During those weeks of the season when we're concentrating on domestic action you'll be able to catch our regular "Premier League Heroes" feature. This week, however, sees international football take centre-stage as World Cup qualifying nears its business end.

One team with hopes just alive of being in South Africa next summer are Ukraine, in Group 6, behind runaway leaders England. When they face Andorra on Saturday, they may well call on the talents of a man who must surely rank as a Premier League zero; Andriy Shevchenko, who last Friday ended his time at Chelsea, an association that finished with much more a whimper than a bang. Contract paid up, "Sheva" rejoined Dynamo Kiev, the club where he once made his name, paying glowing tribute to Roman Abramovich as he went, his exit a mere footnote on a day of constantly breaking transfer news.

He left for no fee where it once took £30m paid to AC Milan to secure his services in the summer of 2006 and augment a Blues team that were looking for three titles in a row. Most, including myself, considered his addition another nail in the rest of the Premier League's coffins. I recall watching his debut for Chelsea in the Community Shield that August. A well-taken strike against Liverpool caused me and a pal to drink up and leave a Toulouse watering hole in resignation that this would be another season of domination for Jose Mourinho's team.

Yet it was not to be. Just over four months later came my next encounter with the striker who once terrorised defences across Europe. As Macclesfield Town were thrashed in the Third Round of the FA Cup at Stamford Bridge one man stood out as a performer struggling to live with the gap in class as a lower division team were pulled apart. Problem was, he was playing up front for Chelsea. Shevchenko slipped, slid, mis-controlled and miscued his way through 90 minutes of ineptitude that cheered the travelling Macc faithful no end as their stricken team ended the game with just nine men on the pitch.

At the end of that game a sporting Mourinho took the trouble to shake the hands of every Macc player. He looked far less impressed with Shevchenko, left to suffer for the full match while the likes of Frank Lampard, Ashley Cole and Salamon Kalou were allowed to take their leave and head for the warmth of the dug-out.

By then, whispers had begun of the Portuguese manager's unhappiness with a player said to have been foisted on him by Abramovich, who had enjoyed a long-running friendship with the player before finally tempting him away from Italy after seven goal-filled years. Mourinho's tactics, hugely successful at that, had centred around playing one striker, a target-man, and his name was Didier Drogba. Shevchenko, apart from no longer being the quicksilver goal-machine of Serie A yore, was not that player and neither was he an ideal partner for the Ivorian. Nor could his goal tally justify his place; he left Chelsea with just seven league goals to his name.

Counter-rumours of Abramovich annoyance that his prize asset was not being assimilated were also rife. One thing for certain is that the Russian and Portuguese alliance ended in October 2007, just over a year after world domination had been predicted by so many. Mourinho left by a "mutual consent" that most personified as the pair's relationship reaching breaking point. Ever since that moment, Chelsea have failed to emulate the pre-eminence of the Mourinho era.

Carlo Ancelotti, the latest entrusted with that task, was in charge of Shevchenko last season, during a loan spell back at AC Milan that yielded just two goals in 26 appearances. Back at Chelsea, at the start of this season, it came as a shock to see a familiar face, hair perhaps a little longer, coming on as a sub at Sunderland. The four minutes he was granted at the Stadium of Light were the 32-year-old's last in a Chelsea shirt. The Italian, and perhaps Abramovich too, had clearly seen enough.

After £30m wasted on a possible cause of the breakdown of an alliance that had brought unmatched success to Stamford Bridge, it is little wonder that there was a rather muted publicising of his departure by the Chelsea PR machine. Even in the glaring light of the Gael Kakuta affair, Andriy Shevchenko must surely rank as the club's worst ever signing and, in value for money terms alone, the most disastrous of the Premier League era.