Terry singing the Blues

JOHN TERRY admitted Chelsea had fallen short of the raised expectations at Stamford Bridge as he conceded that failing to win a trophy was now simply “not good enough“.

Coach Claudio Ranieri is set to pay the ultimate price of Chelsea's Champions League semi-final defeat against Monaco, with the Italian expected to leave the club this summer as another spending spree begins.

Although Porto coach Jose Mourinho has clearly been targeted as his proposed replacement, Chelsea are not expected to officially announce Ranieri's departure or their new appointment just yet.

After all, Mourinho, who was at Stamford Bridge for Wednesday night's game, has yet to contest the final with Porto, while Ranieri is still attempting to lead Chelsea to second place in the Premiership.

Either a draw or a victory at Manchester United tomorrow would be enough to complete that achievement, ensuring automatic qualification for the Champions League next season.

Allied to reaching the last four of the Champions League a feat which Arsenal, United, AC Milan and Real Madrid did not manage this season that could reasonably be construed as progress.

For while club owner Roman Abramovich may have spent huge sums on the squad at Stamford Bridge, this is a club that had previously only finished in the top two in England once in 1955 and had never previously made it past the European Cup quarter-finals.

Indeed, Terry insisted that finishing second in the Premiership would constitute "an improvement, which is always a good stepping stone".

He added: "We said at the start of the year that it would take time to improve. For many years, it's been Manchester United and Arsenal in the top two, so it would be good to put an end to that."

However, when pressed, he seemed to concur with chief executive Peter Kenyon's oft-quoted view that not winning a trophy this season would be a "failure".

Terry added: "It's not good enough. Even before Roman Abramovich took over, everyone wanted to win things and I'm no different. I want to win trophies and at the end of my career, that's the only thing I want to have firstly the league title and secondly the Champions League.

"Hopefully there will be many more but, as a player, you dream of winning things. When you don't, it's frustrating."

Terry, who insists that he will have recovered from a knock to his ankle in time to face United, declared: "We need to go there and play well, maybe that could give us a lift. It's going to take a couple of days to get this game out of our system, but we need to forget about it as soon as possible if we can do so.

"For a good 45 minutes after the game, there was not a word said in the dressing room. We were just frustrated. We felt we were the better side but they killed it by scoring just before half-time.

"It was there for us at 2-0 up. The clock said 44 minutes and 30 seconds were gone, so I just said 'just put it into row Z'. It was frustrating that we switched off for a couple of minutes and they scored.

"At half-time, we were a bit deflated but we picked ourselves up straight away. We still believed we could score two more goals but it wasn't to be and we're just gutted."

And so the night ended in failure. Glorious failure, but failure nonetheless.

Trophies are the new hard currency at Stamford Bridge and Ranieri has failed to deliver in time.

Chelsea's defeat at the hands of Monaco could cost them around £10million.

If Chelsea had got to the Champions League final they could have earned up to £5million in performance bonuses plus around another £5million through television and sponsorship money.

The Blues at least earned slightly more than Manchester United and Arsenal from their most successful season in Europe's elite club competition.

United earned £19.15million (not including gate receipts or matchday income) from UEFA's Champions League this season, just behind Arsenal on £19.4million and Chelsea on £19.8million.