Considering how often we've seen the racking of his broad shoulders as rivulets of tears stream down his quivering cheeks, there was something ironic about John Terry's call for his Chelsea team-mates to "man up" this week. For them it must have been the equivalent of being urged to lighten up by the pope. By his own account, Terry once sobbed his way through a lonely night of incarceration in police cells after a West End nightclub misunderstanding, while TV cameras have always been on hand to record the wet and salty fallout of the penalty-related catastrophes that punctuate his career.

And then there were the bad times. Well, the particularly bad times.

Considering in 2005, the euphoria of Chelsea's first title win in 50 years moved him to sniffle "I just want to break down and I probably will in my hotel room", we can only imagine how many Kleenex Terry reduced to a sodden pulp behind closed doors in the face of the crushing, largely self-inflicted adversity he tackled during his recent annus horribilis.

Unfortunately, it behoves me to add that's a sodden pulp from crying, for those of you sniggering down the back.

Terry's latest rabble-rousing cri de coeur came on the eve of his side's Champions League encounter with FC Copenhagen, opposition that would go on to prove so feeble that the manned-up men of Chelsea could have been replaced with the mascots of Uefa Youth who accompanied them out on the field and still have been confident of a result. But before the match they weren't to know that, so we can only surmise how they rallied to his call.

Considering the ridiculously testosterone-charged macho environment in which they ply their trade, it is difficult to imagine how any Premier League footballer could be found wanting in the manliness stakes. After all, these are men – fit, athletic young men – in the prime of their lives, for whom fast cars, bone-crunching tackles and bawdy dressing-room banter are a way of life.

But then you look at some of them, with their accessories and antics: spitting the dummy, with their alice bands, snoods, gloves and occasional protestations of homesickness. You look at them and you realise just how unmanly Carlos Tevez really is, and he stands out as being quite hard.

Just two days ago, in this space, came the astounding revelation that some Premier League footballers read actual books, with the Blackpool midfielder Andy Reid being singled out for his heroic attempt to negotiate James Joyce's Ulysses. Assuming it's this sort of unmanly behaviour with which Terry steadfastly refuses to have any truck, one can only imagine the futility of his struggle as he fist-pumps and snarls his way around the Chelsea dressing room, seeking out rogue copies of such classics as Dostoevsky's The Idiot, which are notoriously bad for morale.

Of course with this being your beard-sporting, sandal-wearing pinko-liberal Guardian, we must at least nod to the possibility that when he called upon his team-mates to man up, England's Brave John Terry may not have meant it in the primal, loincloth-wearing, chest-thumping sense of the expression.

However unlikely it might sound, he may have been urging them to embark on meaningful personal journeys involving less "stick for the lads" and more talking about their feelings. After all, they don't come much manlier than Manchester United Methuselah Ryan Giggs and he's hawking a yoga DVD.

But ultimately, for a dressing room to man up, it first needs to woman down. And contrary to what the marketing men would have them believe, those designer-monogrammed vole-skin men's hanging wash bags so beloved of footballers are not "distinctively masculine" and need to go. So too do the expensive, scented lotions and potions of the dressing-room showers, to be replaced by odourless, Albanian prison-grey carbolic soap.

In place of that padded skull-cap with chin-strap, Petr Cech might at least consider adopting a fearsome Highlander style Kurgan skull-helmet, while for all we know, the increasingly effete flower Fernando Torres could be just one left-up toilet seat from hitting the richest vein of scoring of his career.

As Chelsea's players prepared to face FC Copenhagen on Tuesday, there were few obvious signs that they'd collectively heeded their captain's clarion call. Beyond a token sartorial effort by substitute Didier Drogba, who'd swapped his traditional bench footwear of flip-flops for trainers, there was no outward evidence of manning up among the rank-and-file. It was small wonder, for over the click-clack of players marching out to do battle, a shout could be heard: "C'mon boys!"