Are We Getting A Genuine 3 Horse Race?

Do you remember when we were ruining football?  We were the scourge of the Premier League, lambasted by the media in all corners for our 'immoral' and 'disgusting' spending, well we aren't alone any more, because Roman Abramovich has opened his cheque book again, and this time not just to pay off another manager.  In fact if they finalise the 2 deals they are currently working on, they will have spent more than us in the last 2 years, who'd have thought it?!


Of course spending at Chelsea never really stopped like the media would have you believe, they did however curb their spending somewhat, and at the same time we were spending £18M on Roque Santa Cruz and paying Wayne Bridge £100k a week!  The main result of the 'reduced' spending at Stamford Bridge was their first finish outside of the top 4 for 9 years.  In a very strange twist of fate however there lowest finish since 2002 coincided with them winning the one prize they have missed out on, and the one prize they have wanted more than any other, the Champions League.

Had Abramovich and his merry men slipped up in Munich the club would have been in real trouble, sustaining their wage bill without the income from the Champions League this coming season would have been close to impossible.  On top of that, they would have found it frustratingly difficult to recruit new players, as we found in our initial wave of spending immediately after Sheikh Mansour took control.  Attracting top players without the promise of Champions League football is incredibly difficult.


Things didn't quite pan out that way, and even though I should have been supporting Chelsea that night against Bayern, I hold my hands up and admit that if they had lost I wouldn't have been overly upset.  Not because of any particular dislike for the London club, but just because it was apparent that should they win and gain Champions League entry through the back door, it would mean another team for us to compete with in the transfer market.  The landscape of football in England wouldn't have been massively different, but it would have taken Chelsea a few years to get back to where they were, where as now, with this increased spending they are demonstrating you have to admit they should be right back in the title race next season.

It is hard to put a finger on exactly what was wrong with them domestically this season, I suppose the simplest explanation is that AVB was brought in to revolutionise the Chelsea set up and was not given the time to do so, and by side lining experience and promoting youth he got the club into a really dire situation.  Then latterly when Lampard, Drogba and Terry were reinstated caretaker manager Roberto Di Matteo did not try to battle on 2 fronts, he put all his eggs in the Champions League basket, resting important players in league games to ensure they were fresh for their European adventure and in the end you simply can't fault the approach, it worked.


Now as we look to next season, their success is impacting on City already.  It may not be set in stone yet, but it appears a near certainty that the paperwork and necessary medicals will soon be completed to confirm Belgian Eden Hazard as a Chelsea player; before their showdown with Munich it appeared City were hot favourites to land the 21 year old with competition from Manchester United.  However, as soon as the London club ensured their place amongst Europe's elite, the landscape changed, they were willing to pay the exorbitant agent fee's that we were rightly haggling over and they could offer the player all he wanted, so we missed out.

If the transfer rumour mill is to be believed they are also close to landing Porto forward Hulk in a deal worth £38M on top of the £32M they paid for Hazard, and the spending doesn't stop there, they are looking at making a move for Ajax right back Gregory van der Wiel, a deal that would cost around £9M to pull off.  Let's not forget before last season ended they agreed a fee of £7M to sign Marko Marin from Werder Bremin, reigned in spending this is not.


Clearly as Manchester City supporters, we cannot criticise their outlay but we can see how it could affect us going forward, should all their transfers come off, their starting 11 next season could look a little something like this: 

Then with players like van der Wiel, Marin, Terry, Sturridge, Malouda, Mikel, Essien, Meireles, Lukaku on the bench it becomes clear that they have a squad not just a team, and an incredible strong and dangerous squad at that.

Obviously we can compete, our front 4 is still better I would argue, our defense is superior and i'd much rather have Yaya Toure and Gareth Barry (or even Javi Martinez) over Ramires and Lampard but the gap will clearly have closed.  It seems to be expected that Ferguson will spend this Summer to keep Manchester United there or there abouts, but on the evidence of this season, even if he didn't spend he'd still get his perhaps average team performing at a much higher level than many would expect.

Clearly the losers in all of this are either Spurs or Arsenal, if RVP does depart North London (maybe for a move to the blue side of Manchester) they could be in a little bit of trouble, and a top 4 of City, Chelsea, Spurs and United would have a fresh look to it.  This potential challenge from London though is something that I am pleased with, when City first got the investment I said it was good because it would stop the league from stagnating, there was an extra team to compete, and as much as i'd love City to win the league every year (something I wouldn't put past us), 3 teams slugging it out for the title could be a great thing, even better if it were 4, but lets not get ahead of ourselves!

The approach Chelsea are taking is clearly not a patient one, it is worth remembering they are still manager-less, and a bad decision there could derail them even with their potentially much improved pool of players, but if they get that choice right, and if they do manage to finalise these deals they will be a real force to be reckoned with, I say bring it on!

We Must Learn From The Mistakes of Others and Our Own History...

A while ago I was cooking something horrifically mundane and I was listening to Radio 5, I am really not into Talksport and their brand of sports 'journalism' and chat, so I spend a lot of time tuning into to Sport on 5.  For those unaware, on a Monday evening, presenter Mark Chapman, journalist Ian McGarry, City hating former Pompey striker Steve Claridge, and John 'Motty' Motson discuss the weekends football stories, this is dubbed 'The Monday Night Club'.  


As I was stirring whatever listless 'delight' was in the pan on the hob, McGarry matter of factly said: 'well obviously if City don't win the league Mancini will be out' or words to that effect.  This was delivered with such an air of authority and confidence that it genuinely bothered me, what made the comments worse was that the other 'pundits' didn't question it, instead it was just glossed over and the conversation continued.  I wondered if McGarry had some kind of inside knowledge, unlikely, or if maybe it was the reasonable action and it was just me that thought it was madness, and then I realised what it was based on, we were being compared to Chelsea, our Abu Dhabi owners were being likened to Roman Abramovich, his attitude of 'no success = no job' was being applied to us.

It is nothing new, there were occasions last season when 4th place was far from a certainty, and when we were toiling against lower league opposition in what at the time looked like being a spectacularly fruitless FA Cup run, during these periods the tabloids would run negative stories about Mancini, the knives were well and truly out.  I do wonder what would have happened had we finished 5th and not picked up the FA Cup, would the Italian still be in charge?  There was a great deal of frustration shown towards him at times, our method of grinding out 1-0 wins throughout the early parts of the campaign was not greeted with over the top enthusiasm by supporters, but he won us over and delivered that famous trophy as well as our highest ever Premier League finish, bettering our 4th place aim and finishing level on points with 2nd place Chelsea.


At this moment in time, I genuinely wouldn't swap Mancini for any other manager in the world.  This season has brought with it the best football that I have ever seen City play, at 27, I suppose that is not overly surprising, but surely it must be getting close to, if not better than what we were producing in our glory days.  Clearly there have been disappointments, the defeat to Manchester United in the FA Cup was a shame, but is still something everyone can hold their heads up high about.  We were perhaps a bit naive in our first Champions League outing, and the manager will obviously have to take some blame for that, but it is a learning experience for everyone, let us not forget we managed more points than our neighbours in a far more difficult group, and the 10 points we did achieve would normally guarantee progress to the knockout rounds.

I was watching Barcelona dismantle Bayer Leverkusen last night in the Champions League, as the goals rattled in, you could see what the Italian coach was trying to achieve.  The Catalan giants are clearly the template that we are trying to use as our inspiration, now I am not saying that we are close to their quality, but you can see that this season our approach to the game is very similar to how they play.  Mancini would never accept the cavalier attitude that they possess defensively, but their style of keeping the ball, dominating possession and grinding the opposition into the ground is definitely something that we have started to do.  Both teams pass and pass and pass, pull the opposition all over the field, pass, pass, pass until space for the killer ball opens up.  The improvement on the last campaign is huge, scoring 5 at White Hart Lane, 6 at Old Trafford, being top of the league for the majority of the season, this is dreamland!


The man behind all of that is Roberto Mancini, he has put us where we are, sure it has taken hundreds of millions to do it, but as Chelsea have proved, without a good manager at the helm, you won't achieve very much, despite how much you spend.  So is Ian McGarry right? Will Mancini be sacked if we fail to lift the Premier League trophy at the end of the season.  Well as is quite clear from this piece, I sincerely hope he isn't.  I understand that we are in a strong position, but we must recognise that for as great as we have been, our rivals are only just behind us, we have clearly played the best football, but whatever United are doing, it is picking up points.

For me, the most important thing when it comes to judging a manger is improvement, and it is impressive how far we have come over the last 12 months.  Should we finish 2nd, it would really not be the end of the world, should we not win the Europa League it would not be such a big deal.  Sacking Mancini for failing to deliver the league, would be a big error of judgement by those at the top.  Clearly there could be a degree of revisionism, but genuinely at the start of the season I expected us to improve, and I wanted to finish closer to Manchester United, I didn't expect us to win the league, I certainly didn't expect us to play as well as we have, and I would imagine this attitude applies to many City supporters.  So why now should we be disgruntled with our management?


Chelsea have proved on a couple of occasions that sacking the man in charge rarely helps, their decision to bin Carlo Ancelotti was ridiculous, they sacked Scolari after barely giving him a chance, they got rid of Avram Grant despite him guiding them to a Champions League final.  This instability has not helped them, we are progressing well, and we know all too well what chopping and changing the management brings.  Besides if Mancini is to go, do you really want Mourinho in charge at City? REALLY?

Petr Cech unmasked! Behind the mask of a man who's still the No 1

By MATT LAWTON

Standing over a golf ball at Wentworth with an audience, Petr Cech looks a little uneasy. A childhood spent playing ice hockey probably explains why he swings a club a bit like Happy Gilmore and he seems rather miffed when he heads for the clubhouse. ‘I just don’t get to play enough,’ he complains. ‘I can shoot 10 over one day and 30 the next.’

Amateur golfers the world over can sympathise but Chelsea’s giant of a goalkeeper seems to be unflappable in every other respect, on and off the football pitch.

He is extremely bright. He insisted on completing his education in the Czech Republic even after joining Chelsea seven-and-a-half years ago and he can speak five languages. ‘At  the moment I’m studying Spanish for fun,’ he says. ‘We have many different nationalities in the dressing room and it allows me to converse with most of them.’

But Cech’s linguistic skills also enable him to articulate his thoughts and feelings on a variety of issues. From the recent problems at Stamford Bridge and the questions that remain about Andre  Villas-Boas to his personal journey at Chelsea; a journey as memorable for the setbacks as the success. 

I last interviewed him, one-to-one, in August 2004, a couple of weeks into his first season in  English football and long before he needed a head-guard or the  services of a plastic surgeon for a facial injury that required 50 stitches. Just lately he has needed a mask too, this time to protect a broken nose. He says it does not bother him in the slightest.

‘I can see a line at the top of my nose but it’s not a problem,’ he says. ‘When I played as a goalkeeper in ice hockey I would wear a full mask so I am used to it, although I hopefully won’t have to wear it in another week or so.’

But I have to ask him if he ever feels vulnerable. If he ever fears that the next 50-50 ball could leave him with another serious injury. Particularly when the club’s medical experts now suspect that being one of triplets has left him with a fractionally thinner skull than the average man and particularly when he concedes that a head injury as serious as the one he suffered in a collision with Reading’s Stephen Hunt back in 2006, at that time obviously without the protection of his head-guard, could kill him.

‘I guess whatever produced the bones had to be shared between three kids and they do say my skull, in terms of the thickness, is slightly under the average,’ he says. ‘They don’t know for sure but they do  say it could be because I was one  of triplets.

‘But once I’m on the pitch I’m  giving 100 per cent for the team. If that means if I have to put my head somewhere I will do it. Even after the head injury it meant I ended  up with a broken nose against  Blackburn and I needed plastic surgery after a training session.

‘If I have to put my head in to  get the ball I will do so because I don’t want to concede a goal. To be  honest, if you have a bit of fear you should not go on the pitch because if there is a bit of hesitancy you  will probably end up with a more serious injury.’

Even so, one can only admire his courage and his resolve. ‘If I ever feel differently, if I ever feel I cannot give 100 per cent, I will stop,’ he says. ‘But it never once crossed my mind to stop playing. Obviously I was initially thinking, “Thank God I’m still alive”. But I was also relieved I could still play.

‘The day it happened they told me I might not play again that season. Perhaps even the following season. They said it would be a case  of seeing how things progressed. The first priority was my life. It was not about football.

‘But as soon as I realised I would be able to play again I was determined to get back as quickly as possible. There were some days when I could not even think about training. But I was back after three months and a month later we won the Carling Cup. It remains one of my favourite trophies because of what I’d had to overcome. I was happy not only for myself but for all the people who had helped me through that time.’

He says he will always wear the head-guard. ‘I have to because another crack and it’s all over,’ he says. ‘And because nobody can guarantee what would happen if I took another blow like that to the head. I don’t think it’s wise to risk my career, perhaps even my life, for the sake of not wearing a helmet.’ He has always been brave. You have to be to face an ice hockey puck travelling at up to 100mph.

‘When I played the padding and protection was not as good as it is today and, boy, it could hurt,’ he says with a chuckle. ‘I was good, and when I was younger I probably enjoyed it more than football. Probably because there was more to do. More shots to deal with.

‘It was only because the  equipment was too expensive for my family that I chose football. But if you got hit by the puck between the pads, it was terrible — really painful. The bruising could be unbelievable.’

It might, nevertheless, explain why he has long made goalkeeping look relatively easy. It is impossible to find fault with any aspect of his game but his ability as a shot stopper is second to none, perhaps because he grew up facing a considerably smaller, faster flying object.

That said, he has conceded a few more goals than usual this season. It has not really been his fault, the decision by Villas-Boas to play a more aggressive, ambitious style at times leaving him exposed.

But Cech has an interesting take on what led to a run that saw  Chelsea suffer five defeats in nine matches before what appeared to be a return to more familiar tactics enabled them to beat Manchester City and Newcastle and progress to the last 16 of the Champions League with an impressive win against a much-fancied Valencia team. 

He dismisses talk of tactics being the problem before Chelsea’s game at Wigan today. ‘The problem was that we were making too many individual mistakes,’ he says.

‘The high defensive line was not the issue. The problem was that at moments we would lose balance. We would have too many people attacking and we could not recover fast enough. Now we keep more people behind the ball. That is the major change.

‘It means if we lose the ball we are now better organised. Against Valencia and Manchester City we played deeper but we did that because they played really well. We couldn’t play high because we didn’t have the ball. They had spells of possession and we had to organise ourselves to deal with that. 

‘We talked about the individual mistakes we were making and the fact that, while we were attacking really well, we were forgetting to defend. We put that right and you can see the result.

‘But it’s about adapting to the challenge of each game. Against Wigan this weekend it will be  different to the last two games because I would expect Wigan to defend and wait to hit us on the counter-attack.’ 

Cech speaks with real authority and he does so as one of Chelsea’s most senior and influential players. He is a member of the four-man players’ committee at Stamford Bridge, along with club captain John Terry, Frank Lampard and Didier Drogba.

So it seems appropriate to ask him about Villas-Boas and the  attitude of the players towards their 34-year-old manager. After all, there have been mutterings of discontent; this sense that the return of Jose Mourinho’s DVD guy as  manager might have been met with a touch of scepticism. When Luiz Felipe Scolari was sacked as  Chelsea manager, Cech was singled out by the Brazilian as a reason for his downfall. Scolari said he had problems with Cech, Drogba and Michael Ballack, claiming he clashed with his goalkeeper when his demand for a personal coach was not met. 

Cech has since refuted the claim, insisting he has never had a personal coach and never asked for one either. Judging by what he says, he seems to have genuine respect for Villas-Boas.

‘Every manager is different,’ he says. ‘But the people identifying problems at the club are making those judgments from the outside.

‘They are never at the training ground. They never see what we are doing on a daily basis. I know that everybody is looking only at the results, but sometimes it is not always a reflection of what is happening. And everybody with Andre is talking about his age when in football there is no such thing as age. There is only quality.

‘It’s about the talent, quality and character of the individual. Edwin van der Sar was still a top, top  goalkeeper at 40. If you have the quality and the character to win things, and the manager won  with a big club like Porto, then I am not worried about the age. He has the experience.

‘Whether you like or dislike a  manager is not important. There have been so many managers I have not liked but I might have liked the way they are working; the way they prepare the team, the way they organise the training. If they understand the game, I am happy.

‘You don’t have to love the manager, you don’t have to love the other players. You can hate half the dressing room but if you are happy to play with them on the same pitch that is all that matters.

‘In training we are doing some very interesting stuff and that gives me a lot of confidence. It gave me confidence even when things weren’t going so well in matches.’

But what about Scolari? What about this group of senior Chelsea players some managers might find intimidating?

‘I was really surprised by Scolari,’ he says. ‘If you think a player is a problem, if you think they are not good for the team, you take them away. You are the boss after all. Well, I played every game and I always gave my best, for the team and for the coach. When Scolari arrived I had big respect for what he had done. He was a world champion with Brazil and he did good things with Portugal. But it didn’t work out for him at Chelsea.

‘I will never do things for myself. For me the club and the team come first. Petr Cech is not important. I might be an important member of the team but compared to the club I am not important.’

And the dressing room? ‘If you are the manager it has to be a massive help that the dressing room is united,’ he says. ‘It’s a good working environment, easier to manage. The players should not be intimidating.

‘Yes, it’s a strong dressing room. We have a lot of experience and we have won things together. We have also had plenty of difficult moments and we have always managed to come through them as a group. We have had so many different managers but the strength of the team has remained and we have enjoyed great success.

‘You discover the character of the team in difficult moments. I think you have seen that character in the last couple of weeks. We have been through another tough period, and it’s not over yet. But I think we have found a way out. We are back on the right track.’

And with that Cech heads back to the driving range, to the nice chaps from TaylorMade he wants to fit him for a new set of golf clubs. You never know, they might even make him hit the ball more like Nick Faldo than Wayne Gretzky.