Multi-millionaires Chelsea are the only English team still waiting to book a place in the last 16 of the Champion’s League following last night’s 1-1 draw at home against Bordeaux.
They’re hardly on their uppers yet of course but they need to beat Romanian champions Cluj (there’s a household name for you) in their next game at Stamford Bridge to go through.
New manager ‘Big Phil’ Scolari, who seemed to be carrying all before him at the start of the season, says “it would be better for me to go back to Brazil and stay there” if Chelsea lose out. Well the weather’s better Phil.
One man who most definitely won’t be pleased at this turn of events is Chelsea owner Roman Abramovitch.
In the last two seasons he has dispensed with the services of managers Jose Mourinho and Avram Grant so the writing is on the wall for Scolari. Bizarrely one of Scolari’s problems is that he doesn’t have enough players, or players of the right quality and experience.
Chelsea have been hit hard by injuries this season, missing winger Joe Cole particularly, and they also have a skulking Didier Drogba to contend with, who seems to want to wave England goodbye (a feeling reciprocated by many football fans) to join his old boss Jose in Milan.
Scolari clearly doesn’t want to play Drogba if he can help it but that only leaves him with one adequate striker, the equally moody Nicolas Anelka.
In the summer transfer window he was desperate to sign Brazilian Robinho but Abramovitch, who seems to have been clobbered by the credit crunch along with many of his Russian pals, was unwilling to pay an eye-watering £32m to Real Madrid and lost out to new Premiership moneybags Manchester City.
Scolari made the point that Chelsea were a bit one-dimensional and needed “something different”, which Robinho, for all that he tends to disappear in away games, certainly is.
Chelsea will probably beat Cluj and proceed in the Champion’s League (although it’s worth remembering that they lost on penalties to lower league Burnley at home in the Carling Cup).
And they’re still second in the Premiership. But Abramovitch, who’s ‘loaned’ the club nearly £600m to date, might well come to blows with Scolari if his manager demands, as he surely will, an expensive new forward in the January transfer window.
[Image Attribution: Crystian Cruz]