You Can Have the Club and Yacht, Too!

Not sure how many of you got to see the "message to the supporters" from John Terry. It’s a couple of weeks late but it’s still relevant, so here it is:

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"Firstly, I want to say a huge thank you once again to every single one of you for your support this season. Each of us in the dressing room and behind the scenes fully appreciates the lengths you go to all year round to support the team, whether it be at the Bridge, or at away games around the country and in Europe. I would also like to say a special thank you to Guus Hiddink, who has been just brilliant since he arrived here in February. He came at a difficult time when things looked like they were slipping away from us, so to lead us to an FA Cup Final and within a whisker of the Champions League Final, is a great achievement.

That said, third place in the league isn’t good enough for Chelsea anymore. It’s our worst finish since Mr Abramovich bought the club and we all know we need to do better. It is fantastic to win the FA Cup but we want more and that’s the way it needs to be for us these days. We will all enjoy the time we have off now and come back for pre-season as determined as ever and of course looking forward to achieving great things with the new manager Carlo Ancelotti. This year we are off to America for four games in the summer, and we’ll be hoping to see some big crowds against an impressive line-up of opposition. Enjoy your summer and see you next season."

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It’s interesting to see that JT says third place is not good enough, and it’s worse we’ve finished under Roman.

Surprisingly, still no transfer action at Chelsea. No one’s come in and no one’s gone out. You hear that Roman has bought the most expensive yacht (£300m or something) in the world. Things must now be better for Roman, who was rumoured to sell Chelsea to buy a yacht. He was seen bidding world record amounts for Kaka sometime earlier, and I just hope he did not dump the Chelsea transfers in the sea.

With Real Madrid in a rampant mood, as always, off the pitch, they tempt evey football player. Lots of pluses playing for Real Madrid. They are the biggest club in the world. Their record is unparalleled. You get to play in sunny Spain. You’re in the Spanish capital. You get to play in the team where Kaka and Ronaldo play. You’ll get all the money you want and more, unless you’re name is Robinho. Players like Ribery and Villa are all just probably waiting for a call from them. Who wants to play for Chelsea FC when Real is calling?

In a way, I’m happy that Real is spending big bucks. Last season, we saw from Man City and Tottenham that money spent has little to do with where you end up on the table. Let Madrid spend £200 million in this summer alone. I’m still waiting for more poisonous comments on how they are killing football with their money. If Man City took the limelight off Chelsea last season, Real Madrid has wiped us off the bad boys map. Good for us.

We should forget these five-star targets whom the Madrids, Barcas, and Milans are after. Enough of this Kaka, Villa, Ribery nonsense. I’d love to see them here but it appears completely improbable now. There are some good four-star and three-star targets. Players like Tevez, Podolski, Schweinsteiger, etc. These players are all young enough to be called next generation players for Chelsea. As in, they can stay here for another four or five seasons. There’s a rumour that Ancelotti called Tevez and offered to take him at Chelsea. I’m a big fan of Carlos Tevez and I’d love to see him in Chelsea colours. Also there is this great Real Madrid sale that seems to offer gems like van der Vaart, Sneijder, Robben, Huntelaar, etc.

While I can come up with a wish list of who I want to see in Chelsea this summer, I’m still not sure what system Ancelotti wants to play. That would be very crucial for our transfer business. If he is going to continue our 4-3-3, we are well off already and a little bit of strengthening would help. If he is going to play his 4-3-2-1 Christmas tree, then few of our players would become redundant, say Malouda, Kalou, Di Santo, etc. The rumours about Malouda being offered to clubs is worrying. I have always like Malouda and with his resurgence, I simply don’t want to leave him. Also this means we could very well be changing our system for this season. With offers flying from Kaka to Ribery to Tevez to Zhirkov, I just wonder what is that we want to do? What’s the vision that we have in mind?

We don’t have to be Real Madrid. Let’s buy players for football reasons and for football reasons only. Let’s look at what system we want to play. Let’s look at whether we have the right players to play that system. Let’s look at what and who we lack and go for the roles and not for the players. Exactly, we should have roles in mind and find the players that would fit that role. When we bought Shevchenko and Ballack, we went for the players and not for the roles. We should not commit that mistake again.

What are our priorities now?