Robinho plays the victim in bid to clinch move

Football players have never been regarded among the great thinkers of our time, and yesterday Robinho appeared to go to great lengths to prove his talent lies firmly within his boots. Long gone is a time when players signed a contract, showed some loyalty to their club, and more importantly to a club's fans, and aired their grievances in private. Robinho yesterday appeared to deem it acceptable to stage a press conference declaring his wish to move to Chelsea from Real Madrid, despite having two years to run on his current contract. The Brazil winger wore a baseball cap back to front, but in terms of trying to engineer a move to the English Premier League, he would have been better served donning a boiler suit and a hard hat. Ahead of the closure of the transfer window tonight, Robinho is hardly a pauper but portrayed himself as the wronged party. He was dropped from Real's game game at Deportivo La Coruna yesterday, and suggested that he will be unhappy to represent Bernd Schuster's Madrid if his desires are not met. "The situation is still the same - I want to play for Chelsea," he said. "I don't know what more I can do. Since May I've been trying to renew my contract but they didn't want to because they were so sure they would sign Cristiano Ronaldo [of Man Utd]. "Now, they haven't signed anyone, so they won't let me go." With an estimated asking price of £30m (Dh200m), the hindrance to any transfer may still be hard cash.