As the Old Lady and perennial champions of Italian football wallow in unfamiliar territory, standing a lowly 14th on the log as at 14:15 GMT 19/10/15, with marquee midfielder and posterboy Paul Pogba their de facto leader, yours truly can hardly help thinking if Chelsea dodged a bullet not signing the French kid.
Okay, it’s probably more like the “dodging” was fortuitous than deliberate as we were game though priced out of harm’s way by the likes of Barcelona and the drunk sailors of European football, Manchester City, as rumours then had it. But didn’t my colleague GabeU get it spot on when he kept hammering on to whoever cared to listen, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, that the Bianconeri will find life very difficult with the departures of the legendary midfield metronome Andre Pirlo and enforcer, Arturo Vidal?
What do they call that kind of error in judgement/execution in tennis? Unforced error? Oh well, granted Pirlo left by default, but quite what inspired the Italian champions to do away with Vidal – their own very Genaro Gattuso – the same summer they also let go of the indomitable Carlos Tevez is beyond what anyone from far away England can fathom, let alone pontificate on. So now that the chickens have apparently come home to roost for them, they’ll be getting little or no external help dealing with the fallout.
Maybe they can win the Champions League, for the second time in their history to salvage their season if their performance against Manchester City on Match Day One is anything to go by, but they certainly have a helluva mountain to climb if their dreams of retaining their league title is to be realised, just like us one might add.
But are there lessons The Blues can learn from La Vecchia Signora’s relatively bad summer business? How they shot themselves in the foot, unforced, only to strengthen a rival?
Have the Chelsea board realised how shrewd and wise it is to work within a budget, especially Roman Abramovich and Jose Mourinho, who not only flirted with the idea of making the 22-year-old former Manchester United trainee his marquee signing of the summer but also in one of his innumerable moments of verbal epiphany cryptically referred to the 2014 FIFA World Cup Young Player of the Tournament as the “Eiffel Tower”?
I ask this, because as it stands it seems the £71m-rated* Pogba is nothing but a luxury midfield acquisition who doesn’t only depend on a backup cast to shine but also one whose midfield position is not yet defined – if it will ever be – and has been overrated, as the estimable Sir Alex Ferguson a.k.a. ORN and most of the Vital Chelsea membership/readership had long suspected.
(* – price tag per Manchester Evening News)
I know how I will spend my £71m, how about you?
Nevertheless, do you think we dodged a bullet with this one?
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