Just read this on the BBC Football website:- More from David Johnstone, spokesman for Chelsea fanzine cfcuk, who tells BBC Sport: "I'm very disappointed for Roberto Di Matteo and Eddie Newton, I think they've been fantastic for Chelsea. But I'm not shocked. We know what the board of directors are like, they've done it before and they'll probably do it again. "The board have got to learn that you've got to give managers time. Chelsea wouldn't be in the position they are in without Mr Abrahmovich, he's been fantastic for us. But the board of directors who work for him have to stand up for themselves, they have to stand up for the supporters and give him some better advice." Yeah, right, pal! Let's say a board member stands up to the mad-dog Russian oligarch, and tells him something that goes against his own convictions, what do you suppose will happen? That's right, the poor bastard will be collecting his P45 on his way out of the meeting.
When is Abramovich just going to install himself as the manager and be done with it? He'd still probably sack himself after six months, anyway. Twat.
Did I? I thought only spent a few hundred pounds more than usual. So I assume you mean the football club I support. Well they spent about £20m which is a decent chunk but then they also saved a lot of money on the wage bill by moving out some high earners. I don't think it's fair to judge RDM on last year's Premier League performance, given that he is using another manager's team. The Premier League was already lost, and RDM won everything else that he could. Are people forgetting that AVB also had money to spend at Chelsea, so why begrudge RDM the same?
Well he has probably seen the work of more managers than most so you would expect him to pick up a few pointers.
So what? Over the last 2 years we've let go players worth far more than that. That's the problem with fans of certain clubs, It's all about cost and not value. Drogba, Ballack, Carvalho, Cole, Lampard, Essien, Terry and to a lesser extent Alex and Anelka are near enough impossible to replace. Why do you think Scholes and Giggs have lasted as long as they have done? Vidic would have been shipped out long ago if Fergie thought he had a genuine like-for-like replacement. You can't put a price on success.
I'm talking about the fans PNP. Do you honestly believe when Aguero scored the winner v QPR that City fans just paused their celebrations and thought "Hold on, we've spent £Xm to win this"? No amount of money could ever replicate that feeling for them, same with us winning the CL. We will reap the rewards for that CL win for years to come. Liverpool are still virtually living off their success from 3/4 decades ago.
And it's exactly this which has devalued football as a sport. Where's the competition, when certain clubs can just keep throwing virtually unlimited funds at it until they win? It may not have taken any enjoyment out of it for you, but you can't begrudge the rest of us showing you no respect for buying those trophies.
Football has long since become like Formula 1 motor-racing, where the team that has the best car will always win the race, regardless of whether or not they actually have the best drivers on the track.
That's Capitalism for you. It's been that way since the Tories had their say and allowed businessman to infiltrate sport. In the 20s it was Huddersfield and Sunderland 30s Arsenal 50s Man Utd, Wolves and Spurs 60s Spurs 70s Liverpool 80s Liverpool and Everton 90s Man Utd/Arsenal 00s Man Utd/Chelsea 10s Chelsea/City/United There always has been money differences. I didn't see any Spurs fans complaining when their double winning 61 side cost twice as much as anybody elses or whilst they smashed the wage cap to sign Ardiles and Ricky Villa. Football never has been a level playing field and never will be. Football never will be devalued if you support a proper football club i.e League 2 or below.
It's not so much buying success, big clubs have always done that. When we bought Greaves from Chelsea we broke the transfer record to do it. The difference is the money that was spent came out of the support for the club. Chelsea and Man City have bought their way to being big not by fan support but simply by having extremely wealthy owners. On top of which these owners have nothing to do with the British tradition whatsoever. They didn't grow up in Blackburn accumulate wealth and use it for the benefit of their local team. They just flew in with container loads of cash and bought the game. City in particular have stock piled players like gold bars. Far more than they need, preventing other clubs from playing them and preventing fans from seeing them.
