Chelsea’s success came at a human cost – was it all worth it? asks Bill Leckie
THIS is a question for the fans of every club who never win anything.
If someone came in offering a bottomless well of riches that would take you from the pavement to the penthouse, would you bite their hand off?
We’re talking big money here. Enough for a stadium to make Tottenham’s look tinpot, enough to lure Donnarumma to the Doonhamers or Messi to Methil.
The only issue would be the money was made forcing African kids to dig diamonds at gunpoint and had been laundered via a global drugs cartel.
Or…let’s go all the way and say it’s come straight out of wee Kim Jong-un’s back pocket. Are you having it?
If you’re a Cowdenbeath punter, resigning yourself to the prospect of the Lowland League, would you swap weed-strewn terraces and a stock car track for European glory nights and trophies on tap if your owner was basically a Bond villain?
Chelsea fans did, 19 years ago, without a moment’s hesitation. They took to Roman Abramovich like he was waving a Golden Ticket, caring not a jot that Willy Wonka had taken over the sweetie factory and turned it into one of the world’s greatest sources of pollution.
In return, they got to bask in five league titles in 12 years — having lifted just one in the previous century — two Champions Leagues, two Europa Leagues, five FA Cups, three League Cups and a Club World Championship.
Throw in £2.1billion in superstar signings, all of it financed out of the goodness of their steel and gas oligarch owner’s heart via £1.5bn in loans, which he even promised to waive if he ever sold up.
Imagine that, all you Cowdenbeath fans.
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Close your eyes and smell the silver polish. Dream wonderful dreams of what might happen next if the Supreme Leader And Grand Marshal of the People’s Democratic Republic of North Korea rolled into town today with a fleet of juggernauts stuffed with £50 notes.
Just think where YOU could be 19 years from now.
Queueing at the pie stall for your allocated four grains of rice per week.
Cheering a 6-0 defeat while a flint-faced guard holds a pistol to your temple, shortly before the victorious away side’s bus mysteriously disappears on the back road to Buckhaven.
Maybe starting a 26-hour shift down the salt mine where your centre circle used to be.
Or, as happened to those Chelsea fans yesterday, wondering if this might be the last time you see your team play now that the owner has been sanctioned, the company credit cards frozen and the players are being paid in luncheon vouchers.
This nightmare scenario is running through your head while listening to the away end mock and taunt, smug in the knowledge that THEIR decades of global domination are just about to begin now they’ve unwrapped the pre-match kebab to find a Golden Ticket of their own.
The fact that the away end’s Willy Wonka is currently waging a war every bit as brutal and unjustified as the one that has seen Abramovich declared an unfit and improper person to own a club seems lost on them.
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Either that or, more likely, they simply don’t care as long as they win some football matches.
Come to think of it, the fact their Willy Wonka is currently waging a war every bit as brutal and unjustified as the one that has seen Abramovich ostracised seems to be lost on most people.
So, in the wake of what Sky Sports really should have billed as Hell Clasico, let’s remind ourselves of the situation.
Newcastle United are now 80 per cent owned by a state-run Saudi Arabian organisation called The Public Investment Fund, whose chairman is Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, son of King Salman and the guy who pretty much runs the desert nation’s whole oil-driven show.
Saudi Arabia is into the sixth year of doing to next-door neighbour Yemen what Russia has been doing to Ukraine for less than three weeks.
Now, I’m no expert on international affairs, but it feels like being owned by a fund chaired by a guy who’s actually running a war kind of trumps being owned by a guy who’s only pals with a guy who’s running a war.
There are no We Stand With Yemen messages on world football’s big screens and the trackside boards and no Yemeni flags on the warm-up T-shirts.
Not only is there no suggestion of sanctions against Newcastle, they’re openly congratulated for pulling off the coup in landing all that lovely Saudi gold and bravely fighting off relegation.
But it’s been 50-odd years since they won anything worth a toss, so they’ve earned a break.
So if you go long enough without success, then it doesn’t matter who buys you it?
We’ve all heard Geordies calling the day the Saudis replaced Mike Ashley as the best of their entire lives.
We’ve seen them in the full Sheikh outfits and we’ve heard Toon legend Alan Shearer demanding Abramovich speaks out on his links with Vladimir Putin while saying hee-haw about the blood on Saudi hands.
There are no We Stand With Yemen messages on world football’s big screens and the trackside boards and no Yemeni flags on the warm-up T-shirts.
Still, maybe 19 years from now the Toon Army will be the ones standing there fretting over the future as their World SuperDuper League status is threatened by Prime Minister Boris Johnson Junior’s decision that 25 years of war in Yemen is enough and the Saudis have to go.
Their pain ruthlessly rubbed in by the endless taunts from an away end packed with Kim Jong-un’s Blue And White Army.
Who, by the way, will be an ACTUAL army…
IF anyone deserves a job that comes with a dugout rather than a fishbowl, it’s Neil Lennon.
Not that Cyprus will be a skive or managing Omonia Nicosia without its pressures.
But after two spells at Celtic that brought such intense, 24/7 scrutiny on and off the pitch and way too much personal abuse, this is what he needs.
I’d hoped to see him re-emerge at a Norwich or a West Brom, somewhere with a big support but reasonable expectations, but this is maybe even better.
A relaxed Lennon is an intelligent, articulate, friendly guy. We see that in the TV and radio work he’s done since leaving Parkhead a year ago.
So here’s hoping he gets the Factor Dufflecoat on, takes in some healthy sea air and re-finds the mojo that evaporated during the calamitous failed ten-in-a-row campaign.
EVERY time Man U are on the box, the camera homes in more and more on Darren Fletcher.
A backroom boy who’s playing an increasingly-important frontline role.
Word is he’s the one who, day to day, keeps the peace between the dressing room and the management of interim coach Ralf Rangnick — and there’s no hiding the fact that, come matchday, he’s the one the German turns to most often as a sounding board.
Best guess, if whoever takes over full-time doesn’t keep the former Scotland skipper on, he’ll walk into a club all of his own in two minutes flat.
There’s a right good gaffer in the making there.
IN a season of superlatives, the part-timers of Arbroath need to produce a miracle if they’re to pull off the title triumph to end them all.
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After leading the Championship for a long, long time, Dick Campbell’s men find themselves behind a Killie outfit who really SHOULD be top.
But they’ve still to go to Rugby Park again. They have six other games. And if ever a dressing room had it in them to make all our jaws hit the floor, this is it.