Bates Era-Chelsea were great. Best game I ever seen us play was a 1-1 draw at Old Trafford in 1999. De Goey, Babayaro, Le Saux, Lebeouf, Desailly, Petrescu, Goldbaek, Poyet, Wise, Di Matteo, Vialli, Zola Shame he over spent and nearly bankrupted us ****ing Chris Sutton
Some good sides no doubt but I mean, there's been a decent club in the PL and there's being a significant player in world football. Two different worlds. The PL has done some job flogging the PL around the world, that spell of English teams dominating the CL latter stages for a few years did much to help them. With those extra PL viewers comes more exposure to whomever is good in the PL. Unlike us, many of these global fans are not fans for life. The asian markets are particularly volatile, they follow players, if you sign that chap from japan. guaranteed new fans in Japan will come along with him in droves. Now Kagawa is done and dusted at United their Japanese fanbase looks for the next guy to take up, this lad coming to you lot is perfect, you'll no doubt end up with spending fans who were supporting United 2 years ago, does that make the money sweeter? I dunno All that with a good strategy, obviously, not just throwing money at it, but definitely throwing money at it, has transformed the "club" into a "brand" in what is in terms of creating a world football power, a very short time.
When FFP was first mooted I was one of the many who said it would do precisely the opposite to what was intended. The 'Big " clubs will get bigger and stronger and the "small" clubs get poorer and weaker. Thats because the dopes who brought it in didn't take account of the status quo. Chelsea, Utd, Arsenal, Real, Barca etc were already set up, the others forced into a game of catch up that they will never win. Proof again that in sport, as in life, you can't legislate to make everyone equal.
You are dead right CP. Pre FFP the equaliser was that any club would find a good investor and challenge, before FFP. Now that is just not possible. Without such investment the PL would be pretty fracking boring. Had FFP always been in place there would be no Real Madrid as we know them, no Chelsea no City either PSG. In short the list of top clubs would be much smaller. Now as it stands, you have the top clubs grabbing most of the fans, which is only increasing their power. Look at Ateltico, they have been good, won a few ELs La Liga and did well in the CL, but to be honest, with FFP they would have to do that every year for a decade or longer to even remotely challenge Real and Barca. Doing that for a decade on inferior resources is nigh impossible because Real and Barca will just spend to compensate, Barca just spent 75m on one player last season, Atletico, CL finalist and La Lagia champions couldn't even dream of spending 75m on one player, they needed to let their talisman go, Costa. So there you have it, when a financially smaller club does well against the odds, the wealthy teams just strip them of their best players. There is a power base in Europe of all the rich owners of the top clubs. PSG Monaco Chelsea the Russian clubs, City, when those teams started making a dent and buying the players the other rich already established clubs would normally have snapped up, they had to act. Elgnish clubs dominating the CL latter stages from 2005 till 2010 really upset Platini and his Eurotrash friends Does anyone really think Fergie championed FFP in the PL because of fairness? When United were the Sky golden boys and received more money than anyone else, can't remember Fergie bitching about it. United spent 40m on Veron 28m on Ferdinand, no one else in the PL at that time could even remotely match those fees. No one talked of fairness.
Nail on head. You'd have to say the chances of anyone outside City, Chelsea, United, Liverpool and Arsenal winning the title is pretty remote now for the foreseeable future. And if anyone dare have a decent season (like Southampton last year), their best players will be taken from them.
Exactly, though I'd say the title is now limited to Chelsea and United as City need an overhaul with FFP on their back and anyone with a shred of common sense would and should get in there with a nice bid for Aguero, (and Arsenal if they continue buying the likes of Ozil and Sanchez) Liverpool have never been in that top transfer fee bracket. That's clear, after Suarez going we needed a 30 40 50 mil striker, and the club spent 16m on ****ing balotelli, and it was not Rodgers who decided on Balo, absolutely not, it was this ****ing committee. Rodgers categorically said Balo was not coming to Liverpool, then he comes in, plus he was never and will never be the sort of player we needed, Rodgers knew that. We spent more on Lovren than replacing Suarez.. we are where we deserve to be as a club after doing that, we were in the CL, Balo? Arsenal have proven you cannot win **** without spending no matter how you try. There are only rare circumstances where clubs end up with previously unrecognised excellent players like Jose and Porto, they got gutted after that CL win, and Atletico, again gutted of the very best. Liverpool, good season, gutted for their best player. FFP is only going to make this worse and worse as time goes by till you have 6 super clubs and hundreds more with no chance of challenging the 6 top clubs.. ever.
Yeah, you only have to look at Real and Barca pretty much taking the best players they don't already own season after season. Ronaldo, Bale, Modric, James, Suarez, Neymar, Kroos. The next tier of clubs are doing well by buying their cast offs. Fabregas and Sanchez being the obvious most recent examples. I think no-one will be able to consistently challenge them 2 anymore though. Maybe United in the long run, maybe Bayern but then they've been fortunate with so many great Germans coming through at once. Will that happen again? FFP has closed the door on competition. For all the haters of the new rich clubs (which I can understand to a point), Chelsea and City broke up a very boring duopoly of United and Arsenal but we'll probably be the last to do so.
