{"id":291503,"date":"2023-09-21T19:35:24","date_gmt":"2023-09-21T19:35:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tellmysport.com\/?p=291503"},"modified":"2023-09-21T19:35:24","modified_gmt":"2023-09-21T19:35:24","slug":"man-city-have-cracked-the-code-chelsea-are-throwing-darts-in-the-dark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tellmysport.com\/soccer\/man-city-have-cracked-the-code-chelsea-are-throwing-darts-in-the-dark\/","title":{"rendered":"Man City have cracked the code, Chelsea are throwing darts in the dark"},"content":{"rendered":"
When Roman Abramovich paid \u00a3140m to buy Chelsea in the late spring of 2003, Manchester City had just played their last ever game at Maine Road. They lost 1-0 at home to Southampton and literally sold the door to Kevin Keegan\u2019s office for \u00a370 and seats for \u00a312 a pop.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s fair to say, then, that Chelsea\u2019s Premier League money arrived a good while before City\u2019s did. While Peter Kenyon \u2013 briefly employed by Chelsea as chief executive \u2013 was promising to \u2018turn the world blue\u2019 City did not even wear the most prominent colour in their own town. Abramovich\u2019s cash had swept Chelsea to two league titles and a couple of League Cups by the time Abu Dhabi petro dollars washed up at City\u2019s door in August 2008.<\/p>\n
So it\u2019s worth asking now just how a club with such a head start on the one that is now Europe\u2019s dominant force has managed to fall so far behind.<\/p>\n
Abramovich, of course, forms a huge part of the answer himself. The Russian\u2019s billions gave Chelsea success, glamour, silverware and eventually a bulging academy. It gave Chelsea and the Premier League its first glimpse of the magnetically brilliant Jose Mourinho. Seventeen significant trophies in 19 fascinating years. It was some journey.<\/p>\n
But at the same time Abramovich never gave his club any of what City now have. His formula for football had plenty of goals and glory. But it never had enough of the boring, prosaic stuff like strategy, planning or future proofing. No, it never had any of that while City \u2013 after an uncertain start \u2013 have become slaves to it.<\/p>\n
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Roman Abramovich’s billions gave Chelsea 17 major trophies in a 19-year period<\/p>\n
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Chelsea won trophies under multiple coaches but the\u00a0Abramovich era lacked future proofing<\/p>\n
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Man City’s funding has been used to create a sustainable football plan around Pep Guardiola<\/p>\n
Your browser does not support iframes.<\/p>\n
So while Chelsea went from manager to manager and bounced up and down the Premier League from first to nowhere and back again, their emerging rivals in the north-west built one of the most enduring and sustainable football operations in the world.<\/p>\n
The Premier League and its investigation into City\u2019s funding may one day have something to say about all this. But for now we can only look at someone like the new wide player Jeremy Doku and accept that Pep Guardiola and his friends at executive level have cracked the code.<\/p>\n
Doku, 21, is a Belgian forward signed from Rennes a week before the end of the transfer window. There was not an awful lot of noise about the signing, just like there was not about the arrival of the Croatian defender Josko Gvardiol, also 21, a few weeks earlier.<\/p>\n
But watching Doku tear through the West Ham defence on only his second league start last weekend was to witness a player seemingly made for Guardiola\u2019s team. He arrived oven ready at the press of a button once Riyad Mahrez walked out of the door for Saudi Arabia. Gvardiol has played four times in the league and looks similarly at home.<\/p>\n
This is where planning gets you. It allows you to evolve quietly. It allows things to change while hardly anybody notices. Liverpool have managed it, too, at times, with players like the Colombian Luiz Diaz.<\/p>\n
Chelsea have not managed this, though. They are not alone but it\u2019s true nonetheless. Abramovich\u2019s Chelsea welcomed some rare talents but there was plenty of self-indulgence too. Hence the boom and bust nature of owner\u2019s tenure.<\/p>\n
And now to the regime of the current owners, Clearlake Capital, whose co-founder Jose E Feliciano said in Paris that week that their Chelsea stewardship has brought them \u2018more scrutiny than we expected\u2019.<\/p>\n
He added: \u2018We own a dozen businesses larger than Chelsea but you don\u2019t ask me about those. They don\u2019t get reported by The Telegraph and Daily Mail every day.\u2019<\/p>\n
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Jeremy Doku was signed without noise by Man City and has seamlessly slotted into the team<\/p>\n
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Chelsea, under co-owner Todd Boehly, splashed out \u00a31bn on players across three windows<\/p>\n
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The influx of players into Chelsea appears erratic rather than as part of a clear transfer plan<\/p>\n
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Chelsea’s owners now are seeking further investment to help redevelop Stamford Bridge<\/p>\n
Interestingly, City\u2019s Gulf owners also struggled with all the attention in their early days in football. The Press don\u2019t ask many questions in Abu Dhabi. But they soon grew used to it and Clearlake probably need to do the same, certainly as long as they continue to burn through money quite so erratically in the market.<\/p>\n
Chelsea have spent more than a \u00a31bn on 25 players in the last three transfer windows yet when you look at the team it\u2019s difficult to work out the how and the why. City press buttons to execute deals months and years in the making. Chelsea seem to do it like monkeys press keyboards on type writers.<\/p>\n
It emerged this week that Chelsea are seeking investment to enable them to replace their outdated Stamford Bridge stadium while at the same time are also trying to cut player costs. That\u2019s quite a contrast.<\/p>\n
City have done all that already. Their own stadium is still owned by Manchester City Council but that remains a peculiarity and no more. The lease lasts 250 years. Plenty of time to dominate football in a way that Chelsea never quite could. Two clubs playing the same money game, just in different ways.<\/p>\n
Spare us the nonsense Mikel, Ramsdale has been dropped<\/span><\/p>\n I would pay to watch Mikel Arteta\u2019s exciting Arsenal team but I take much of what he says with a bucket of salt.<\/p>\n Recently the Arsenal coach responded to questions about his formations by saying he\u2019d employed 43 different ones in the Community Shield against Manchester City. Somebody should have asked him to name them all.<\/p>\n Now, after replacing goalkeeper Aaron Ramsdale with new signing David Raya, Arteta is claiming the England player has not been dropped and that he is planning to use both men in the same game.<\/p>\n \u2018We have all the qualities in another goalkeeper to do something when something is happening in a game and you want to change momentum,\u2019 said Arteta. \u2018Why not do it?\u2019<\/p>\n It\u2019s a brave and novel thought, using goalkeeper substitutes like you would do an outfield player. I don\u2019t think for one minute it will happen, though. Ramsdale has been demoted, pure and simple.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Arsenal boss Mikel Arteta says he could use David Raya and Aaron Ramsdale in the same game<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Aaron Ramsdale has been dropped as Arsenal’s goalkeeper despite Mike Arteta’s claims<\/p>\n When Brian Clough sent his side home with the fans\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Last week\u2019s column discussed managers and authority and the increasingly thin skin of some modern players.<\/p>\n Graham Stenton subsequently got in touch to recount a story from the late 1970s and a heavy defeat for Brian Clough\u2019s Nottingham Forest at Southampton.<\/p>\n So disgusted was the great man that he sent the team bus away and left his players to carry their dirty kit to the train station. Shilton, McGovern, Birtles and Francis sat with their own disgruntled away fans all the way home.<\/p>\n It didn\u2019t work, mind. Forest lost four of their next five. Even a genius gets it wrong sometimes.<\/p>\n Blades counting the cost of their own time wasting<\/span><\/p>\n Four of the nine goals Sheffield United have conceded in the Premier League have come in the 88th minute and beyond.\u00a0<\/p>\n They have cost Paul Heckingbottom\u2019s team five points and, by extension, they are 17th in the table rather than 12th.<\/p>\n If teams who blatantly seek to waste time, like the Blades did at Tottenham, can\u2019t handle the added minutes that are now a regular feature of games at the top level, then they may wish to question why exactly they do it.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Tottenham’s stoppage time goals against Sheffield United followed the Blades’ time wasting<\/p>\n Rodgers\u2019 return looks more baffling by the day<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Celtic’s defeat at Feyenoord means manager Brendan Rodgers has only won two of 19 Champions League group matches in his career.<\/p>\n This statistic points more to Celtic\u2019s diminished European standing than it does to Rodgers\u2019 ability as a coach. But it also hardens my view that he shouldn\u2019t have gone back to the Glasgow club this summer.<\/p>\n Last time around, Rodgers won all seven domestic trophies available to him between his appointment in May 2016 and his departure for Leicester in February 2019. So the only way the 50-year-old can improve on his legacy is to succeed in Europe and that is going to be desperately hard.<\/p>\n I would have liked to see Rodgers tasked with turning a big English club such as Leeds around. That would have been a challenge. Going back to the familiarity of where he has been so successful before clearly carried an allure but it\u2019s one I don\u2019t understand.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Brendan Rodgers watched his Celtic side lose to Feyenoord in the Champions League\u00a0<\/p>\n It’s All Kicking Off is an exciting new podcast from Mail Sport that promises a different take on Premier League football.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n It is available on MailOnline, Mail+, YouTube, Apple Music and Spotify.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Your browser does not support iframes.<\/p>\nIT’S ALL KICKING OFF!\u00a0<\/h3>\n