“It’s a big mistake by Chelsea,” Redknapp told the Daily Mail. “He can still do a job for them. “They don’t seem to treat older players well. Look at who has left – Petr Cech, Frank Lampard, Didier Drogba and now John too? That’s the spine of their trophy-winning team. They make half-hearted efforts to keep them. They should have kept him playing for a year then made him their defensive coach.”
But former Arsenal and England defender Martin Keown told the same newspaper: “I’ve never been (Terry’s) biggest fan. Chelsea need to change and bring in fresh blood. Maybe they need to remove any obstacles. Nobody can question what he has achieved on the pitch. I respect that people who played with him admire him. He was powerful in the dressing room, but was he too powerful?”
Terry remains a popular figure with Chelsea’s fans, who campaigned for his reinstatement when he was dropped from the team earlier this season by then-manager Jose Mourinho.
Chelsea Supporters Group chair Trizia Fiorellino told 5 Live: “It seems a very strange time to do it and given that we’ve got no manager at the moment, we’ve got an interim manager, who has made this decision for John Terry to go? He played every minute of every league game last season and we won the title. It’s just all very peculiar, very strange, and I think the club owe us an explanation.”
Sutton agreed: “What I find odd is that it doesn’t look like (Guus) Hiddink will be in place as manager next season, so what if the new manager came in and wanted to keep John at the club? Obviously Hiddink hasn’t made that decision.”
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