The story of Roman Abramovich is an incredible one.
Russian business has been corrupt from top to bottom since the fall of the Soviet Union, but Roman has managed to build up a larger fortune than anyone else, entirely honestly. Incredible.
Russian business has been dominated by the Russian Mafia but Roman has managed to operate without resorting to criminal methods. Incredible.
When the Soviet Union unravelled and Russia tried to move to a capitalist system, oil shares were distributed widely. Yet the Russian people had such respect for Roman that they wanted to hand over their shares to him. Incredible
Who would have thought that owning a large proportion of the world’s oil resources could be such a remunerative undertaking. Apparently in Russia, only Roman. Incredible.
Apparently in some countries (Italy comes to mind) figures who have political/criminal enemies/competitors take high profile positions in football clubs to give themselves some protection against assassination (it being much harder to “take out” a high profile figure than a relative unknown). In which case aren’t we fortunate that we don’t have such things and instead have Roman prepared to altruistically invest money into a poor, struggling club from one of our inner city areas? Incredible.
On our way into the ground we had the usual search. But in addition we were scanned using those hand-held metal detectors that detect concealed firearms. The only other place I’ve ever seen them are at airports or diplomatic premises. Why would they need to search for firearms? Who could possibly have the criminal intent and financial backing to want to assassinate somebody in the Chelsea crowd? Somebody they couldn’t usually get a clear shot at because of the high security around him? Incredible.
Chelsea dearly want to be hated. They always have. They plead with Arsenal and Spurs for one of them to hate them but they have always declined on the basis that they were busy hating each other. Now they want to be hated by everyone in the way there was widespread jealous dislike of Man U. But as Arsene Wenger said “Arsenal’s success is to do with Arsenal, Chelsea’s success is to do with Mr Abramovich’s money.” So we no more dislike Chelsea than we would dislike Grimsby if Roman had altruistically decided that having a high profile position on Humberside was more useful than a high profile position in West London.
In a game that deals in millions it is impossible to compete with someone who has billions and is prepared to employ them. And so we got beat. But not as badly as we might have expected. It is the strange thing that although we are sitting at the bottom we are not that far off being canny. You just feel that we are 10% away from things clicking. And I think we might have found that 10%. Hoyte was a big improvement at left back – allowing Arca to do his better left wing role. Hoyte even did OK when he moved into the centre when Stubbs went off. But all season long we’ve been whinging that we haven’t been doing the holding midfield role properly – particularly when we were playing 4-5-1. And now we have Bassila. This was an almost Varga against Arsenal type of debut. The guy is immense in more than one way. When you think the quality of player he was playing against his approach of “you’re not getting past me yer little shit” was superb. If he keeps this up, he is going to be a hero for us all. What is more important is that he will allow the other central midfielders to push up properly to support the striker(s). He even did a Poom-like come over to the crowd at the end. Excellent.
Obviously there were some downsides – their first goal was certainly one. Davis’s throw out was awful – both in intent (bad place to give it to someone – and he wasn’t clear that Welsh knew it was coming) and in execution (it came at Welsh like a Flintoff bouncer). Welsh did pretty badly with it mind as it bounced off him (he had just come on and he seemed to lack confidence for the rest of the game). While the ball was close under his body Davis could see the shot coming in from some way out and maybe should have done better. Davis also did the quick clap of the crowd and walk off routine – don’t be stupid Kelvin – these lads and lasses had come a long way, paid £48 and supported you throughout – at least acknowledge that support. In hindsight I’m almost pleased they got a second because that would have been a sickener to have lost the game after all the good work.
West Brom next week is now looking really crucial. If we can win this then we can start believing that actually we have been playing canny but up until that game not quite getting things to click. If we lose again, then …….