April Week 1 - Countdown

[El Gordo]

I probably shouldn't talk about football immediately after getting back from the pub.....

Supporters of the Premiership behemoths are always telling me that footballing ideals are long since gone, implying that I should "accept it and move on".

In response I say that it's very much in the interest of the cash-rich giants to urge people like me to keep quiet. Much more important, it's not true that these ideals are gone. I see it week after week in the lower divisions, where, apart from a small handful of clubs, we have to survive and try to flourish on almost nothing. It's here that a club succeeds by managing itself well, working extraordinarily hard to get and develop the right personnel, living in a constant state of self-motivation, hard effort and fund-raising with the fans. If any part of the plan slips, you fall.

Some will say that it's actually the same for Chelsea, but no. The point is that Chelsea have removed this necessary tension between effort and reward. If a player fails, Abramovitch shrugs and replaces them. If a coach fails, Abramovitch shrugs and replaces them. If a chief executive fails, Abramovitch shrugs and replaces them. The permutations continue until success arrives, as it is arriving now, this season.

He has bought glory, and therefore there is no glory.

He hasn't twigged this.

I actually don't bracket Man Utd and Arsenal with Chelsea at all. Though very rich, their riches have been amassed by gradually building up support off the field through brilliance on it. It was a long process that eventually paid off. In short, it was earned. Chelsea's success is unearned and therefore has no value and no honour.

But more serious, in executing this plan they are corrupting a football generation that may never recover. If it was only the behemoths that were to expire in the impending explosion, I wouldn't be so concerned. But we all know what will happen. The giants will survive; the rest of us won't.

That's why it concerns me.