James Lawton: Ranieri proving the value of dignity amid a mirthless start to the season

In a gale of laughter, he calls himself the Roman Tinkerman. When he is caught out in a workaday football manager's fib, he disarms a roomful of world-weary journalists with the miming of the growth of Pinocchio's nose. Each day, however, you see a growing touch of assurance, humour that is about passion and joy rather than any desire for ingratiating effect.

Claudio Ranieri came into this puking, mewling and so far mostly mirthless football season as almost everybody's idea of a multi-million pound fall guy. But then so far, the manager of Chelsea is keeping his feet so adroitly that the temptation is to believe his stay of execution might just become permanent.

Indeed, he is acquiring the aura of a winner in place of that image of a clown, and if it just happens that his command is handed to someone else in the next few months for one reason or another - perhaps a suggestion in the ear of the patron from one of his advisers - Ranieri could walk away from Stamford Bridge without a single word cast against his integrity as both as a coach of football and a man.

It is a stunning performance from the son of a Roman butcher, given the pressures that have boiled around his excitable head.

He saw the picture of Sven Goran Eriksson marching to his meeting with the paymaster of Chelsea, Roman Abramovich. He read of Sir Alex Ferguson's statement that feelers had gone out to him. He noted Graeme Souness' inclusion in the list of runners for his job. Enough, surely, to make a man a little tetchy, to jump this way and that as expectations rose with each new megabuck signing. But who's squirming now? Who's facing prosecution and inquiry by the Football Association? Ferguson and Arsenal's Arsène Wenger. One for a stream of "F" words in a moment of touchline abandonment. The other for refusing to take the merest peek into the mirror.

Who is fighting for his professional life? Sir Bobby Robson. Who bitched like fishwives over the broken leg of a fine young footballer, Jamie Carragher? Souness and Gérard Houllier.

And amid all the moral mayhem of this new season, as the FA made public its dismay at the decline in discipline, who whispered to his lavishly rewarded players the oldest truth in the game, the one that sooner or later every successful manager has engaged? It was Ranieri, saying that the referee, whatever he does, is always right. Because what is the alternative to such a view? There isn't one which doesn't cause damage of some kind, be it at the lowest level of unnecessary bookings or dismissals and, at the highest point of concern, something as disturbing as the mass paranoia now being witnessed at Highbury.

For the moment at least, Ranieri's greatest strength is a football paradox. Before the madcap finances of Chelsea left the club in no position to compete in the transfer market, nor change their coach, the most significant criticism of Ranieri was that one of tinkering. In his hands, "rotation" didn't seem so much a way of distributing pressure as a wonderfully intriguing game. The Italian was candid enough about his fascination with the process. "I have always believed there is a certain player perfectly right for a particular challenge - and I have always tried to match players with tactics. Yes, I'm the Tinkerman."

But if tinkering is a classic offence against the building of a consistent rhythm, if the likes of Bill Shankly and Don Revie and Jock Stein would have seen it as a self-destructive vanity, they never had to throw up the names of two whole teams every time they came to pick one. "It is a difficult situation for great players who want to to play every game, but they have to accept the situation of Chelsea and I have to work with it and make it a success," he says. "We need patience, but we can all enjoy success."

On another football man's lips these may sound like the baldest platitudes, but here they are infused with a transforming passion. In one revealing moment, Ranieri had to force himself not to run on to the pitch to embrace Gianfranco Zola, his beloved player at both Napoli and Chelsea. "A coach cannot run on to the field, no, it is not right, but it was hard not to do so when Gianfranco scored a goal of fantasy. He hated not playing, and he had great difficulty with that. But when he went on to the field he took everything he could from his chance. He is still an example to us all at Chelsea."

Another former Chelsea player, Roberto di Matteo talks of the human quality that lightens Ranieri's insistence on good discipline. When Di Matteo's attempt to come back from serious injury had failed, Ranieri told him to lead out the team in the FA Cup final against Arsenal in 2002, a symbolic tribute to the spirit of a professional who fought so hard to play again. "He certainly stepped up the discipline at Chelsea," Di Matteo said, "but first of all he is fair. How many people would do that for a player who was no further use to him? That wasn't about management. It was about being a generous man."

Today, Chelsea are at home to Aston Villa with another ton of expectations on their shoulders. Ranieri will perform his dance of football life and death in the technical area. If he remains an expendable pawn in a game beyond his control, he has plainly chosen not to believe it.

Even as the size of a possible contract for Eriksson is a matter of public speculation, Ranieri resolutely gets on with his job. How is he doing? Well enough to silence the cry that no one ever built a great team out of sheer wealth. Perhaps, who knows, Roman Abramovich is seeing the value of passion and truth in a football club, and that it might just be where the Tinkerman fits in.