice have branding his departure as “undoubtedly unfair dismissal”, and, with a huge surge in betting on Ancelotti’s future on Sunday, rumours began to spread that the Italian was going to follow his former number two out of the club.
But a Chelsea spokesman told Sky Sports News: “He is contracted until 2012 and speculation about his future is total nonsense.
Meanwhile, Ancelotti himself has insisted the reigning Premier League champions’ slump has nothing to do with Wilkins’ departure.
He said: “This is not the reason we lost. We lost because we have scored just one goal in four games. We have to improve, to stay more in focus. We didn’t score against Birmingham because we were unlucky.
“We conceded just one opportunity and they scored. We had 10,12 opportunities to score but we were not able to take them.
“We’ve lost three in four and this is not good. But I’m not worried about the team. We just have to move on.”