Graeme Le Saux has revealed how Gianfranco Zola and other Chelsea stars used to fork out for their own training equipment.

In his new autobiography, serialised in The Times, Le Saux wrote: "Franco (Zola) had already bought a defensive wall out of his own pocket so he could practise his free kicks at the end of training.

"He was saying now that he also wanted to buy some lightweight aluminum goals so we didn't have to go through the daily weightlifting ritual. I said that squad members should chip in £100 each because it wasn't fair that Franco footed the whole bill and then people started weighing in with other proposals.

"Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, who had just joined, suggested we should pay a groundsman's salary for a year so that we had a guy to look after our pitches. He said if we all put in £1,000, it should cover it. Someone else said that if we put an extra £500 up, we could get the showers retiled because people had started to cut their feet on the jagged edges. Marcel Desailly added that if we put in another few hundred quid we could get a jacuzzi. Then Eidur Gudjohnsen piped up.

"'F*** it,' he said, 'why don't we put in £100,000 each and buy Ronaldo.'"