Some nonsense from that paragon of footballing excellence, Paul Parker, to update you on.
I stumbled across an article on Yahoo/ Eurosport online (read it in full here) in which England legend Paul Parker (he played for Chelsea don't you know - four times) suggests that Chelsea were 'shown up' by Real Madrid's signing of Kaka.
Flexing his intellectual muscle to bring his scintilating wit to bear on an otherwise flawless article, Parker also suggests that the deal represents 'another failure in the transfer market for Chelsea, who have really struggled to make the 'fantasy' signings Roman Abramovich wanted when he bought the club'.
Strangely enough, his wizard-like use of iambic pentameter and the pathetic fallacy almost had me believing him, until he amusingly went on to say 'I think most players would rather sign for Liverpool than Chelsea'. At this point I awoke from my daze and starting considering the number of levels on which he is entirely wrong. I settled on four:
1) Haven't we actually signed some mighty fine, top-billing players since Abramovich came to the club? Regardless of the extent of their success at Stamford Bridge, one can't argue that the likes of Shevchenko, Crespo, Ballack, Veron, Deco, Makelele - there are more - don't fall into the world class bracket. Yes, we haven't signed a Kaka, but these are 'fantasy' signings for 99.9% of football teams in the world.
2) In the same breath, Paul suggests that Chelsea don't have a hope of signing these sorts of players when up against Madrid. And he has a point - Madrid have a 50 year history of winning things, a prime location in a hot country, a 100,000 seater stadium and truckloads of cash. But if that's the case and we're not in the same league - as Paul argues - how can you also argue that we were 'shown up'? Surely if we'd have signed Kaka from under Madrid's noses then they would have been shown up, but it doesn't work the other way round. In fact, that we've signed the likes of Shevchenko and Ballack pays tribute the outstanding ability Chelsea has found to sign the biggest names in spite of its status.
3) We didn't try to sign Kaka anyway. Read the statement on the Chelsea website. Must be true.
4) Players would rather sign for Liverpool? Err...yes, that's why we were signing Ballack while they were signing Lucas. Or why we hired the services of Shevchenko while they were selling Keane and relying on N'gog (who?) at the close of last season. No top class player who isn't Spanish wants to play for Liverpool at the moment (don't tell me they wouldn't rather pick a nice club in Fulham). Don't believe me? Wait to see who the scousers sign this summer...
Parker's article is certainly nonsense. But there is something in there that is important - Chelsea do need to more generally rethink their transfer strategy, moving more towards uncovering promising talent. I'll post some thoughts on this tomorrow. In the meantime, if you see Paul Parker, don't hesistate to show him this article. I'm sure he'll be interested.
Or is it me talking nonsense? Post a comment