Not Exactly One to Bite His Tongue

Over the last fortnight we have seen an almost unprecedented media circus surrounding Manchester City and AC Milan’s Ricky Kaka. What has been strange though is the unusual silence emanating from Citeh’s most famous supporter, Noel Gallagher throughout the course of the whole debacle. Never fear though because his two-pence worth are, as ever, more than worth the wait.

“Looks like the Sheiks are starting to put their money where their mouths are," Gallagher wrote on his personal blog. “It looks like Robinho was just the start. Huge amounts of money are being talked about. Obscene, some have said.” By ‘some’ he is referring to Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger, who were fairly vocally opposed to supposedly £100million-plus transfer from its inception.

“

Ferguson's face was a picture in his press conference yesterday though. That in itself was worth £100m. He looked shell-shocked,” Gallagher continued. “Bring it on, I say. Fuck morals. Fuck Arsene Wenger and his socialist football nonsense. Fuck all that bollocks about the club losing its identity. What identity? The fact that we've been skint for 30 years?”

So there we have it then, a pretty measured and objective view as ever from Mr Gallagher.

Stop the Madness

For everyone still cringing over the ridiculous transfer figures being banded about for Kaka, solace might finally be on the horizon with the European Club Association sitting down this week to discuss the capping of money clubs can spend on players and their wages. The proposal reportedly states that clubs will only be allowed to spend what they actually earn, rather than being bankrolled by faceless billionaire corporations. In other words, they will be subject to the same rules as everyone else.

The Offside have cleverly worked out the practicalities are such: “Basically, a team’s spending limit would be determined as 51% of their income from gate receipts, TV revenue, players sold, sponsorship and merchandising.” In layman’s terms then, no matter how rich the owner was, a team couldn’t spend money that wasn’t earned directly by the club itself, meaning no more £100million-plus bids. Unless of course Eastlands were to expand to the size of Wales and sell out every week for a year.

Obviously this is a great idea because the recent activity around Manchester City has been out of control to say the least. However, clubs and players are used to a certain trickle of income and a certain way of life, so how might teams continue to live the life they’ve become accustomed to? Well, jack up prices of course: tickets, drinks, merchandise, sponsorship and maybe even TV subscription rights.

In many ways as well this model uniformly ensures that the rich get richer and the poor stay, well, poor, with the option of big-money takeovers left redundant. There would never be another team like Fulham or Wigan or Reading meteorically rising to the top, and order would be virtually solidified, save for the obvious promotion/relegation merri-go-round once a season.

Finally though, and perhaps most compellingly, there is an obvious loophole here for those sugar-daddys still committed to asssembling their own fantasy football team. Spend £250million every week in the club shop on shit like cuddly mascots to bump up the club’s turnover…

Shopping List

If press reports are to be believed, we could be on the brink of a new era in football spending that will make Abramovich’s Chelsea look positively frugal. I am of course referring to the takeover of Manchester City on Monday by an Arab consortium estimated to be worth around £650billion. Shortly after ushering Brazilian wonderkid Robinho to Eastlands, the leader of the consortium, Dr Al Fahim, revealed the group’s ultimate plans involve the creation of a Harlem Globetrotters-esque dream team. Dr Fahim told The Sun today: “We have big plans for this football club and we’ll be back to try to get him again next year,” vowing to bring more than 18 new players into the club in January, including, get this, Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, Kaka, Dimitar Berbatov, Fernando Torres and Cesc Fabregas.Fahim continued: “If we can get the biggest players in the world, then we will get them. Ronaldo has said he wants to play for the biggest club in the world. So we will see in January if he is serious. Real Madrid were estimating his value at £90million. But for a player like that, to actually get him, will cost a lot more. I would think £134million. But why not? We are going to be the biggest club in the world, bigger than both Real Madrid and Manchester United.”

Fahim, sickening young at just 31-year-old, is not short of a bob, but the main cash comes from a chap called Sheikh Munsoor bin Zayed al Nahyan, who has a 90 per cent stake in the consortium. There are genuinely no official estimates of Sheikh Munsoor’s wealth, it is so vast, but in quantifiable terms, he and his five brothers control the Abu Dhabi Sovereign Wealth Fund, considered to be the biggest in the world and valued at £460billion. The man nicknamed ‘The Doc’ is the personality though, also being a reality TV star back home in their version of The Apprentice, and even having his own flippant catchphrase: “Impress me!”

Not wanting to cast a dark cloud over all this, but in my head this is one of the last nails in the coffin of the Premier League. With this kind of wealth backing them, Manchester City are in a position to do literally anything they want, because ultimately everyone has a price: “Oh, you guys don't want to sell Messi? Ok, well how about we give you £500million, can you turn that down? Thought not, see you later.”

Construction

There is currently quite a big to-do in the press about Liverpool’s former-captain-turned-substitute Steven Gerrard spending lots of wonga on adding what appears to be a gymnasium complex onto his £2million mansion in the Northern suburb/slum of Freshfield. Ever the wits, The Daily Facist xenophobically questioned whether any of those pesky asylum seekers were being hidden away in it. The Daily Express went for the slightly more obscure suggestion that it never would have been built if Princess Diana were still here, whatever that means. The Telegraph meanwhile simply voiced the presumably-more-intelligent-in-their-eyes conjecture that it has a different postcode to his house. Very reserved gentlemen; kudos as ever for rising above the use of humour as a rhetorical device.

Anyway, the quite brilliantly named Cecil Crossley, who lives across road from the site, had this whinge on behalf of the residents’ association: “I cannot begin to understand why anyone would want to build an eyesore like this in their back garden. It is not in keeping with the properties in this area. It’s like building an Asda supermarket in the middle of a beauty spot, but our objections were ignored.” The structure was designed by Liverpool-based DK Architects, and partner David Gilkes defended the style: “It is a matter of taste. It is a fairly contemporary building…there is a mixed bag of styles on that road. Most residents have been quite supportive.”

We can now exclusively lift the lid on the building’s true purpose however. For several months Alex Curran has been in training with Cristiano Ronaldo working towards a career as a professional tanner. However, while he is an advocate of the traditional au natural approach out under the sun, she is very much from the new school and thus favours tan-in-a-bottle treatments and over-priced spa booths. Now the result, as if you haven’t noticed, is that she has become radioactive, with a dangerous orange glow permanently emanating off her. Ever the pragmatist, Stevie G decided that enough was enough, and has actually had this bespoke containment chamber fashioned to keep Alex and her gaggle of giggling gal pals safely out of harm’s way. You heard it here first…

The Million Dollar Man, well, Million Pound Man actually

There are very few more obvious statements you can make about football these days than ‘the players get paid too much.’ When painfully average Championship level bench-warmers get paid more in a month than 90% of the population earn in a year, you know something is wrong with the country. Anyway, soap-boxing aside, according to The Observer we are on the brink of passing yet another wage mile-stone, with reports leaking out of West London that Chelsea are prepared to offer Brazilian divinity Kaka’ the princely sum of £1million-a-month to join them from AC Milan.

Just when you thought the saga was over, press speculation has picked up again over the weekend, after last week reports of a €100m offer for the midfielder were laughed off by Stamford Bridge insiders. So-called ‘transfer guru’ Adriano Galliani confirmed that he and Milan had rejected a “conspicuous” offer from Chelsea but wouldn’t reveal a figure, before adding that Kaka was not for sale at any price. However, chatter persisted, and rumours of a €150m and then a €200m offer further circulated mysteriously, while both Galliani and Chelsea chief executive Peter Kenyon denied all knowledge.

If this £1m-a-month offer is to believed then this would make the 26-year-old the first player in footballing history to earn this amount, topping his current salary which is already the highest in the world at the moment. “Kaka's contract gives him €9million in its first season, and rises by a million euros for each of its five years,” a Milan source explained. “To better that, Chelsea will have to begin at more than £200,000 a week.” It seems then that the speculation surrounding Chelsea and Kaka just will not go away, but is there any way this mess can get cleared up in the next three weeks before the season starts?

If insider conjecture is to be believed then Kaka’ has fallen out with new toast-of-the-town Ronaldinho, but would he ever leave Milan and want to ply his art in this country? And that’s the point I think; the way Kaka’ plays is as close to art as football can get, gliding mercurially around and making it just look like the easiest thing in the world. Would he ever want to risk essentially his whole career by lining up against the limited-skill defences of the Premier League, where certainly outside the top 6 or so, the mantra is very much pure physical intimidation?

So is he worth it? Would Chelsea finally be able to capture the Champions League crown with him in their side? Are we being too harsh on Premier League defenders? Tell us what you think in the handy comments box below…

Winston and Lose Some

These days it is not uncommon for a player to sell his potential, along with any personal ambition, for a huge wage and a spot on the bench. Look at Steve Sidwell; outstanding last season at Reading, but after a year of doing literally nothing at Chelsea for twice the money, his career’s basically over already. However, many people might not know that the man who laid the blueprint for this goes by the name of Winston Bogarde, who played just 11 times for Chelsea between 2000 and 2004, but earned more than £5million by recent estimations. Thing is, he was coming to the end of a stalling career, and following a quite farcical spell in this country, was able to bask in ridicule while sticking a couple of middle fingers up at everyone’s favourites Blues.

Going back a bit, he had a fantastic pedigree in the 90s. After a formative few years at Sparta Rotterdam, Bogarde moved to Ajax in 1994, where in one of the greatest club squads ever assembled (Marc Overmars, the de Boer twins, Clarence Seedorf, Kanu, Jari Litmanen, and Patrick Kluivert, to name just a few), he won the Champions League in 1995. A spot in the Dutch national team followed, but at the 1998 World Cup he was seen as a dissident to the team morale, filmed forcibly pushing two white teammates aside as they were trying to celebrate Davids' winning goal in the second round match against Yugoslavia. The year of the World Cup he was at AC Milan, but played just thrice before being somehow offloaded to Barcelona, where he sat for the next three years, playing just nine times in total in the second two years. His highlight at Barce was undoubtedly in a 1999 Champions League group match against AIK where he was humiliatingly substituted after just 20 minutes, prompted by nearly getting sent off for a horror challenge on an opposing striker.

Here’s where it gets good though. He signed for Chelsea in 2000 season, but literally weeks after signing his contract with the club, the newly-appointed manager Claudio Ranieri wanted him to leave. According to Bogarde’s biography (which has possibly the greatest title I have ever heard – This Negro Bows for No One) it would have been impossible to find a contract comparable to the one he had at Chelsea, so he decided to stay and honour the full term of the agreement. In the end, he appeared just 11 times during his four-year contract, reportedly earning more than £40,000 a week. Quite why Chelsea agreed to such a salary in the first place, given his lack of first-team play at Milan and Barce, is ridiculous, but kudos to Bogarde for sticking with it. Chelsea also won a domestic trophy during this period which hilariously actually triggered a bonus payment in his contract, despite the fact that Bogarde did not feature at all for Chelsea that season.

During his time at Chelsea, they repeated tried to offload him because of his inflated wages. When no-one was interested, Chelsea demoted him to their reserves and then even their youth team in an effort to force Bogarde to leave, however he just kept turning up every day and attending whatever training he was assigned to. Bogarde then claims to have been set-up in a strangely contrived drugs scandal (similar to other Chelsea players Mark Bosnich and Adrian Mutu), but still he refused to leave or sign a new contract for a reduced wage. Bogarde continued to work every day with the Chelsea reserves until he left in 2004 and retired to a life of luxury all paid by the West London club’s weeping coffers. He took a lot of stick in the press for being greedy and selfish, but whatever, if Chelsea were dumb enough to lock him into a four-year contract for such inflated wages, then how can you blame him for keeping them to their word? I reckon at about £750,000 a game he was pretty good value!

We’re streaking on the Quad

Not in fact some enthusiastic Roadwarrior fans enjoying weekend sun, but four of Chelsea’s stars trying out some of their latest flashy toys. Here we can see JT, Joe Cole, Steve Sidwell and Ashley Cole heading home from training in leafy Surrey via the pub.

Perhaps the least threatening gang in the world, dressed in trendy flip-flops, polo tops and shorts, sped to a sunny beer garden near Cobham and reportedly necked twnety pints each of strong lime cordial each before heading home to knock their wives/girlfriends about. Except Ashley of course, he went home to cry and play with himself. He did look pretty menacing with a black scarf pulled over his face like a proper gang-banger but you know at heart he’s still a complete jess.

One observer helpfully offered: “It was mad not to have headgear.” With two huge games coming in the next fortnight or so, could Avram Grant really do without any of these players had they taken a tumble? Apart from JT, unequivocally yes.

Zizou to Loftus Road?

Reports coming from that most reliable source, the Sunday People, suggest that Flavio Briatore is trying to persuade Zinidine Zidane to become QPR's new manager. These revelations come on the heels of a schizophrenic season, with QPR flirting with relegation early on, before pulling some decent results out and finishing in the relative comfort of lower mid table mediocrity. Rangers could lay claim to the title of richest club in the world at the moment, enjoying the backing of Lakshmi Mittal and his whopping $45 billion fortune and the board are looking to attract Premiership level talent to mount a serious promotion charge next year.

Zidane could make a new home in West London with ease, as the town's most fashionable address, Batman Close is within spitting distance of the stadium. Shepherd's Bush Green is the last bastion of the West to remain untouched by gentrification and he could buy knock-off smokes down the market, while hanging out and drinking cans of spesh by the swings. He may also do a bit of football management while he's between vices.

In more realistic news, it appears that Tottenham's Radek Cerny may be QPR bound, having not completely displaced Paul Robinson as number one. He would replace roly-poly funman and fan's favourite Lee Camp and is said to be looking at a two year deal.

I Thai-ed My Best

This guy Thaksin Shinawatra is a bit of a slippery customer to say the least. Surely being ousted as the President of Thailand by a military coup was a bit of a red flag to all Manchester City fans that he perhaps doesn’t fly straight, but recent talk now suggest that he’s completely lost the plot at Eastlands. After just one pretty impressive season, the word on the street is that manager Sven-Goran Eriksson is to face the chop in the summer after failing to produce instant results and presumably winning Premier League. Admittedly the Sky Blues have suffered a post-Christmas slump, and a couple of Sven’s big money signings haven’t come to fruition, but for a first season Sven has done remarkably well to mesh together a group of players who’d never played together before, even scoring a historic double over local rivals Manchester United. As The Telegraph perhaps rightly pointed out today, this is a sign of not being fit to run the club, as surely just ignoring the fans completely shows how little idea some foreign owners have of the passion within English football?

Now however furious players are lining up to follow the Swede and quit City. Club captain Richard Dunne will be among them, as will his defensive partner Micah Richards, and promising young English midfielder Michael Johnson. Playmakers Elano and Martin Petrov will also be looking elsewhere, after joining the club basically only on Sven’s desire to sign them, and the ex-England coach’s reputation. Eriksson’s long-time colleague Tord Grip confirmed today that they will definitely be out at the end of the season: “I don’t think the owner has been patient enough. We think that we have done it well. It hasn’t been that good after Christmas but there is always ups and downs in football. The Premier League is like a marathon. It takes time to build up a team that will be competitive in the Premier League.” According to The Sun, the normally cool Sven had a blazing row with Shinawatra in a meeting on Sunday, apparently sparked by Shinawatra’s refusal to allow Eriksson any say in the summer’s transfer dealings, a state of affairs which contradicts his contract with the club.

It is not just players who are pissed off though, with a fans’ revolt potentially on the cards should Shinawatra attempt to install a puppet in the summer for him to pull the strings of. Obviously all the usual names such as Rikjaard and Scolari are being thrown around as potential replacements, with STT favourite Slaven Bilic’s name also in the ring, but chances are none of these men will satisfy the mutiny should all of the above players leave. Head of this loose collective is famous City fan Noel Gallagher, who said Shinawatra must be “living in cloud cuckoo land” if he thinks sacking the manager is a good idea.

Speaking to BBC Radio Five Live, Gallagher continued:

“To get rid of him after the best season I can remember is ridiculous. It can't be for any footballing reasons. For a club that's been going nowhere fast for the last 25 years…he turned it around and gave us a bit of style and dignity and grace. He bought some great players. The fans have got pride back in the club… I just think it's beyond a joke.

“This guy Shinawatra has come in and he seems like a bit of a nutcase. The only thing that will get him off the hook is if he's got Mourinho lined up. Apart from Mourinho Eriksson's the best thing out there. I'd be amazed and appalled if I met a City fan who thought getting rid of Eriksson was a good thing. They all love him up there. I'd give him a big kiss and say, ‘You know what, you take them to the cleaners.’”

The Rich Get Richer

This week has seen the publication of two very important annual lists: one sexy, and the other not so much really. Unfortunately for you though, it’s difficult to really weave a football-related story around the FHM100 Sexiest Women (trust me; I only got about 30 words in over an hour) so you’ll have to just check it out for yourself without our usually insightful commentary. The release of Britain’s Rich List on the other hand is yet another display of the escalating wealth of our country’s footballers, with the Beckhams’ in particular sitting on a quite depressingly large pot of gold.

Their fortune has reportedly sky-rocketed by £13million in the last year alone, taking their collective net worth up to £125m, and making them the 616^th richest Brits in any (legal) industry. Unsurprisingly their recent move to the States has seen the coffers truly open, with D. Beck’s endorsements and sponsorships adding to his already ludicrous wage from the LA Galaxy. Posh on the other hand has really contributed too, supposedly re-inventing herself as an ‘actress’ and ‘fashion designer,’ presumably in the same way she was previously a ‘singer’ and a ‘quantum physicist.’ To put their fortune in perspective then, other loaded British couples on the list include Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones, whose bank balance reads £185m, Madonna and Guy Ritchie, whose combined wealth is reportedly £300m, and The Osbournes, with £110m. Fellow football pair Wayne Rooney and Coleen McLoughlin also make the cut as the richest celebrity couple aged under 30 with £35m, the same amount apparently held by Princes William and Harry in their trust funds.

Thelondonpaper however also published figures for the richest players based in the Capital, and just for the record, seven of the top ten are Chelsea players, each sitting on a rainy-day-find of more than £10m. ‘Super’ Frank Lampard heads the list, having made some shrewd property investments and sponsorship deals on top of his wages, to help amass a net worth of £19m. Does being able to literally swim in money (like childhood hero Scrooge McDuck) help ease the pain of potentially another trophy-less season for the Blues superstars? I should think it probably goes quite a long way, yes.

It’s My Birthday and I’ll Have You Killed if I Want to

Watching that enjoyably lobotomised MTV show My Super Sweet 16 I’ve always thought it must be ace to have really rich and famous parents. It’s carte-blanche to behave like a complete prick the whole time, because, you know, they were never there for you, and they, like, totally don’t understand how cruel life can be when you pull into school in your ’08 Range Rover Sport only to see Sarah Jessica Parker’s cousin parking the new Hummer H3. I think it was Luthor Vandross’ son who actually cried and locked himself in his room all day because his dad couldn’t even get Kanye West to play at his party…I mean come on, surely that’s grounds for child abuse?

But there’s rich, and then there’s buy-your-own-country rich. Outside of guys who’s first name is ‘Sheik,’ the richest guy I know is Roman Abromovich, so as his daughter Anna prepares to make the intrepid journey into womanhood (i.e. get finger-banged behind a fruit machine by someone who’s 378^th in line for the throne), he’s taking a break between building mobile lairs to throw her a party she’ll never forget. The exclusive bash will be held in an as-yet-unnamed trendy West End night-spot, and headlining will be wanky nu-ravers The Klaxons and, er, ‘esoteric’ Brazilian electro-rock outfit CSS. The somewhat Chernobyl-affected young lady has even been boasting about all this over the excellent media node that is Facebook, telling anyone who’ll listen that her party will “beat the crap out that shit Live-8.”

It seems though that for the right price (or thinly-veiled threat) anyone is for sale, as Klaxons’ frontman James Righton is a huge Tottenham fan, and even once missed out on a trial with Leicester in the past because he refused to replace his Spurs shirt with the Foxes’ kit. Just what did it take then for him to acquiesce to the Chelsea owner’s request? Rumour has it that Roman offered to give Spurs his choice from John Obi Mikel, Florent Malouda and Salomon Kalou, but thankfully Righton saw through his clever ruse, leaving the pair to settle only on the young girl’s virginity as payment instead, as was the way in colonial Russia.

Sorry Roman that was a bad joke, please don’t have me killed! I really like Chelsea, they play great football, and your daughter’s very pretty in a pristine, Victorian novel kind of way. Not that I fancy her though if that’s worse…I like whatever you like ok.

Does Anyone else miss the Cold War?

Ok stop me when this starts to sound familiar: exotic quasi-European accent; villainous scheme for world domination stemming from humble beginnings; a plot to kill those who get in his way; exquisitely neat facial hair; a string of nameless scantily-clad beauties; numerous extortion attempts and the stealing of secrets or technology; luxurious mobile lair. I am of course describing Roman Abramovich, who seems to have missed the point of the James Bond movies more and more every day. The latest two additions to his, ahem, arsenal are the world’s largest privately owned yacht (see above) the M/Y Eclipse, which is currently being built under a cloud of secrecy off the German Baltic island of Ruegen, and bizarrely the world’s largest drill, which has a staggering diameter of 19m.

The Eclipse costs a modest £200m to manufacture, and at 550 feet is just about long enough to house a couple of decent par 3 golf holes. Our good friends over at The Spoiler have further worked out that in total, he will require nearly as many men to crew his four enormous yachts now as the entire Irish navy.

Regular features of the Eclipse reportedly include:

• A small hospital staffed by his own private medical team; a good use of resources that would otherwise would just be wasted on people in Africa or something

• Anti-bugging equipment windows that have flash sensors to warn of paparazzi photographers

• A cinema, aquarium, disco, gym, sauna, steam room, spa, several hot tubs, and a large outdoor swimming pool for Roman to host his famous ‘sexy parties’ with the likes of current WAG Daria Zhukova

Bond villain optional extras then include:

• Bulletproof glass, underwater cameras and a missile detection system

• Two £1m helicopters with indoor hangars

• Four detachable pleasure crafts and 20 jet skis

• A £2m, 12-seater submarine for diving and secret escape

Say what you want about the guy but he’s a pretty class act; you know you’re doing something right when 50 Cent wishes he rolled like you. It all sounds very very cool, but if this is anything other than a floating missle base / ops centre for a play for world domination then I’m Miss Moneypenny.

So, this drill then. Has Mr Abramovich actually got to the stage where he simply has too much money so has just started buying ‘the world’s biggest…’ well, everything? Abramovich's firm Infrastruktura in Moscow announced the purchase last Thursday, but still speculation is rife as to exactly what he plans to do with it. Wasn’t there a book where someone tried to drill a hole through some South American landmass to de-stabalise the whole continent? Maybe it’s that? Or perhaps he took uber-trash flick The Core a little too seriously and decided that a trip to the centre of the earth might be good for a few jollies? Genuinely, one suggestion is that his goal is to make a Channel Tunnel-style link between Russia and America by drilling a subterranean passage across the Bering Strait, between Siberia and Alaska. If so this would a truly phenomenal feat of both engineering and also diplomacy, given that it wasn’t long ago that the two super-powers were casually aiming nuclear warheads at one another.

Further conjecture includes rumours that Frank Lampard is no longer able to get his stomach inside Stamford Bridge so Abramovich wanted to accomodate his prized star by widening the stadium entrance, and yada yada...

That’s a Lot of Wonga

Since joining Chelsea in June 2003, for better or for worse, Roman Abramovich has changed the Premier League. He brought in hot cutting-edge talent and a prodigal manager to marshal them, but despite the seemingly endless supply of money, still the Champions League crown eludes him. Figures released today showed that in the 4 and a half years Abramovich has been at the helm, he has spent a frankly staggering £578million trying to make Chelsea the biggest club in Europe, which works out at an inconceivable £204,931 a day and even £8,539 per hour.

This massive influx has meant that Chelsea’s spending potential has sky-rocketed, significantly boosting transfer fees and wage bills not just within the Blues, but elsewhere in the country too. Similarly, the all consuming approach that this money has handed to Avram Grant and Jose Mourinho before him, has led to many talents from home and abroad choosing vast pay packets and sporadic appearances at Chelsea, over lower income and regular football elsewhere. Often you even get the impression that guys like Shaun Wright-Phillips and Steve Sidwell were only bought in the first place so that they won’t go to another team and become a potential threat. The conclusion we can come to from all this is that sure, you can buy the Premier League, but to be very top of the European pile requires something more than just money, something unquanitifiable like class and passion.

With such a ridiculous bank balance, Abramovich is unlikely to run out of money for quite some time, despite still recording an overall loss of £74.8million last year, but how long will his interest be maintained if Chelsea fall short of the Champions League again this season? While still in all four competitions, no-one really cares about the Carling Cup and to be honest, the Premier League title looks already to be a two horse race between Arsenal and Manchester United, so would even an FA Cup win be satisfactory enough this year given the invested funds? The standard of Chelsea’s transfer policy tends to ignore future re-sale, focusing on buying players in the their prime at mid to late 20s, so it won’t be long before the likes of Ballack, Carvalho and Shevchenko will need replacing. Rumours of Ronaldinho and Kaka coming to Stamford Bridge again fit in with this pattern; fantastic players without doubt, but while their title rivals focus their big spending on young raw talent, Chelsea seem to be missing a trick by living only season to season. The reason for this is of course that a businessman of Abromivich’s standing requires results, and patience is presumably not one of his virtues, as the Mourinho saga earlier this season showed.

Chelsea’s youth program is underwhelming to say the least, with Scott Sinclair about the only one in recent memory to have actually climbed out of this and challenge for the first team. Again, you look at Arsenal for example, and they are constantly sourcing players at 16 and under, putting teams together as early as possible and instilling Wenger’s style of football into them. Their Carling Cup team, so successful in the last two seasons, has been almost entirely promising British players, and youngsters drafted in from abroad. We’ve seen many rise to first team football, such as Hoyte and Denilson, through commitment and hard graft, while hardly ever does Wenger buy an established player to simply slot straight into the first team.

Chelsea Chief Executive Peter Kenyon seems to have recognized this, and yesterday as he played down any interest for the two aforementioned Brazilian maestros, said this of potential summer transfers: “It’s fundamentally got to be somebody who will contribute to the team and have a long-term view.” Now watch them go blow more than £45million on Karim Benzema, just to trump Man United…