• Terry urges team-mates to give Hiddink winning
send-off
• 'The players admire him, and understand why he has to go'
John Terry is hoping Chelsea can defeat Everton in
the FA Cup final for departing manager Guus Hiddink.
John Terry
has said the Chelsea team are
determined to give Guus Hiddink,
their interim coach, a day to remember by winning the
FA
Cup. Hiddink is set to quit Chelsea after
Saturday's final against Everton and return to his main role as
Russia's national coach.
Milan's Carlo Ancelotti has been heavily linked with the Chelsea
position, but Terry insists that his team-mates do not care about
who comes in because they are solely focused on winning the Cup for
the Dutchman.
"We are not thinking about the new regime at all," the Chelsea
captain said. "We don't want to disrespect the current manager and
so we are fully focused on the FA Cup. I am sure there may be a few
chats after the game with the people upstairs, but they are the
ones making the decisions. As a group of players, we get on with it
and we do what we can on the pitch.
"We will get this game out the way and go away in the summer. I
am sure there will be loads of speculation. For us, as players, it
would be lovely to win the Cup, go away and not read anything and
not hear anything about Chelsea or football.
"It has been a tough couple of years with different managers and
it is important the players get their rest and we come back even
stronger next year," he added. "We don't know who is coming in and
we don't know what regime he is going to bring in. But at the
minute we don't really care about that. We care about Guus Hiddink.
He is the man in charge.
"From day one he kept this group of players together. He has
come in and reassured everyone that if they played well they would
keep their place. When you see him around the camp and how he deals
with players and people, he gets respect because he has an
aura."
And Terry says the players understand why he must walk away from
the Stamford Bridge job despite losing just one league game since
replacing the sacked Luiz Felipe Scolari in February.
"All the players understand why he has to go and they admire him
for sticking to his word," Terry said. "He has thoroughly enjoyed
it and he has said that to us. We all want him to stay – the
players and the fans – and it is a shame he is going but there is
only one way to send him off and that is by winning the trophy.
"It is massively important to win some silverware because if we
went another season without winning something it would be a bad
couple of seasons. We owe it to ourselves as a group of players and
to our fans, who have supported us through thick and thin during
difficult times over the last couple of years. We should be winning
trophies with the players we have got."
