What are Chelsea doing in the transfer market? Nothing seems to be the answer. There I sat, Monday morning listening to the usual garbage from tabloid men of Britain in the latest Sunday Supplement podcast. Very rare that the podcast manages to grab my attention, but this week it did. Rob Beasley, amongst all the other crap, managed to hit the right note.
When Abramovich arrived we spent big, and it worked. Nothing’s wrong with that. If you want to catch up with the big boys, you need to spend big, this league is yet to show otherwise. What we haven’t done though, is maintain the spending, not the stratospheric spending, but replacing one or two players with players of similar quality. This season is proof of that, Deco and Ballack, players of massive quality have gone and what did we get? Ramires and Benayoun. Whether you like the players or not, there is no question they are nowhere near of the same quality.
What good clubs do, is sell. They know the perfect time to sell the players. Man Utd and Fergie have done that in the past, Beckham, Van Nistelrooy, Keane – they’ve all been sold just before their sell-by-date. Barcelona have done it as well, selling Ronaldinho, Deco. Chelsea however always fail to sell at the right time. Bayern Munich were keen on Bosingwa a season ago, were willing to splash out. We didn’t sell and now his contract is running out and he is worth nothing. Joe Cole, now don’t get me wrong, he was no longer good enough to represent us, but we lost out on resale value of about £10 million at least.
So we’re left with an egg on our face. A small squad with a few ageing stars, untested youngsters and a load of rubbish in between. People, who have no clue about running a football club, are making football decisions. Chelsea were offered van der Vaart for £10 million in the summer, well before Spurs signed him, yet we politely declined and instead spent £24 million on Benayoun and Ramires. Ramires may well turn out to be a decent acquisition yet, although it’s hard to see what role he plays on the football pitch. But you have to question what ‘wise man’ turned down van der Vaart for £10 mil, and then sanctioned a move to spend £18 million on Ramires. Sure seems like it wasn’t Ancelotti.
I keep being asked who Chelsea are after in this transfer window, a new centre back it seems – the one position that doesn’t need strengthening, in my opinion. The situation will become clearer after we get an update on Alex’s fitness.
Follow Danny on Twitter – @DannyTheJourno
There’s a severe shortage of attacking midfielders in Chelsea and that’s what caused this whole slump.
Ramires is yet to shine, Mikel is a midfielder with less goals than Brad Friedel, Essien is plagued with injuries and the three of them are not attacking midfielders. And then there’s Benayoun, who 30 year old, supersub from the 7th best team in the country. And he got injured.
Which leaves only Lampard. It’s stupid to think that one man would never get injured and have no back up for that position. Well, Lampard got injured and he will never fully recover from his injury.
Chelsea made no interest in buying any attacking midfielders, presumably in the false hope that Lamps would never get injured or drop in quality. With VDV, Chelsea would be first with 12 points to spare. Then there was Ozil, also available in the summer… and even before that. I don’t know what the Chelsea scouts are doing or who makes the decisions on transfers, but this is world class bad.
Its hard to understand as a Chelsea supporter and after the clubs most successful season ever. Why did we let players leave without replacing them? Surely after last season Abramovich must have known it was time to spend again to push for his ultimate goal the Champions league. Surely Ancelotti must have raised concerns about the squad shrinking and the next generation either not good enough or lacking experience. The fact that we have had a few injuries and illness proves this point. The squad this season is quite simply too small and too old. Chelsea’s currant group of players are the most successful in the clubs history. If we don’t spend money now and again in the summer they will remain that. Yep I have to agree with everything written above. The time has come to start rebuilding the team and Mr Abramovich that means spending big again and spending soon. If not I fear we will not be seriously competing for major trophies again for a very long time if indeed ever. We’re told there is money available but so far just rumours and no genuine bids it seems.
I agree with Danny too. Every successful team spends money Barcelona, Madrid, Man United and the Milan clubs… Let’s not forget that these are all teams with established success over a long period of time and all boast large stadia, so what makes us think we can compete without investment?