The pressure is off Chelsea, thanks to Man City!

This is not an article written by me.It was copied as a message for all the Blue fans.As it pointed out later spread this message!So plz don't feel offense all credit goes to Blue Champions site.Thank you.

The big spending evil club that is Chelsea, has been outspent this season too. In fact the money raised by Chelsea in player sales was sufficient to fund the player purchases. Of the players that we used last season, Chelsea bought only Malouda and Anelka and the rest were all free transfers. The season in which we bought a certain expensive striker, Roman said that the high spending days are over and I think he stuck by his words.

In his first couple of seasons he did sanction some expensive transfers to set up a league-winning team. If you’re looking for instant success, it is quite necessary to spend that money. Once Chelsea is established as a European footballing power and also after confirming that Chelsea is here to stay in the top four, the money is not flowing as it used to. For two seasons running, Chelsea is not even in the top three spenders in premier league, leave alone Europe.

The deadline day events are quite significant for Chelsea. May be, it even marks a new milestone in Roman’s Chelsea. As far as I can remember this is the first time Chelsea has been out bid. There were occasions like the one with Dani Alves, where Chelsea pulled out due to exorbitant pricing but has never been outbid in a bidding battle such as the one for Robinho. Roman’s ego could be hit. He may not like what happened yesterday. His new manager wanted only two players, and he could get only one of them.

I’m not trying to say that we should have kept bidding until the Sheikhs walked out. I guess even if Chelsea had offer 40m or more, the Sheikhs would have still got Robinho. The whole bidding battle would only have benefited the sneaky bastards of Real Madrid. It is a prudent decision that we pulled out. Chelsea pulled out of the deal not because of the Arabian blitzkreig, but because we’d then be overpaying now or at the end of the bidding war. If you’re asking what’s the big deal in overpaying, haven’t we done before, that’s where my very point comes in. Chelsea has become quite different from what is being propagated. The first season we did overpay, after that I don’t think we overpaid for anyone (barring SWP). The purchases of Essien and Drogba are all value for money.

You can infer two things from the withdrawal. The other thing I infer is that Kenyon & Co were a bit over-confident that we would sign Robinho. It’s fair that he could not have expected this sheikh from Abu Dhabi to appear on the last day and swoop our month long target. For us, it could be a surprise, but in Kenyon’s circle, surely I don’t think it may have been a complete surprise. Anyway, let’s say it was a surprise for Kenyon too. Isn’t it common sense to have a back-up plan especially when the transfer goes down the wire? Shouldn’t we have gone after an alternative winger, if we don’t end up getting Robinho? The back up may not be as good as Robinho. It could be anyone who can find a place in the starting eleven at Chelsea.

Unfortunately, like all of us, Kenyon must have thought that Robinho’s transfer to Chelsea will be over in a matter of hours. Could Real Madrid have known about the man City take over and that’s why probably they waited so long after rejecting good Chelsea offers and waited even after Robinho’s outburst at his press conference? Perhaps, Scolari said that he just needs Robinho and if we don’t get him that’s it he doesn’t need anyone else. Sounds unlikely? I guess it could be Kenyon telling Scolari ‘worry not phil, we’re getting Robinho’. I still stand by my ground that we can win the league without Robinho.

The other important thing we need to understand is that Chelsea is not the top dog anymore. It’s not after the Man City takeover happened. It is since much before. And I’m delighted about this. Citeh have an ambitious project and truly have a bottomless pit of money to support the ambition. The Sheikh is 10 times wealthier than Roman and that also means Man City is now quite big, in money terms. Good thing is, if we win the league, it won’t be undermined as having ‘bought the league’. The Sheikh bought City only on the last day of the transfer window but still they ended up spending about 80m on transfers this summer. If they had bought the club sometime in May or June, they would have broken the british transfer record over and over again. For our own good, let’s accept that City is the top dog now, and we should not try to compete with them in their game.

Roman has been with us for 5 seasons. I guess we’ve come a full circle with respect to transfer spendings. We started big, got the good players (not greats, mind you), got a world class manager, won back-to-back titles and now have even become the top seed in Europe. We’ve stopped spending big on player transfers and on the contrary, we are spending big on the youth academy and training facilities. Now the club looks to be in a mode to settle down and consolidate without losing focus on the ultimate ambition. That’s we won’t or we shouldn’t try to be the top dog anymore. Let Man City have their time of glory, press harassment or public ridiculing as we step aside for some organic growth.

So will this be the season Chelsea loses its official title of being a richman’s plaything? Compared to the Sheikh, Roman doesn’t seem very rich after all and he is not certainly treating us like a plaything. I would count Grant’s appointment as a mistake rather than anything else. The multi-million bench that people loved to talk about, is slowly disappearing.

We offloaded a 50m worth bench places in Shevchenko and SWP. The total cost of our team would be in the region of 150m which is in fact profitable considering the money that’s earned in premier league and champions league in the last four seasons. The cost of our 7-member bench should be in the region of 40 - 50 million, which is again reasonable if you want truly compete in all competitions. In other words, in terms of player transfers, Chelsea is back on level terms with the other big clubs. In terms of salaries, Chelsea still has an edge though. Except John Terry and Michael Ballack (who came on a free), the salaries of the other players are not really as high as it’s made out to be. In fact clubs in Spain and Italy pay more salaries to their players.

Let’s look at this season’s stats. I’m looking at the transfer details for some clubs this season.

Man Utd has spent about £63m (£32m Tevez + £31m Berbatov). Man City has spent about £80m (£19m Jo + £5m Tal Ben Haim + £6m Kompany + £10m SWP + £6.5m Zabaleta + £32.5m Robinho). Tottenham has spent about £40m (Modric £16.5m + £4.7 Dos Santos + £14m Pavlyuchenko) plus an undisclosed fee on Bentley. Arsenal spent about £16m plus undisclosed fees (£5m Ramsey + £11m Nasri + undisclosed fee for Bischoff). Aston Villa spent in the region of £34.5m plus undisclosed fees (£5m Sidwell + £3m Shorey + £6m Young + £8m Cuellar + £12.5m Milner + undisclosed fee for Freidel and Davies). AC Milan spent about £35m (£7m Zambrotta + £8m Boriello + £20m Ronaldinho). Inter spent about £39 million (£10.5m Mancini + £13m Muntari + £15m Quaresma). Barcelona spent about £63m (£11.5m Keita + £26m Alves + £13.5m Caceres + £12m Hleb). Madrid spent about £26m (£8m Garay + £3.5m Javi Garcia + £10.5m van der Vaart + £4m Ruben de la Red). Lierpool had a lot of undisclosed transfers so that the scouser fans can keep saying that they didn’t have money to spend. They bought £20m Robbie Keane and the transfer fee is undisclosed for Dossena, Lucas Weijl, Cavalieri, Ngog and Riera.

Some of these clubs have also sold players to fund their purchases but most have clearly spent more than what they have earned. There are lots of other clubs as well (non-champions league clubs) which have also spent more than £20m this season but I’ve not included them here. Just a snapshot now. Man Utd - £63m. Man City - £80m, Spurs £40m plus undisclosed fees, Arsenal £16m plus undisclosed fees, Villa £35m plus undisclosed fees, Milan £35m, Inter £39m, Barca £63m, Madrid £26m and Liverpool £20m plus lots and lots of undisclosed fees.

And now the outspending evil richman’s club Chelsea has spent £26m (£7m Deco + £16m Bosingwa + £3m Franco) and you know what, Chelsea also earned £25m through sales - £5m Sidwell, £5m Ben Haim, £5m Boulahrouz and £10m SWP. And we could earn upto £8m on Sheva’s loan this year. Even Arsene Wenger who takes more pride in lesser spending than in winning trophies, did spend more than what he earned from transfers this season. There are more than a dozen clubs that spend more money on transfers than Chelsea.

Chelsea should no longer be the most hated club for money reasons. We are back on level terms with the rest of the top clubs with respect to spending or to be exact we are way below the spending levels of our European rivals. Chelsitos! Go back and spread this message! I’m not taking any shite from anyone on this topic again