Money can do strange things to your mind.
It can make you feel invincible, untouchable and it can also lead to you believing that you know how to run a football club.
When Chelsea owner, Russian oligarch and 50th richest man in the world, Roman Abramovich first purchased the Blues from Ken Bates, he was content to watch the matches from his comfortable box and let the football people make the decisions. All he had to do was open up the cash spigot and let it flow.
Over a six-year period, the West Londoners became the toast of football. They made winning look easy and they did it with arrogance. But a funny thing happened on the way up to the stage to collect yet another trophy. The owner started believing he was the man responsible for the team’s success. So he sacked the best manager in the world and brought in his own puppets. Well, it turns out that running a club is not as easy as he thought.
When it’s your toy though, there is always the attraction to want to play manager every now and again. Since his tenure in West London, Abramovich has succumbed to its irresistible temptation on more than one occasion.
The results have usually proven disastrous and on each occasion he’s been forced to scurry back to ‘football people’ that ‘know the game’ in order to repair the situation. Whether he’ll do so this time is the burning question on the minds of all Chelsea fans.
Since the firing of assistant coach, Ray Wilkins, the team has gone into a tailspin of epic proportions. With only one win in their last six Premiership matches, the club has slipped from first to third. With Spurs, Manchester United and Arsenal coming up in a trifecta that would test them at their best, there are legitimate fears that the season that began in glorious sunshine and scintillating fashion will freeze over in December.
In fact, I hope you’ve packed some thermal underwear and a copy of Solzhenitsyn’s 'One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich' if you want to hang out with Abramovich because I think he’s looking firmly back east to Moscow and that his crush on Chelsea is all but over.
Of course his parting gift will be to sell off any shining baubles that still have value, because he sure doesn’t seem like he wants to spend any more of his easy earned money on a Chelsea team that is aging before my very eyes.
Let’s be clear here. This team, right now, is suffering from a mental fragility and its so obvious that even Carlo Ancelotti is being forced to address it.
"We started to be scared when Everton put pressure on us," he said after yet more dropped points. By the way, this same Everton team had been pummeled 4-1 at Goodison Park by West Bromwich Albion last time out.
Scared and mentally fragile are words that I’ve not heard associated with Chelsea since the infamous meltdown to Marseille in the UEFA Champions League under Claudio Ranieri.
Sure you have the warriors in the form of the ever-mouthy John Terry, the brave and dignified Petr Cech but after that it’s a struggle to name a true Blue. With Frank Lampard still on the sideline, Chelsea is currently missing that heartbeat that defines all clubs.
The likes of Ashley Cole, Nicolas Anelka, Flourent Malouda and Didier Drogba may kiss the badge, but offer them a fat contract elsewhere and they’d be at Heathrow Airport before you could order them a limo.
As for Michael Essien, John Obi Mikel and Jose Bosingwa, they appear to shrivel up when the going gets really tough and the bench, well it is the weakest I’ve seen in years. The intimidation factor that won Chelsea games in the tunnel before the match had even started is not there and you can almost pinpoint to the day when that happened.
On November 7th a very average Liverpool team tore into the defending Premier League champions and stuffed them. That has become a blueprint for the rest of the division.
Ancelotti seemingly has no answers and is beginning to take on the haunted look of a man that knows the axe is being sharpened. Unfortunately for the Italian, the executioner’s knowledge of football could fit on a pinhead but as I like to say, 'it’s the man who pays the piper that calls the tune.'
Watching Roman call FIFA’s tune last week in Zurich, I would imagine his new mission concerns the building trade and developing the many stadiums that Russia will need in eight years time. Given his close relationship with Vladimir Putin, I don’t think too many of those contracts will be going out for tender.
From club football to World Cup football and all it takes is a few hundred million.
Money. It’s a gas.
Nick Webster is a senior writer for FoxSoccer.com covering the Barclay's Premier League and the English national team.
