ronk wrote:Socrates wrote:
pointless continuing this. You are talking about the past and present and I am talking about the future. You obviously haven't grasped how much more money and potential we have than Chelsea so let's leave it there.
I was using examples from the recent past to support my analysis.
Money can buy success. The future is great for us. But it will take a lot more than a bit of success before we're matching Real Madrid and Barcelona as a draw. We'd need to establish ourselves as one of the all time great teams to make a serious dent in their image.
It's an exciting time for our club, we've come a long way and this is only the tip of the iceberg. But we have no real reason to believe that we'll be the beneficiaries of limitless amounts of money and ambition. Chelsea sacked their manager for finishing 2nd the year Arsenal went unbeaten in the league (and closing the gap as the season went on) and losing in the CL semi final. Mourinho's failure to win the CL cost him his job despite winning back to back prems.
You can put much of it down to the single mindedness and patience of our owner and the capriciousness and impatience of Chelsea's but we don't seem to be on a path to throw a billion or two at a goal of becoming the greatest team in the world. We seem to more modest ambitions and the rate of spending should slow somewhat.
It makes sense because there aren't really that many players (left) around who are worth going for world record bids on at the moment.
Sorry Soc .... but he's right mate.
You have to put our situation in the right context. Sure, we are well stashed to the point of it almost being unfair .... but that won't bring everything to us by 2012.
We can now put some massive spokes in a few wheels, challenge for the Premiership within a few years and compete for some trophies, whilst having a great laugh screwing up the hopes and ambitions of our more illustrious rivals and their owners.
However, we cannot hope to compete with the global popularity of the manyoos, Barca's, Real Madrid's, AC Milans of this football world, within the next 20 years, if that. Chelsea have also had to realise tha they don't really come into it either.
They have each won dozens of National Championships , Champions Leagues and domestic and european cups, have a global recognition and appeal, which attracts the world's best players in their prime and has made them football institutions.
We must accept that we are light years behind in this regard and even winning the Premiership within the next two years will change diddly squat in that respect. But, we can all enjoy the progress, look forward to some big games and moments and hope that maybe before we die ...... we too will eventually join their institutional status. Personally, at the moment, I am just enjoying being the 'kids from the Council House who won the lottery'!
I inow that you are looking at the future Jon .... but you can't assess where you intend to go unless you fully understand where you are starting from.
If indeed, the establishment are vehemently out to stop us (which I doubt they can do), qualifying for the Champs league prior to 2012 won't really make any difference.
