Reality

[Power n Glory]

Chelsea's starting lineup, and how much they cost:

Cech £7m (and that was quite a while back when that was a LOT for a 'keeper)
Cole £5m (+ Gallas, they bid £16m)
David Luiz £26m
Bosingwa £16.2m
Cahill £7m
Bertrand - bought young
Lampard £11m
Mikel £16m
Mata 23.5m
Drogba £24m
Kalou £8m

£143.7m - 4 players in their starting 11 cost more than Arsenal's record transfer fee.

And while we're at it, Chelsea's bench last night:

22 Turnbull - Free
19 Ferreira - 13.2m
05 Essien - £24.4m
06 Romeu - £4.3m
15 Malouda - £13.5m
09 Torres - £50m
23 Sturridge - £4m

£109m. Sat on the bench. 2 players on their bench cost more than Arsenal's record transfer fee.

Yes, yes,, you need a good manager to get all that talent to play well as a team, instil team spirit. Fine. Although top managers generally cost a lot of money too so ultimately it does all come back to that. I agree with a lot of your post but it comes down to this: would Chelsea have won the CL without Abramovic? Would they have won their titles without Abramovic? Would City be champions without their billionaire backers? Would they balls.

To an extent clubs have always bought success of course but never so overtly as in the modern era and never by spending such obscene amounts of money.

That's not even the argument and only deals with the first paragraph. I agree they'd never be able to win it without Abramovich's millions because they wouldn't be in the competition full stop. But because they have managed to win it that way, it shouldn't distract us of the fact that Wenger has played in this competition for 15 seasons and never won it. Plus, that argument about top managers costing money is rubbish because Wenger is one of the higest paid managers in the league. Mourinho had no rep real European rep when he won with Porto, Pep was promoted from the reserve team, Rafa won with Liverpool in his first season, di Matteo is bloody caretaker manager. How much the manager earns is a mute point. When Wenger had the double winning sides and the Invincibles playing, he should have won the competition. He couldn't even win a UEFA Cup final.

[fakeyank]

A huge oversight in this thread. Chelsea were looking terrible some months back under AVB. The players wouldn't play for him and he couldn't control his players or get a performance out of them. Roberto di Matteo came in and turned it around without spending a penny. The same crop of players but they play differently. If money was the key factor AVB would have been celebrating with the Chelsea players on the pitch tonight.

I agree with Tipsychubbs and Ernesto on this one. Money has always been used to win titles and this is nothing new. My opinion, the billionaire owners have only raised the profile of mid table teams and bought them Champions League/ Elite club status. They're new money teams and have come up fast. Paid for admission but it doesn't guarantee a great performance. As seen yesterday. Two different managers, same team, different performance. Of course, Matteo would never be able to pull this off with West Brom and he's not a better manager than Wenger all of a sudden, you need a good team to win.

We have no business complaining about success being bought. For starters, we've beaten Chelsea and Man City this season but if we somehow managed to make it to the CL final, we'd lose. We've been in the Champions League for 15 years running and even at our best with the Invincble team we had a chance to get to the final and only had to beat Chelsea, a team we had already beaten 3 teams in previous meetings that season but we choked. We also choked against Barca in the final but that's no disgrace and we also fluffed our lines for a semi when threw it all away against Liverpool when Theo had that amazing assist. 15 years of competing and Wenger can't win it. It's not money. We compete in that competition every year and have seen our best players compete year after year but they choke. We've seen our best players choke in the UEFA Cup final even. Furthermore, we've lost the Carlng Cup final against Birmigham.

People can't keep pointing to money as an excuse. It covers over Wenger's weakness as a manager. It's a factor in football but it's not our problem. We compete, lead the league with only a couple of months to go then go on terrible runs to blow all our progress. Teams that should be moaning are the teams that have no chance of seeing Champions League football without a sugar daddy. We compete every year and choke against big teams, small teams the lot.

You cant buy tactics and winning mentality.

[Letters]

@P_n_G I said I agreed with a lot of your post, and I do. But your first paragraph seemed to imply that Chelsea's win wasn't about the money. Yes. It. Was.

[Boss]

@P_n_G I said I agreed with a lot of your post, and I do. But your first paragraph seemed to imply that Chelsea's win wasn't about the money. Yes. It. Was.

Money has led to more competition, innit.

10 years ago we had 2 teams challenging for the league, now we have 5-6 that at the start of the season should be able to do so.

Not sure what people are complaining about, yesterday's game was pure entertainment and money may have gotten Chelsea into the position they were in but money had nothing to do with Messi or Robben missing penalties, Man U choking to drop 8 points in three games and so on. People spout garbage like wanting small teams like Stoke etc to challenge for the league and then when a small team like Man City are put into the position to do so they whine.

[Power n Glory]

@P_n_G I said I agreed with a lot of your post, and I do. But your first paragraph seemed to imply that Chelsea's win wasn't about the money. Yes. It. Was.

No it wasn't. For starters, your valuation of players is out of date and that team is an old team. Lampard, Essien, Malouda, Mikel, Drogba...they're not worth that now. Chelsea player against a club that have recently spend millions on building their team as well. Neuter, Boateng, Gomez, Robben, Ribery... they didn't come cheap.

Plus, again...this valuation comparison is bullshit because you wouldn't bring that argument upon when talking about our loses in the final against Birmingham or the Uefa Cup loss against Galatasaray.

[Olivier's xmas twist]

Money has led to more competition, innit.

10 years ago we had 2 teams challenging for the league, now we have 5-6 that at the start of the season should be able to do so.

Not sure what people are complaining about, yesterday's game was pure entertainment and money may have gotten Chelsea into the position they were in but money had nothing to do with Messi or Robben missing penalties, Man U choking to drop 8 points in three games and so on. People spout garbage like wanting small teams like Stoke etc to challenge for the league and then when a small team like Man City are put into the position to do so they whine.

No it was not it was bloody shite.

[Joker]

Chelsea played garbage football for a lot of the Champions League and I don't think they deserve to win it at all, but we really need to get over Chelsea (and other club's) wealth. It makes us look extremely bitter and envious. It would be understandable if the people moaning wanted a sort of socialist system in football, with salary caps, redistribution of wealth towards struggling clubs, fan ownership etc, but I don't think that's what many of the people complaining about Chelsea, City etc want. The argument seems to be that they're not running "proper" businesses, with healthy wages:turnover ratio, paying off debt, healthy balance sheets, etc. The complaint seems to be that they've "distorted" the free market. Well, in that case it seems that the same people are satisfied with how our club has been run by the Old Etonians, who do "respect" the market and seem to think the only thing the club should care about is the return to shareholders, like any other private enterprise. If this is what you want football to be like, fine, but if given the choice between a Milton Friedman-inspired football world of perfect free market competition with shareholder value maximisation the only objective, or a world where Russian/Arab oligarch's upset the applecart, and focus on actually winning trophies rather than running a steady ship (because of the reflected glory and status that they get) I'd prefer the latter (although it's not ideal).

And people need to stop feeling so sorry for ourselves. Yes, there is inequality between us and City, but what about the inequality between us and most of the teams in the bottom half of the EPL, and going further down the Championship? They probably feel the same way about us and Spurs as we feel about City and Chelsea. We are a very rich club indeed with affluent owners (unfortunately they don't seem to care about the welfare of the club, only filling their own pockets with gold), and with the Champions League cash-cow have been able to increase the gap between us and other clubs. Moreover, we've taken advantage of rules that make it easy for us to bring in young talent from lower Premiership clubs and the Championship (like Ramsey and Oxlade-Chamberlain). So let's not act as if we don't have privileges in our favour as well.

Complaining about Sky is all well and good, but don't forget that our owners were part of the group that were encouraging the Premier League to break away from the football league. So if you want to complain about money taking over football, football losing it's soul etc, then again you have to point the finger at least partially at our owners who (along with clubs like Liverpool, Man Utd, Everton, etc) set the gravy train in motion.

[Olivier's xmas twist]

Are you saying that the fair play rules wont change things? I think they will. Clubs cant make losses like before. And Man City are gonna make huge losses if they pay half their team £10million a year.

No, Ach is saying Yes we spent money to win the league mancs too, but it was not money that some rich fool gave to us it was money we earned through winning cups or through shirt sales etc. Compared to city and Chavs who with out the money would not be where they are today.

But why do we need to grasp it? Do you get brownie points for one instead of the other? In history, a title counts as a title, no matter where the money came from, unless it was proven to be illegal, or unless there were other illegal dealings going on such as the Serie A match-fixing scandal which stripped Juve of 2 titles and relegated them.

So far, however distasteful, both Man City and Chelsea's title wins have been just as legal as Man U's, whether one chairman had 800 million to spend or 80 million. I've long since got used to it and I'm not really that bothered by it. It is what it is, and while its legally allowed by FIFA/UEFA, whinging about it makes us look bitter and envious, even though we may not be.

Your still missing the point. As i said above Without the Money City and chavs would not have won these things its that simple. Chavs and City were not rich before their owners came and they did not have the money to win the league or CL its that simple.

Yes Chavs were lucky but with a shite team do you think they would have won that game. If City had the squad they had 5 years ago this season would they have won the league.


Yes UTD spent money to win the league i get that and you have too. They did it though money they earned not with money they got from some rich fool who don't give a shit about the club really.

[Joker]

Money has led to more competition, innit.

People spout garbage like wanting small teams like Stoke etc to challenge for the league and then when a small team like Man City are put into the position to do so they whine.

That's a good point, before the gap between us/Man Utd/Chelsea and City was enormous and there was no way they could challenge for the league. After the takeover, the gap has turned in favour of City but it is NOT insurmountable compared to the gap that existed in our favour before the takeover. I think some of the complaints about City are the typical complaints when a Monopolist/Oligopolist's position is upset by an new entrant into the "market". They complain about the young upstart, whinging about market distortions even though it is market distortions that have maintained the top clubs' privileged positions at the top of the tree.

[Joker]

No, Ach is saying Yes we spent money to win the league mancs too, but it was not money that some rich fool gave to us it was money we earned through winning cups or through shirt sales etc. Compared to city and Chavs who with out the money would not be where they are today.



Your still missing the point. As i said above Without the Money City and chavs would not have won these things its that simple. Chavs and City were not rich before their owners came and they did not have the money to win the league or CL its that simple.

Yes Chavs were lucky but with a shite team do you think they would have won that game. If City had the squad they had 5 years ago this season would they have won the league.


Yes UTD spent money to win the league i get that and you have too. They did it though money they earned not with money they got from some rich fool who don't give a shit about the club really.

Us and Utd still have rich owners which allow us (if we wanted) to spend much more relative to most clubs in the Premiership. You're acting as if us and Utd are run as workers cooperatives, while Chelsea and City are run by evil capitalist businessmen. The reality is that all our clubs are run by affluent businessmen, so we can't assume the moral high-ground.