Hiddink Favourite To Succeed Mourinho At Bridge

William Hill offer odds of 9/4 that Chelsea boss Jose Mourinho will leave the job before the first day of the next Premiership season, and have installed Gus Hiddink as 11/8 favourite to succeed him as permanent manager when he does depart.

"Speculation about Mourinho's length of tenure at the Bridge is rife at the moment, but we make him a 1/3 chance still to be there at the start of next season as there do not seem to be any genuine football-related reasons for him to depart at the moment" said William Hill's spokesman Graham Sharpe.

"It may or may not e significant but we did lay one or two relatively small money bets for Hiddink to be Mourinho's ultimate successor at odds of up to 20/1late last year, so maybe behind the scenes approaches have been made at some point to sound him out."

William Hill offer 6/1 that he will be replaced by an Englishman, and make Sven Goran Erikkson 4/1 second favourite to take over, and also offer 9/1 Frank Rijkard; 12/1 Fabio Capello; 14/1 Paul Le Guen; 20/1 Arsene Wenger; 33/1 Alex Ferguson.

Chelsea are 40/1 to win all four trophies this season and 7/2 to win none at all.