As a Chelsea fan, it’s a poignant thing to watch. Madrid, of course, remain the icon they always have been: a collection of insane individuals hysterically buying famous footballers in an ever more laughable attempt to reclaim a glory that was once genuinely theirs by right. Who among us hasn’t sneered at the comedic underachievement of the Kaka / Ronaldo / Benzema splurge last season? I’ve searched, but can’t seem to find a Spanish equivalent for schadenfreude. Ah well.

City, on the other hand, are closer to home, and their competent demolition of Liverpool last night – a Liverpool which seems to have declined in potency year on year since Benitez’ last Champions League final in 2007 – was an acute reminder of their potential to upset the cosy club at the top of the Premiership. The question which many seem to cling to is whether Roberto Mancini can keep his glittering squad motivated. Emmanuel Adebayor was an unused substitute last night. Mario Balotelli, presumably, didn’t move to Eastlands to play 10 games a season. And even though Craig Bellamy, arguably City’s most potent forward last season, has been elbowed aside to make room, City’s website still lists 6 strikers at the club.

More to the point, it marks an evolution in footballing terms that first really came to my attention when Chelsea signed Asier del Horno in 2005. Signed from Bilbao by José Mourinho, del Horno made 34 appearances in the 2005 – 6 title-winning season before being quietly sold to Valencia the following year. Ashley Cole, it seems, was the player José had wanted all along.

It’s easy to feel no sympathy for the modern top-flight footballer. Earning sums the likes of which many of us find virtually incomprehensible, lauded and lionised – and occasionally hounded – by tabloid and broadsheet alike, the idea that they might not feel entirely secure in their job would, in most of us, provoke a resounding “meh”. And yet, as we’re so often told, great football is almost as much about confidence as it is ability. How often do you hear that old chestnut “I’m enjoying my football again”? Players and coaches alike claim that the knowledge they are trusted, that they have the security to express themselves, is intrinsic to producing their best performances.

So how does that square with the absolute, unshakeable knowledge that the club can replace you, without fuss, sympathy, effort or remorse, on the basis of a so-so season?

Going back to del Horno, I wonder how many Chelsea fans raised an eyebrow at his summary dismissal. How many City fans, at that, mourn the departure of Bellamy? I don’t know and have never met the Welsh striker, although the prevailing opinion I’ve gathered over the years he’s been a professional is that he’s a mouthy, opinionated wart with all the charm of a surprise kick between the slats. Does Carlos Tevez look at the situation and think well, that’s interesting, he scored 9 goals in 19 starts last year, and they don’t want him? What if I go 8 games without scoring? Who’s being lined up?

Footballers will doubtless say that the competition inspires them; that it’s healthy to know people are lighting a fire under their backside and waiting for them to slip up. When you listen to this guff, ask yourself whether you’d feel comfortable if you showed up for work one day and were introduced to a younger, better-looking chap who, you’re told, could do exactly what you do and, should you fail to do what you’re currently doing, would be doing it instead of you.

Yes, yes, we tell ourselves, much of this is the nature of football. And it is, but when you’re operating without financial constraint, it takes it to a different level. When the atmosphere is one of total expendability – the ability to wipe any signing mistake out of existence with a stroke of the Mont Blanc Meisterstuck on the dotted line – can the squad ever truly relax?

Asier del Horno. Stephen Ireland. Shay Given. Craig Bellamy. Don’t feel sorry for this lot, with their munificent pay-offs. Feel concerned for the integrity of the group that’s left looking over their shoulders. Next up, it could be them.

It was with some dismay that I read the following quote in my newspaper some time ago: “The rules from Uefa on home-grown players and Fifa’s proposal for 6+5 puts a real onus on clubs to develop their own talent much more fully. With that comes a lot of benefits, and so we looked at our scouting programme to be more focused.”

These words, for those of you drawing a blank, are from Chelsea chief executive Peter Kenyon speaking at the International Football Arena conference in Zurich last year. They are, in part, a response to the news that Chelsea have drastically downsized – the management term seems rather apt – the scouting network acting under the auspices of the world’s most expensive talent-spotter, Frank Arnesen.

First things first. Arnesen, the subject of a rather grubby tug-of-love some years ago between Chelsea and Tottenham, is a figure of some controversy amongst the fans. There have been rumours that his growing influence with the owners was amongst the catalysts for the departure of José Mourinho from Stamford Bridge.

The only people upset by this, of course, were Chelsea fans and the media, but the mere suggestion carries with it all the negatives that our island race associates with the multi-tiered management structure of continental football. Moving on to his ability to do his job, you may well have heard his name (assuming you’re not a Chelsea fan) in connection with the original discovery , and signing to PSV Eindhoven, of Ronaldo Luiz Nazario de Lima. Or the “real” Ronaldo, if your frame of reference pre-dates the notorious Portuguese stripling playing for Manchester United… sorry, Madrid… no, no, I meant Manchester United all along, greatest club in the world, it’s a privilege, etc.

Thing is, since Frank has been at Chelsea, we’ve all been wondering where the next Ronaldo is coming from, and what time he might show up. Because Chelsea haven’t exactly risked it all when it’s come to promising youth. Investing a few years in Salomon Kalou, sure. But Ben Sahar, or indeed Sergio Tejera, or Miroslav Stoch, or even the oh-so-promising Scott Sinclair… well, they don’t exactly appear to have set the first team alight yet. And yes, they’re young, and time is on their side, and we can of course afford to buy ready-made first-teamers while we give them that time. But that sort of brings me back to my original point.

Peter Kenyon made his latest pronouncement in the context of a conference where the future of football, and particularly its financial future, is a huge talking point. In a way, his comments seem admirable. Which team wouldn’t like to find itself in a position where it’s churning out vast numbers of locally-grown, fully organic, farm-bred young players with the technical skills to match their enthusiasm and fire, all ready for the rigours of the top division or, if that is their lot, a lucrative sale to another club?

Let’s be honest… there are some teams doing it, and when they do, the truly promising ones are cherry-picked or thieved by other clubs (witness the uncomfortable war of words and wallets between Chelsea and Leeds over Tom Taiwo or, dare I say it, Arsenal’s snatch-and-grab of Francesc Fabregas a matter of weeks before he was eligible to sign professional terms with Barcelona).

But no title-challenging English team can sustain the ambition that Kenyon aspires to at this point in time. Manchester United achieve some of the English-foreign balance that Chelsea are lucky enough – or wealthy enough – to have, but Alex Ferguson has shown a recent penchant for high-profile raids on South American or Iberian youngsters like Nani and Anderson, a bargain at £30-odd million the pair.

Chelsea were aiming for the signature of Robinho before City discovered their oil well on the halfway line, which would surely have put an emphatic end to any chance Scott Sinclair ever had of starting a League game for Chelsea barring a glut of injuries.

The player that really inspired this article, though, is England U-21 centreback Michael Mancienne. I’m sure you’ve heard of him, what with his recent recognition by Fabio Capello in the senior England squad. If haven’t, ask a Wolves fan their opinion. The boy’s represented (and captained) England at every level from schoolboy onwards, and made a significant impact within a previously struggling Wolves defence when he spent the earlier part of the season on loan at Molyneux. But will we ever see him break into a Chelsea back line in which John Terry, Ricardo Carvalho, Alex and now Branislav Ivanovic all stand ahead of him? The lad himself hopes so:

“I think there is still hope for me at Chelsea – I’ve been on the bench a few times but not on the pitch yet. I’ve got top quality centre-halves in front of me (at Chelsea) so it’s a hard decision. I’ve got to see what happens and take things as they come really.”

Staunch words from a really promising talent. It would be a pleasure to think that the club could accommodate his ambitions. Perhaps, given the increasingly crunchy state of the economy, we might find that making the most of the talent we have – and not hankering after the talent we can buy – is about to become the norm. And then the pronouncements we hear from the senior figures in football (and please believe, Mr Kenyon, that I’m not sticking the boot in… I’m just struggling between a cynical disposition and a romantic temperament) might have the satisfying ring of truth.

In the second most tedious transfer kerfuffle of the summer, we hear this morning that John Terry feels “unwanted, and even betrayed”.

“It’s unbelievable – even though he’s the club captain and one of the Blues’ most important players, senior management at the club haven’t once tried to talk to him.” So says that most spineless of journalistic gambits, the unnamed “source close to the player”. There was a time, once, when unnamed sources were anathema to serious newspapers. In fact, for any of you that have enjoyed the 5th series of David Simon’s outstanding The Wire, this issue will be a familiar one.

So yes, this is the story that Manchester City have probably made a reasonably large offer for Chelsea and England captain John Terry, that Chelsea instantly made a point of rejecting said offer out of hand, that City may well come back with a larger offer in the near future, that that offer will – again, probably, instantly – be rejected out of hand as well, and that JT will almost certainly begin next season as a Chelsea player. Let’s be honest… if he really wants to go – and I couldn’t really blame him if City are offering to double an already quite immoderate salary – he’s going to have to hand in a transfer request. It’s the only way Chelsea can come out of it with their heads held high, at least from a fans’ point of view.

Betrayed? Unwanted? Supposing it is all true, what exactly is the big number 26 after? Do Teflon Pete Kenyon’s pronouncements not hold water for JT? Is he, perchance, remembering any votes of confidence in managers past? Or is he just a needy fellow? Someone’s offered you £300k a week, John. Let me be the first to extend the offer of a big hug.

Now, just suppose that it’s all true. That the captain and legend is seriously weighing up the investment opportunities open to a man who earns £10million or so a year. Feeling “betrayed” could be very much a precursor to manoeuvring one’s self out of the door. I can hear it now. Chelsea never made me feel as though they really wanted me. No, I don’t think £130k a week qualifies as wanting. It’s not about the money, it’s about the cuddles.

Alright, so it’s silly season. I don’t really think any of this is true. Terry upset that the club hasn’t contacted him? Contact them, then… I’m sure you can cover the cost of an overseas call. And don’t tell me you don’t have Roman’s number in your phone. Well, one of them, anyway. The encrypted one, perhaps, straight to the red telephone with the white cat sitting next to it.

Still, on a day in which Martin Samuel had a longish comment piece printed in the Mail in which he gets stuck into Barcelona as the preening, holier-than-thou stuffed shirts of European football, it’s also worth pointing out that M. Wenger can do a pretty decent job of mimicking the blaugrana’s tune. Why don’t teams play the way we want them to play? It doesn’t seem fair. We spend months developing our pretty, intricate little triangles. But do you stand around admiring them, as is your duty and our god-given right? Do you make the effort to stand stock-still in the centre circle to let us bamboozle you with our brilliance? Do you balls.

Now, Arsene didn’t tread that particular ground this week, but as I watched Arsenal play Chelsea on Sunday, I couldn’t help thinking that Barcelona were the perfect way to prepare for this encounter. Arsenal are a sort of Barca-lite: they have the neat interplay, the studied possession style, the patience to wait until the right opportunity presents itself. What they don’t have is a single player comparable to Messi, or even Henry, so it should have come as a surprise to precisely no one that a Hiddink-organised Chelsea were able to resist their attacks until the game was more or less beyond doubt.

Back to Arsene. Today it’s Drogba, a man who is certainly divisive in terms of how people see his performances. Rehashing all that’s been said about the big man would takes ages, so let’s take all that as read and move on to the actual quote.

“We live in a league now where the divers are rewarded. It’s not right but it is like that.”

Well, yes, except that’s not strictly true, is it? After all, I only saw one flagrant dive in the whole game and, while that did come from an African striker, he was wearing the red and white of Arsenal. And Adebayor was pretty lucky not to have been booked for it. I know plenty of Arsenal fans who are sick of their lanky Togolese, who still seems convinced that the one decent season he put in for Arsenal somehow entitles him to a squillion pounds a week. I’ve also heard them compare him to Drogba, which does strike me as a little far-fetched. If Drogba dives, you know about it. He rolls. He moans. He waves his arms around, sometimes has to be carried off, and limps back on with an agonised expression on his features, only to break into an astonishing sprint to chest yet another 60-yard pass down and lay it off to a midfielder.

Adebayor, by contrast, sits around for a bit and then smilingly lopes off, presumably with one eye on that nice apartment near the Duomo and a guide to Milan’s 3-star restaurants in his back pocket.

There are those who say that this will be Drogba’s last season in England, or at least at Chelsea. Mind you, they said that last year. If it turns out to be true, though, you opposition fans are going to miss him. The papers are going to miss him. You can laugh at pantomime villains like Paul Dickov or Robbie Savage because, when it comes right down to it, they’re crap. Drogba, on the other hand, can take on most of a back four on his own, and come out with the ball, and shoot from 30 yards, and score headers and tap-ins, and do all of it on a pretty consistent basis. Like him or not, his passing will deprive the English game of one of the rarest things in the world: a true target man with touch, power and finishing. At the moment, I can’t think of another one in Europe who really compares to him. If you can, I’d like to hear about it.

Ouch. No bitterness there, then.

Sam was a product of the Atalanta youth system – one of several players that Chelsea signed from the Italian club in the Vialli – Ranieri years. He was the only one to make a real impact, scoring 6 goals in 73 appearances for the Blues. The one I’m sure we all remember was the spectacular 30-yarder against Ipswich, deciding a humdrum game that had threatened to descend into a stalemate. For that alone, we salute him. But, despite a strong season in 2001-02, interest from Milan was too much of a temptation. Despite a fiercely competitive midfield at the rossonieri, Sam left to test his mettle amongst Serie A’s finest. We’d love to say that this was a fairytale return to Italy for a young man who had captained his country at every level up to Under-21. Sadly, it wasn’t the case. Sam was unable to make an impact on a team featuring the young Pirlo and Gattuso, and with the experience of Seedorf. A miserable season with only 10 appearances, 6 from the bench, culminated in a loan move to Bologna and then sale to Lecce, followed by a further move to Sampdoria last July. He’s been an intermittent feature of the Sampdoria team, with 14 starts in Serie A and a further 4 in the Coppa Italia. Not quite the promised land he might have hoped for.

Just thinking about Sam takes me back to an era that, in these heady days of unlimited expenditure and back-toback titles, already seems a long way off. Remember the frightening season that Eidur and Jimmy had together? Remember Stanic and Petit? And this was less than 5 years ago. What a difference a new owner makes.

Sam first scored for the Blues at Everton in November 2000, with what was to become a trademark fizzer from outside the penalty area. I’m surprised more comparison hasn’t been made with Frank Lampard in recent years: both have a laconic, loping sort of stride on the pitch, and both favour hitting the ball from long range. Fortunately for us, Lampard’s much less likely to go missing when things are tough on the pitch. Sam’s relaxed approach could frustrate. Perhaps it shouldn’t have surprised us: he learned his trade in the slower Italian game. I thought him symptomatic of the attitude under Luca, and carried over into Claudio’s time. We were a cup team – ironically, the very mentality that seems to elude us now – and Sam a cup player: elegant, capable of moments of real class, but ultimately not a title challenger. That’s not to say that we had no affection for him: there are many who still hanker after those days. The sort of side that could thump United one week, and be ground down and beaten by Sunderland the next. Thinking back to the perverse glamour and the inimitable charm of the great Vialli, it’s easy to feel nostalgic.

There’s much to admire in Michel Platini’s recent – and clearly heartfelt – appeal to the European Parliament. For those that haven’t had time to look over it, the two issues that stuck out for me were:
A ban on international transfers of players under the age of 18.

An exemption from European competition law for football clubs, effectively allowing the long-mooted idea of salary and transfer fee caps to be implemented.

Now, the former seems to me to be fair enough. There have been a number of harrumphs on the subject of large clubs trying to ring-fence promising young players. Current European law, as I understand it, defines a “child” (in a working context) as someone under the age of 16. Platini, however, rightly points out that in many European countries the school-leaving age has been raised to 18. And, from a purely common sense point of view, you must remember the maturity and eye for your own future that you had when you were 17.

Blinding a fledgling superstar and his family with the offer of a nice 4-bedroom in Surrey or Warrington so you can fast-track him into the reserves… well, it isn’t a very pleasant idea at the best of times. Asking him to travel a thousand miles to do so, uprooting him from his culture and his language at arguably the most impressionable time of his life, is even more repellent. I’m not saying the idea is a no-brainer, but I’m sure most of us can agree that there’s plenty of merit to it. One to watch.

But…. da da daaaaaaa… cometh the salary cap issue once more. On the face of it, this one has got to please Real Madrid more than anyone. After all, when they finally get their hands on a certain gel-slathered Madeiran winger, it might mean them paying rather less than they were resigning themselves to.

In fact, Platini had his broadside aimed at a rather more predictable target: Manchester City. Using City’s abortive bids for Kaka, John Terry and Thierry Henry as ammunition, the UEFA president laid out his vision for establishing what he referred to as “financial fair play”. And I’m sure that you can imagine the rest for yourselves.

If I’m honest, the first analogy that sprang to mind was to compare City to those twin emergent economic powerhouses India and China.

See, for decades us in western democracies have enjoyed the fossil-fuelled fruits of our relative affluence. Two cars per family. Unlimited electronic gadgetry. Homes heated to sub-tropical temperatures. Plastic carrier bags hanging from every tree. And, just as India and China come charging up the world economic rankings to make their bid for membership of the ‘Mercedes For Every Citizen’ club, we turn round and start finger-wagging. “What of the environment?” we admonish. “Is it sustainable? Think of the future.” 

Bollocks, thinks middle-class India. I’ve waited through the East India Company, the Raj, Gandhi, and decades of posturing with Pakistan over Kashmir, and now I want a 5-litre muscle car that gets 2 miles to the gallon and seats one spindly teenager.

India, of course I exaggerate. Accept my apologies. But you get my point: through an accident of timing and the increasingly strident voice of the environmentalism movement, these energetic economies (well, pre-credit catastrophe) have the eyes of the world upon them. Conspicuous consumption is out. The new frugalism is in.

So spare a thought for City, who struck oil on the halfway line and are now being told that they’re only allowed to use it on their door hinges.

To give us a little context, I’ve been looking at the ever-enlightening transferleague.co.uk and Endless Soccer’s run-down of the most expensive transfers of all time. And I’ll make my confession right from the start: I was out to get Real Madrid. Circus though Chelsea may be at the moment, even with Captain Hiddink in to steady the ship, we’re but an amuse-bouche to Madrid’s 18-course banquet with 14 cases of Lafitte 1787. Two most expensive transfers of all time? Zidane and Figo to Madrid, for a combined total of £81m. That was in successive seasons, by the way. Not to mention Ronaldo (£29m), Beckham (£25m) and Anelka (£23m). 5 out of the top 15. If you’re interested, United feature twice with Ferdinand and Veron, and Chelsea a wallet-pinching once with Drogba. Having said that, the list looks not to go past 2005, as I’m sure we paid a fair few nicker for Essien and got paid in the same region for Robben. Who went to Madrid.

Obviously if you confine your search to England over the last ten years, Chelsea’s spectacular spending tops the League. In the five years to 2009, CFC spent £221m and recouped just £90m, with a net outlay of £26m per season. Liverpool come a close second, at £24m per season, with United less than a million behind on £23m plus change. Remember, this is transfers only, kids. None of these figures include wage bills or, say, investment in the club’s infrastructure. And rightly so, given the longer-term benefits of, say, building a swanky new training ground in Surrey.

I’m finally getting to the point. Admittedly, there was something distasteful about City waving that £90m at Milan. It’s a nonsensical figure, as even the player himself could admit. By the same token, even Frank Lampard’s most fervent admirers – and I’m happy to say that I number among them – might be forgiven for asking what anyone could do that is worth £140,000 a week. Ditto Ronaldo. Or Kaka. Or Ronaldinho. Or any one of a number of other players. To say that you don’t like Lampard, or Ronaldo, or any player, is to miss the point. I don’t blame these guys for taking the money. I don’t really blame the clubs for paying it to them, insane as it might seem. It’s the situation we, as the current economic centre of the football-watching world, find ourselves in.

So the point is… what’s changed, beyond one club being given sums measureless to man? It didn’t have to be City… it could have been Spurs. Or Sevilla. Or Kaiserslautern. It has been, and will continue to be, Madrid, Milan and Manchester United. I might have missed his diatribe at the time, but I don’t seem to remember Platini registering his distaste when Madrid paid his alma mater £40-odd million for Zizou. Again, for those that say well, United earned that money through merchandising and sponsorship… well, this is true.  They earned the money rather than being given it through someone’s munificence. Does that really, honestly make the difference? If we lament the predictability of a League which has had 3 winners in the last 13 years, are we comfortable whining about that for the next 5 decades? The last Chelsea post on here attracted a long comment from a United fan who gave Chelsea’s owner a kicking for his investment – alright, I see your point – then mocked the club’s plans to become self-financing in the following sentence. But isn’t that the whole point? United are, after all, in nearly as much debt as Chelsea are. Shouldn’t clubs aim to finance themselves rather than operate permanently in the red?

Believe it or not, I’m broadly in favour of the capping issue. Implementing the bugger, of course, will pose rather more of a problem than making an impassioned plea to the European Parliament, particularly as the current system plays to the strengths of all the clubs sitting comfortably in football’s top trough. If you cap player expenditure, where does your excess money go? Grassroots football? Straight to charity? Cut-price season tickets? A fund to lobby the government to bring back the stocks as a form of punishment specifically for Robbie Savage? 

Platini has attracted criticism over here for his vilification of the excesses of English football. I’ve seen plenty of text-language emails on forums like Football365, for example, accusing him of hating the English and wanting to curb the movement of money to stop English clubs from dominating the Champions League. Personally, I have sympathy for what the man is trying to do.

This country has been monopolised, since the mid-nineties, by one club, with occasional sparks of rebellion from Arsenal and Chelsea. Chelsea’s two years of dominance were marked by the only sustained occasion in which they outspent United. Liverpool, by contrast, seem to have spent poorly. Perhaps their outlay will get them the League this year. Perhaps not.

If the modern footballing era has been defined by Biggest Wallet = Winner, maybe we shouldn’t be so quick to mock and harangue Platini for attempting to change things. Maybe it’s worth us thinking about his ideas: ideas that could reinvigorate the national youth set-up, for example, by forcing teams to train and develop their youth teams to keep their transfer expenditure down. If that’s the kind of aspiration the man has, I think that’s worth everyone’s support. Even if it does mean classic spectacles like last year’s all-English Battle of the Budgets Champions League final becoming a thing of the past.ni has attracted criticism over here for his vilification of the excesses of English football. I’ve seen plenty of text-language emails on forums like Football365, for example, accusing him of hating the English and wanting to curb the movement of money to stop English clubs from dominating the Champions League. Personally, I have sympathy for what the man is trying to do.

This country has been monopolised, since the mid-nineties, by one club, with occasional sparks of rebellion from Arsenal and Chelsea. Chelsea’s two years of dominance were marked by the only sustained occasion in which they outspent United. Liverpool, by contrast, seem to have spent poorly. Perhaps their outlay will get them the League this year. Perhaps not.

If the modern footballing era has been defined by Biggest Wallet = Winner, maybe we shouldn’t be so quick to mock and harangue Platini for attempting to change things. Maybe it’s worth us thinking about his ideas: ideas that could reinvigorate the national youth set-up, for example, by forcing teams to train and develop their youth teams to keep their transfer expenditure down. If that’s the kind of aspiration the man has, I think that’s worth everyone’s support. Even if it does mean classic spectacles like last year’s all-English Battle of the Budgets Champions League final becoming a thing of the past.

The single most worrying thing about the recent decline of the team’s fortunes has been the cohesion of the team. On a previous Chelsea post, someone left a comment in which they suggested that a team ethic – a group dynamic, as a business consultant might put it – was essential to success, and that Chelsea’s short-termism was responsible for that lack of ethos and spirit.

Er… exsqueeze me? Lack of team ethic? This is the team that won consecutive titles off the back of a management blueprint for togetherness. United may be grinding out the close games now, but the relentless charge of Chelsea’s 2005 League title was built on virtual impregnability. Athleticism obviously, but the mental toughness and the confidence that Mourinho engendered – keep going, keep doing what I tell you, and we’ll win – is probably unmatched in recent memory. 97 points tells its own story.

Anyway, that’s clearly a distant memory. The captain spilled the beans yesterday in one of the oddest statements I’ve ever heard a club captain make.

“He had my support that’s for sure, and two or three other players will say exactly the same thing, I’m sure.”

Let’s just say that again, shall we? Two or three other players, out of a squad of 26, supported the manager. If this was a political party, you’d be out of the Commons and onto the board of an armaments company before your red box hit the floor.

So who are the fiends in human shape plotting the downfall of the Chelsea project? A quick hunt online reveals 3 names. Michael Ballack, Didier Drogba and Per Cech: the Mammon, Belial and Moloch of SW6. And yes, you did read that right. One of those names was Petr Cech.

Say it ain’t so, Petr. After all, the other two practically have ‘trouble’ written all over them. Of Drogba so much has been written, both in vilification and in his defence, that I can hardly bring myself to regurgitate it all here. Suffice is to say that for many, he’s one of the archetypes of what’s wrong with 21^st century football. As for Ballack, there’s absolutely something of l’étranger about him. I can’t imagine him joining in with team-building Playstation sessions or, indeed, taking kindly to an amusing snowball in the mush.

But Petr Cech? Surely not. He’s the nice quiet lad at the back, no? Smiles a lot. Softly-spoken. I haven’t met the chap myself, but a friend of CFCnet managed to get an interview with him a couple of years ago and couldn’t say enough nice things about him. The giant Czech as co-conspirator? I just can’t see it. Maybe he’s been corrupted. Maybe he was feeling down – scratch on the alloys of his new Range Rover Sport, or something – and Ballack’s intrigues ensnared him while his guard was down. A bit like Johnny Ola and Fredo Corleone, but with shin-pads. My advice to you, Petr, is to avoid rowing boats for the foreseeable future.

Nothing. Not a bean. Looks like I’ll be getting my retaliation in first, then.

First things first. Chelsea were awful. And by ‘awful’, I mean ‘devoid of ideas’, ‘fractured and incoherent’, and ‘offering all the attacking depth of the Women’s Auxiliary Balloon Corps’. Mikel looked lost and harried in a log-jammed midfield. Lampard showed few moments of virtuosity, a flick or two aside, before his harsh sending off. The best we can say of the team is that, had Mike Riley not decided to go for the headlines, we would probably have hung on for a goalless draw. How are the mighty fallen.

What to do with this team, assembled so expensively and now with what looks to be three successive seasons of underachievement to deal with? Nothing is over yet, of course, and the League has a long way to run. Even so, Scolari’s record against the teams adjudged to be title challengers is dismal. There is no consistency in defence, with Carvalho or Terry usually injured and the Brazilian manager’s favoured option for width – attacking fullbacks – leaving us exposed time and again when we meet experienced opposition. Claudio Ranieri must be chuckling into his limoncello in anticipation of Juventus’ visit at the end of the month. I don’t suppose someone could slip a Mickey Finn into Del Piero’s Horlicks, could they?

There was an almost audible sigh of relief as José Mourinho kindly donated the out-of-favour Ricardo Quaresma to us as the transfer window juddered to its usual panicky close. On current form it’s an Elastoplast on a gaping shotgun wound to the head, given our lack of invention in the final third last Sunday. If Roman remains as committed as ever – and I note that several newspapers have been at pains to point out that this is the case, doubtless aware of the writ the club has served on an organ not a million miles away from this very website – then some serious thinking needs to be done between now and the beginning of the next transfer opportunity over the summer. The futures of Malouda, Drogba and Deco must surely be called into question. Michael Ballack’s intermittent form is also cause for concern. I’ve used the Elastoplast analogy already, so I’ll have to think of something else to describe Salomon Kalou’s recent goalscoring exploits. The boy has got us out of jail more than once in recent weeks, but that shouldn’t hide his all-too-common on-field demeanour: that of a quick and tricky goalscoring forward who seems, usually, to be neither quick enough nor tricky enough to score many goals.

And therein lies the real problem. Restocking defenders rarely seems to be as much trouble as freshening up an attacking line-up. Predators and creators are, rightly, the most coveted and expensive of employees. Buying in players of the very highest quality – the Messis, the Benzemas – costs lots and lots of someone’s money. If we believe what we’re told, that money won’t be coming from Roman. And, with the club stretching every sinew to break even, the money from a (hopefully) renewed and improved Samsung deal won’t go very far. New stadium? Maybe, maybe not. Merchandising? No good unless we’re winning, surely.

I’ve wittered on about this before, but there is an opportunity for the club to make some serious decisions about where it is going. The dwindling influence of Frank Arnesen is testament to the Dane’s failure to indentify the searing prospects that his CV led us to expect. The culling of a large number of his scouts points to a loss of interest in the Europe-wide identification of promising youth. Perhaps there is already a plan in place to concentrate efforts on a specific region. Chelsea have, under Roman, attempted to tap into English talent, but names like Tom Taiwo, Michael Woods and even Scott Sinclair have not featured on our radar for some time.

I don’t mean, necessarily, that we should avoid spending to spite ourselves. Arsene Wenger has illustrated, rather elegantly, that that’s a one-way ticket to battling for fifth. But the points above are a reasonable argument for describing ourselves as a club in transition… or perhaps a club at a crossroads. Which way does Roman see us turning? What vision does he have of the next 5… or 10, or 20 years?

Enquiring minds want to know.

No, this is not the precursor to a sneering 500 words about how Chelsea didn’t have quite the same problems persuading, say, Hernan Crespo to come to Stamford Bridge. After all, Kaka is in quite a different league to Crespo, despite the latter’s place at the top table of accumulated transfer fees. Then again, Kaka is in a different league to just about everyone.

It is now clear that Garry Cook and his team were in negotiations with Milan for some time. Take your pick of the various reports quoting the actual figure involved. My newspaper says £108 million. Yours probably says something quite different. I’ve seen £91m, £243m, and several figures in between. Let’s try and nail it down by calling it “quite a lot”.

Of course, Kaka could never lose this one. Go to Manchester, play for two years and buy Barbados with the proceeds, or stay, get to kiss the badge for years and (on the occasion of his retirement) never have to buy a drink for himself in Milan. Ever.  Like I said: no-lose.

The obvious difference between City’s situation and that of Chelsea? The starting point, of course. A team containing Lampard, Gudjohnsen, Zola, Terry and Desailly is a slightly easier sell to a prospective superstar than a team whose most consistent performer in recent years has been either Richard Dunne or Stephen Ireland. All of this is clear. And yet a combination of premature ejaculation at Chelsea board level and a slightly thicker wedge of notes in City’s top pocket led to the arrival of Robinho. Not, quite, at the very top table of European football, but certainly standing ominously behind one of the chairs and eyeing it up for comfort.

The question for City has to be: could this renaissance be over before it’s really begun?

Allow me to throw you a brief analogy. You’re in a grubby nightclub. You’ve been eyeing up the least grimy-looking lass in there for the past hour or two. You’ve finally sunk enough WKD and Aftershock to summon up the mental strength to go over and try your best lines. And then you have a glass of Malibu and pineapple unceremoniously dumped all over your new Stone Island shirt. All the other grimy lasses look on.

What do you suppose your chances will be with any of them? What, do you think, does the unmistakeable scent of eau de rejection add to your mojo? I don’t really need to spell it out for you, do I?

Not that Mr Cook has exactly endeared himself to the market by his subsequent and in no way bitter comments.

“We had entered into a confidentiality agreement weeks ago but, in my personal opinion, they [Milan] bottled it. We had gone through a three or four-stage process in which Milan made it quite clear Kaka was for sale and we made it clear we intended to bring him to Manchester City. As we got to the next stage there were questions they could not answer and I think the political and public pressure made them change their conditions.”

Personally, I struggle a little with the idea that there was some vast conspiracy to deny City the player that should rightfully have been theirs. Public pressure? Obviously. Kaka is Milan’s outstanding player: a reasonably youthful man of sublime talent playing at a club where – excuse me, City fans – history demands a certain dignity. Don’t jump all over me for that – I’m well aware of the shortcomings my own club faces when it comes to talking about history (although, having said that, there’ll always be a Scouser or 10 queuing up to say it again).

The point is that 6 times European Cup winners aren’t supposed to sell their talismans. You might as well have tried to prise Messi and Krkic from Barca, or Casillas from Madrid, or even Rooney and the shiny Madeiran from over the road. They may need the money, but do they need it THAT badly? Obviously not.

Throughout all of this, Mark Hughes remains a bit-part figure: submitting his modest and perfectly sensible targets to his Dubai employers and watching as “Bellamy” and “De Jong” are shunted to the bottom of the list, and “Kaka” (and, possibly, the genetically-engineered clone of a 24-year-old Gerd Mueller) are pushed in above them. How do you discipline your players when they, like everyone else, know damn well that you’re even more expendable than they are? What do you say to Robinho when he flounces out of your winter training camp when you’re all too aware that the owners bust a gut to get him, but could replace you in a week?

I have immense sympathy for a man who, although he’ll always be a United player to me, did a fantastic job for Chelsea in his time at the Bridge and who I rate very highly as a manager and a motivator. If he is feeling a little disillusioned as the days of the transfer window drag on to their mucky conclusion, may I recommend a chat with one of the few managers in the world who might be able to sympathise?  As far as I can remember, his English is terrible, but he’s a bloody nice bloke.

Give Claudio Ranieri a call. When it comes to being dignified in the face of owner power, he wrote the book.

Apologies for the huge, quasi-metaphysical introduction to what will doubtless be a terribly banal bit of football frippery, but I was inspired by a comment left on the last Chelsea article. Sadly, I’m locked out of the comments section at the moment so none of them are published. You’ll have to take my word for it.

If you missed the last piece, it had to do with that enigma wrapped in a mystery wrapped in a short-arsed deep-lying forward: Joe Cole. Hugely popular with Chelsea fans… well, popular with everyone, if we’re honest. He’s one of the very few Chelsea players that it’s acceptable for non-Chelsea fans to like.

The comment, left by a chap calling himself Brian, ran thusly:

“Joe Cole is a player that needs to be kept on his toes all the time to get the best out of him”.

Now, this piece appeared on the Times web site,  so I’m assuming that most of the readers will have gone beyond the stage at which they think, with the right breaks and a decent spell of fitness, they could do a decent job in midfield for, say, Brentford or Leyton Orient. We’re all adults. We’re well aware of the freakish levels of fitness and athleticism required at the top level (Mark Viduka and John Hartson notwithstanding). But if you’re a football fan you must have yearned, nay, burned to play. Give me a fulcrum and a number 8 shirt and I’ll move the world. Why on earth would I need to be motivated, cajoled, hassled and harried to play football AND be paid thousands of pounds a day to do so?

This is a question shouted on many, many occasions at top-flight matches up and down the country, although I’m willing to admit that the precise phrasing can vary. Sometimes the player’s style does him no favours. Ballack certainly had that problem at Chelsea, and I believe Berbatov is suffering a similar reaction at Old Trafford. Languid, graceful players can conceivably be seen as lazy simply because they don’t tear around the pitch like Wayne Rooney chasing a Spandex-clad Thora Hird. It’s probably why the Chelsea fans never really turned on Shevchenko. Awful, awful mess of a one-time genius though the man was, he tried and he tried. 10 out of 10 for effort, and a hundred-odd grand a week. For that money, I’d have undergone extensive facial reconstructive surgery and gone on the pitch in his place. I wouldn’t have been any worse, he could have worked on his handicap, and there’s always the outside chance I could have fiddled a cheeky knee-trembler with that model wife of his (“Andriy, I’m so impressed with your English all of a sudden… oh, and a new tattoo… darling how nice etc”).

Back to the comment on the blog. Because it doesn’t end with Joe Cole. Brian mentions three Chelsea players that, in his opinion, don’t require a regular kick up the passage. Just three, sadly, and you can probably guess two of them. To add to Captain JT26 and Super Frank Lampard, Brian gives us Petr Cech. Whilst I agree that the lanky fella is a great professional and seems an admirably nice young man whenever I see him interviewed, there aren’t many occasions when you’d be able to barrack a goalie for not trying. You can’t exactly shout abuse at him for not jogging up and down on the spot enough when the ball’s in the other half, can you?

So. Three men, out of a squad of, what, 23 or so? Three people who get up every morning and want to do nothing other than play football. Maybe it is just another job after all. Maybe my romantic notions are nonsense, and when Deco gets out of his Aston Martin 177 and brushes the lint off his baby sealskin slacks, all he can think is “Christ, not another 5-hour day kicking an inflated plasto-leather sphere up and down a grass field”. Perhaps Salomon Kalou, in between slices of swan pate, suddenly throws down his platinum cutlery, irritably shrugs the model out of his lap, slumps onto the Philippe Starck-designed dinner table and starts weeping uncontrollably, overcome by the sheer pointlessness of it all.

Personally, I think Brian’s being a little harsh. I think Chelsea are blessed with some superlatively strong characters, and they’ve got us through some tough times. In the last couple of years, the club has struggled for direction and purpose without the brilliant, infuriating, mercurial man that used to manage it. Much as we owe the owner for his munificence and enthusiasm, he gives the fan nothing to latch onto. After 5 and a half years, we still don’t really know who he is. When Chelsea have come under the pressure engendered by the success of 2004 through to 2006, players like Ricardo Carvalho, Michael Essien, the great Claude Makelele, Paulo Ferreira and, more recently, Ashley Cole and Jose Bosingwa have been there to set examples too.

I’m not denigrating the captain’s or vice-captain’s roles. Things would be that much harder without them. I think the spine of the team is larger – and stronger – than Brian and those that agree with him would have us believe. But there is absolutely no doubt that the current squad has, within, an element with a questionable work ethic. Every company, every business – every organisation where the whole is dependent on the efforts of a disparate group of individuals – has these problems. The nature of people is that some need to be micro-managed. Some can get up every day and find it within themselves to get on with it; and to the best of their ability, without the coaching equivalent of Full Metal Jacket’s Gunnery Sergeant Hartman screaming into their lughole.

Over the next 5 months, we’ll really find out who’s who. And with the League running as tightly at the top as it is, the prizes for being able to motivate yourself are as high as it’s going to get, gentlemen.

Who’s ready to step up?