Perhaps Chelsea’s captain spent all summer struggling to find the words to describe his selfless loyalty towards the club

Let’s take John Terry’s word for it. Let’s assume he was telling the truth when he said that “I am totally committed to Chelsea and always have been”. When all’s said and done, only the archest of cynics would doubt the sincerity of a top-flight professional footballer issuing the written equivalent of a crest-kiss-with-clenched-fist, because anyone with a passing interest in the game knows it is not populated by players, or indeed managers, with form in the field of dishonest declarations of loyalty.

Some have questioned the bona fides of Terry’s oath of allegiance on the grounds that it was pledged after five weeks of complete radio silence, a period long enough to prompt acerbic suggestions that “Mr Chelsea” was displaying a certain amount of contempt for his club and those who support it. If he knew Chelsea’s supporters were on tenterhooks waiting to hear his plans and knew there was no question of him leaving Stamford Bridge, why did he wait for more than a month to offer any kind of reassurance?

While it’s possible he was suffering from a particularly nasty throat infection that had rendered him speechless, it seems obvious that Terry is so committed to Chelsea that he was prepared to waste the best part of his summer holidays with spiral notebook in hand, sitting in an armchair surrounded by scrunched-up balls of paper, sucking furiously on his pencil as he struggled to find the exact words required to describe the selfless loyalty we now know he feels towards his club and its fans.

These same fans should be wary, however, as Terry’s statement reveals him to be a man so lacking in ambition that he was unprepared to even consider the prospect of signing for a club whose financial clout and relentless, if ultimately unsuccessful, pursuit of the world’s best players and John Terry has been well documented. Let’s face it, a player so reluctant to even think about leaving his comfort zone is unlikely to stray out of position to cover for Jose Bosingwa or Ashley Cole the next time either full-back is left horribly exposed.

Chelsea supporters could also be forgiven for questioning the smarts of a player whose steadfast refusal to use the interest of a club reportedly prepared to double his wages as leverage with which to secure a new, improved contract from his current employers suggests he may well be several sandwiches short of a picnic. Equally incomprehensible lapses of judgment on the field of play during the coming months would almost certainly scupper his team’s chances of bagging a major trophy.

These are interesting times for Chelsea fans, who will be preparing for the season ahead with some trepidation now that their club’s captain, whose carefully considered utterances have revealed him to be something of an ambition-free dolt. The scarcely plausible alternative, that he’s yet another calculating mercenary who held his club to ransom before fobbing off its fans with a transparent and misleading sop, is unlikely to reassure them.