We are fed the financial info from the media and started looking at it too much. As a fan just support the team, **** the money side of things it shouldn't matter to us.
But it does Luv the top six remain the top six through sustained success. Lets take Arsenals 20 years of champions league campaigns, all those years of massive revenue from the competition has helped enable them to buy new stadia and maintain their position at the top table. It clearly has a baring but if you are not interested in it you don't have to be but the fact remains it's instrumental to success.
That is naive IMHO, unless you mean something like : As long as on the money side the club is in no danger of going under, just support the team.
Success will bring in more money and if you have an endless pot of money then you can buy success and if you as a fan have an interest in all that then fine but I find it sad. I don't pay attention to it myself I just want the ****ers to get 3 points on the weekend, I don't want us to get top 4 so that we can spend more or get more money I want us to get top 4 so that we can win the Champions League. If we were given Man Citys owners right now I think I'd lose interest in the game. Great for them I suppose as they've gone from bang average to the club they are now but it's a side of the modern game I don't like and there's a lot I don't like.
I'm not criticising your willingness to follow everything Liverpool Luv I'm just stating it's very much a part of the game. We all take what we need from our clubs some like to know more than others. But you are correct in stating there are several ways to gain success by quoting City who are still investing heavily in the club. Roman did that with us for quite a while but we are now using that and have created a sustainable plan and this will go further when the new stadium gets built in which every Chelsea fan will be a winner as more fans will be able to see the games and the extra revenue will allow us to better compete with the clubs with large stadia capacity.
Our problem is not due to the size of the club, its due to the fact that we were **** when the CL started being a top four competition and that left us a long way behind financially. We've always played a brand of football that is more likely to win cups than the league, but we were so off the pace in terms of squad strength that even the cups dried up. Under Pochettino we've made very good progress on consistency and have a much stronger squad through exceptional dealing in the transfer market. The issue now is that we need to keep the squad together long enough to deliver some tangible success. But you are right in essence: there is a big difference in expectation from an established top four club like Arsenal compared to us. Only us and City have managed to challenge the original Sky 4 for more than two seasons. That shows how hard it is.
The big issue for Spurs now as you say is keeping your squad together. Some of that will come down to whether they can win anything, and perhaps a larger part of it will be whether Spurs can pay them the wages that prevents them from moving to bigger clubs.
Winning something is not easy though. Even in the cups we are likely to draw teams about as good as us in the last three rounds so there is essentially a 50:50 chance of being knocked out, three games running. Given the chance of being knocked out earlier each cup is at best a ten to one shot. Of course if you get drawn against the lowest placed team from the last 16 onwards (a 300-1 shot) that greatly increases the chance of winning.......but that would never happen, would it....
City are a nailed on contender for the league title every season these days and a more rather than less guaranteed top 4 spot if they fail to win it, Spurs are not in that bracket, as for their recent top 4 finishes, they haven't (so far)looked like they're going to win the CL, beating Real and winning the group is a big improvement, but should it go tits up along with basically turning their backs on the domestic cups they can't take a top 4 place this season as a given. Would Poch be under pressure under those circumstances?
Not if I was the Chairman. We've got the sixth most resources in England, which means we should be in the top four just under half the time and win a cup about once every ten years by my calculations. Poch will be above that level almost irrespective of what happens this year, especially since playing at Wembley doesn't exactly help.
Winning cups isn’t easy, although some of your brethren have tried to suggest us winning the FA cup was. (Even though we did it 3 times in 4 seasons) Ultimately though, what defines a club’s success is winning cups. And it’s also what determines whether players and managers stay or go.
We've got better resources than Spurs but have only finished 2nd twice in the Prem. But on the flip side we've won the CL in far less attempts than Arsenal
It was always going to be tough this year. The move from WHL to Wembley and the expense of the new stadium tightening the purse strings. Could be better in the PL, but qualifying top of that CL group was far more than most expected.
Deffo. Your best chance was 2 years ago when Leicester won the league as surprisingly Chelsea, United and City all imploded, Liverpool where liverpool and arsenal were arsenal. Last year was also a pretty good opportunity as Chelsea City and United all got new managers and generally speaking, its not surprising that managers may need a year to settle in and change a team around (having said that, Pellegrini, Conte, Ranieri, Mourinho first year won it on first time move so maybe its not that rare?). This year was definitely a hope for a challenge but unlikely as all the big clubs have spent and their managers settled and your move to Wembley. Top of the your group in the CL is fantastic but you need to build on that else it will be wasted.
There are very few easy games once you reach the last 16. As I said earlier, we’ll take it as far as we can. But if we can beat Real, and Dortmund twice - even if they’re slightly off form, we needn’t be afraid of anyone.
