april 24th
A brief Sunday round-up of the couple of stories that exist this early on a Sunday morning.
The boss has spoken about transfers this summer and has said that although he’d like to buy Steven Gerrard we can’t compete with Chelsea if they wnt to buy him too. He gave some hints about the type of player he’d like to sign when he said “I have an under-21s team from one to 11. Then we have some exceptional players aged over 30 – like Robert Pires, Dennis Bergkamp and Sol Campbell. But we need a few more in the bracket from 24 to 27, who are established players.”
Chelsea have denied they bought the title this season. While I have to applaud the way they’ve played football this season and played against us without the malice and brutality of Manchester United there can be no doubt cold hard cash has played a huge part in Chelsea’s succes. When you consider how close they were to going bankrupt, with debts of £80m+, for them to have been saved by the bell by Abramovich was perhaps the most fortuitous thing that has ever happened to them. Of course it’s not all down to money. They’ve got a squad of excellent players and a talented coach who seems to have made a pact with the devil himself (the real one, not Roman) but you just cannot dismiss the impact the money has had on the club.
They will win the league if we fail to beat Sp*rs on Monday night. It’ll probably be the first time ever that Chelsea fans will be cheering for the Lily White cunts. The People reports this morning that Chelsea will be hit with a record fine over the Ashley Cole affair with a figure of £200,000 being mentioned. What difference does that make to Chelsea, really? I’ve spoken before about the system of fines as punishments being next to useless these days. Players and clubs make so much money for it to be meaningless unless we’re talking massive amounts of money. The whole thing needs to be reassessed so that punishments actually hurt wrongdoers and act as an deterrent from others who might try the same thing. If Chelsea end up signing Ashley Cole does an extra £200,000 hurt them once they get their man?
And that’s it. It’s off for the newspapers, a beer or two and a tortilla sandwich. Oh yes.
