The Monday Moan is back, back, BACK!

Well, I say "the Monday Moan" and "is back", but to clarify, this Monday morning, all is well at Chelsea Football Club. The time when my Monday Moans were a weekly occurrence date back to that painful period between 8 August and 17 December in 2015 when my previous blog involuntarily recorded Chelsea's actual, physical, literal, visible decline, from defending league champions to one place above relegation. And, you guessed it, you know why the Moan has been resurrected now.

Manchester United are not, as yet, in danger of relegation and I very much doubt they ever will be. But the toxicity José Mourinho is currently creating around the club is absurdly identical to that he generated in his final months at Chelsea, which even kamikaze pilots would have regarded as a reckless trajectory. But it wasn’t just at Chelsea: look at how things fell apart at Real Madrid, when the club’s galacticos rejected Mourinho’s defensive tactics. When he left, and Zinedine Zidane took over, Madrid went on to win three Champions League titles. Funny that. Oh, and who is now being rumoured to be of interest in Manchester?

Literally everyone (OK, an exaggeration, but almost) said it would happen like this: pundits and saloon bar sages alike predicted that José would repeat the three-year cycle he's rolled through seemingly everywhere else - arrive, rebuild, win something, implode - after he'd spent most of his time immediately post-Chelsea positioning himself to be United’s next manager (a job, at the time, already filled by the hapless Louis van Gaal). But once he’d installed himself and his usual entourage of assistants at Old Trafford, hardly anyone expected things to go any differently to that which played out so vividly at Chelsea.

Seeing Mourinho go to Manchester United was like watching some celebrity car crash of a marriage - a tabloid bad boy and a TOWIE bimbo getting jiggy with it on Big Brother, followed by some lovey-dovey appearances together on The Graham Norton Show before it all goes badly wrong with a drunken shouting match outside China Whites. That’s where things stand now between Mourinho and - not just Paul Pogba, but mainly - several players he’s publicly vilified.

Clearly, though, the focus is on the battle of wills between Mourinho and the £89 million Pogba, a player the manager had been reluctant to take on in the first place, and is now making that abundantly clear. Pogba, for his part, hasn’t helped with his own attitude: getting caught larking about on Instagram while your side is going out of the League Cup to lower league opposition is not conducive, especially with a manager as capricious as Mourinho. Pogba’s public criticisms of United performances, such as the 1-1 draw with Wolves, have been either naive or unnecessarily (and riskily) antagonistic. No wonder Mourinho took the captaincy off him. However, left back Luke Shaw’s own seething assessment of United’s performance the other day against West Ham is another sign of the growing dissent within the Manchester United camp that is tearing the club apart. Shaw, himself, has been criticised by Mourinho, so for him to have a pop back appears to be particularly open war-like. Add to the list Anthony Martial, of whom Mourinho criticised for being “not very, very focused on his defensive duties”, and Alexis Sánchez, who was given a dressing down in front of the entire United Squad. In the same team meeting Mourinho laid into the saintly Juan Mata, the player he’d shipped off to United when Chelsea manager (much to the fans’ displeasure), whose future looked bleek when Mourinho followed him there, but whose worth to the Portuguese has, though, been one of the soothing ointments to his time as United boss. Not surprisingly, the smart, intelligent Mata has - along with fellow Chelsea emigré Nemanja Matic - been running diplomacy in the fractured dressing room, trying to sew unity for the sake of the team’s future, though not necessarily for the manager’s future.

Manchester United maintains that Mourinho’s job is not in danger, and on paper it would be absurd for any club to sack a manager after just seven league games, let alone Manchester United (not a sacking club) getting rid of a manager as big as Mourinho. But is Mourinho that big? The Special One clearly has had it - and loves reminding everyone of what ‘it’ is - but the build-win-implode cycle surely now has been found out. What club would, now, be mad enough to bet on the certainty of Mourinho repeating the pattern again if they took him on? And given United’s normal reluctance to make any changes until the end of a season, how bad do things need to get before they are forced into the decision Chelsea had to make on 17 December 2015, having lost nine of 16 Premier League matches, and generating “palpable discord” with his players.

One big difference between then and now was that there weren’t any Chelsea players speaking so brazenly in public. Diego Costa’s flounce with a warm-up bib against Spurs at the end of the November that year was the first real sign of the discord Michael Emenalo would speak of three weeks later. Now, the concerns - mostly private but some less so - of United’s players are becoming known. Mourinho and his assistant managers have a Herculean task ahead of them to bring harmony to this group. If they don’t, it will only get worse, as will the results. And then, Manchester United may just be forced into making an unprecedented decision, one we Chelsea fans have grown used to, but to the Old Trafford faithful, only now getting used to life without Alex Ferguson, such a rupture mid-season would be unthinkable (“nonsense” according to the club). For now, it is, but let’s see what happens come the end of this week.

A Bridge too far?

Ever since André Villas-Boas was, apparently, set the impossible task of transforming from within a Chelsea dominated by its then José Mourinho spine of Čech, Terry, Lampard and Drogba, there's been a never-ceasing murmur about who would blink first in the battle of wills between the club and, in particular, its "Captain, Leader, Legend".

The conventional wisdom has been that John Terry - while beloved unconditionally by Chelsea fans - has been on an exit path ever since he turned 30, six years ago. That he hasn't left - and even had a resurgence, some managers later, under Mourinho - has only served his status as 'Mr. Chelsea'. But the reality has been, despite the mutual Mourinho-Terry dependency, that the defender's effectiveness has started to show its age.

Tomorrow night Chelsea's record breaking, medal-hoovering skipper will no doubt start in the FA Cup quarter-final at home to Manchester United. It's a tie rooted in so many histories, the most prominent being Mourinho's as, now, the United manager, but also the long memories we Chelsea fans all have of the humiliation by United in the 1994 FA Cup Final (never mention David Elleray's name around these parts...) and that night in Moscow when a slippery sod rendered Terry in tears and United the European Champions.

The sad truth is that if Chelsea lose, it could be the last competitive game we see Terry play at Stamford Bridge. And even if Chelsea go through to the semi-final and beyond, Terry's place in any starting line-up will be in doubt. To his absolute credit, Terry has accepted that this season his club captaincy has been more a job of seniority and moral support, dressing room continuity for Antonio Conte. There haven't been any complaints in the press about playing time, while his posts on Instagram have been of a dutiful player training relentlessly. "In the nicest way I hope I don’t get back in because it means we are carrying on winning matches," Terry told the Evening Standard in November. Last week Conte declared that Terry was important to him this season "because he's the captain and he's working very well on the pitch and helping me a lot in the changing room, transferring the right message".

The Italian is well aware of Terry's Chelsea legacy, but most Chelsea fans will, equally, be aware that the old soldier can't go on forever - even if, much like Monty Python's Black Knight of Holy Grail fame, he believes he can. This season's Premier League form with a largely Terry-free line-up has provided Chelsea fans with a convenient reason to not miss Terry. We might love the old slugger, of course, but with David Luiz's growing maturity, Cesar Azpiliqueta's quiet confidence, Gary Cahill finally looking not totally lost without JT at his side, and Kurt Zouma slowly working his way back from injury, no one has felt that Terry could offer anything more than being a figurehead with a penchant for taking a boot to the face when it is needed.

Still, though, the 36-year-old Terry believes he has a couple more seasons in him in the top flight before he hangs up his boots, much like his close friend Frank Lampard who has only just retired at 38. West Bromwich Albion and Bournemouth are believed to be interested in taking him on, Stoke are also rumoured to be keen, and having previously said, out of loyalty, he wouldn't play for a rival Premier League club, these are likely to be his options, should he not accept a coaching or ambassadorial role at Chelsea.

It would be a tough acceptance for Chelsea fans, but no more than seeing any beloved player in another team's shirt. There maybe a few more blue rings on the Terry treestump than when Chelsea sold on the much loved Juan Mata to United, even Nigel Spackman to Liverpool, many years ago when money was tight, but Terry deserves what he can get, even if at a rival, as much as Chelsea clearly need to complete the process begun this season of weaning itself of a club player since he was 14. It can be done, it probably needs to be done if, for once, we allow head to overrule heart.

Whatsa Mata you? Hey, gotta no respect!

"Leave it, bruv, he ain't worth it"

This time last year I was promising myself that I wouldn't blog so much about José Mourinho and would concentrate more on his then-team's defence of the Premier League title. How wrong I was.

Inevitably, however, Chelsea's Community Shield encounter with Arsenal became all about Mourinho, or rather his mindgames with Arsène Wenger and the handshake that wasn't. But, hey, it was only a friendly and Eden Hazard's fluffed shot in front of recently transferred teammate Petr Čech meant nothing for the season about to unfold. Except that Chelsea's next game, against Swansea in the season's first league fixture (exactly a year ago today...), saw the Portuguese's ridiculous meltdown over Dr. Eva Carneiro. This subsequently led to a mental collapse within the team which ultimately resulted in Chelsea dropping to 16th place by December 17, followed by the manager's by-now predictable departure under "mutual consent".

There was, however, something of 'suicide-by-cop' about it all. Many were suspicious about Mourinho coming back to Chelsea in the first place, suggesting that it was only because the Manchester United job he so coveted was not available. Whether this is true, we can only now speculate, but certainly within a matter of days of Mourinho getting the heave-ho from Stamford Bridge, his PR machine was doing a sterling job in keeping him visible, with no shortage of hints that he would finally be on his way to Old Trafford (despite the hapless Louis van Gaal actually being in the job).

It didn't take people - and I single out Twitter people in particular here - many days, either, to start ringing the bell of doom for Juan Mata, the intelligent midfielder who'd won Chelsea's Player Of The Year award two seasons running before Mourinho packaged him off to Manchester citing spurious claims about the player's defensive ability. Poor thing, the Twitter wags snarked, no sooner has he settled at United than the man who unceremoniously sent him there comes after him.

So, fast-forward 12 months from my original vow. Mourinho is back at Wembley for the Community Shield but this time as manager of Manchester United, finally. He has just beaten defending Premier League champions Leicester with a 2-1 win secured by Zlatan Ibrahimovic - a classic Mourinho signing: inconsistent centre forward, getting on a bit, but deadly when the chance arises (viz Didier Drogba). To add to his hubris, he is on the cusp of signing Paul Pogba from Juventus for a fee reported to be £89 million or more. So, The Special One returns, with a special team at his disposal. Amongst it is Juan Mata.

At Wembley, the Spaniard sits patiently on the bench. Twitter notices his slightly forlorn look, the No.8 emblazoned on the left thigh of his shorts. In a forest of vanity squad numbers (first team players at AC Milan have shirt numbers in the 90s...), 8 remains the number of central midfield authority. At United it represents the legacy of Nicky Butt and Paul Ince and their presence, while at Chelsea, it is Frank Lampard and his imperious record of 211 goals from the position.

Jesse Lingard had, arguably, played the pivotal part in Manchester United returning to Wembley in the first place, substituting Mata in the FA Cup Final in May and scoring the winning goal that brought the curtain down on the van Gaal era with something of a wry smile. So, perhaps it was fitting - a reward, even - that the 23-year-old winger got the nod ahead of Mata for the 2016-17 curtain raiser. Mata, smart man that he is, probably saw this for what it was, too, but when Lingard came off injured in the 63rd minute, he was on. Exactly 30 minutes later he was off again...and looked furious.

Surprisingly, player petulance doesn't happen often as often as the back pages might suggest, but when it does, it usually shows more than intended. When a disgusted Diego Costa threw his training bib in Mourinho's direction last November after a touchline warm-up came to nothing at White Hart Lane, it was clear how bad the "palpable" disconnect was between manager and players. Mourinho was gone within a fortnight. The sight, then, of Mata being apparently restrained by United coach Ricardo Formosinho while shooting a look at his manager that definitely could kill underlined the precarious state of Mourinho's man management techniques, which failed him so dismally at Chelsea last season.

"I needed to take off the smallest player [Mata] because we were expecting a lot of long balls," Mourinho said, unconvincingly after the match, which ended just two minutes after the substitution. Now, some might see this as simply Mourinho shoring up his defence, a position consistent with his notorious 'win-at-any-cost' bus parking. Others might see this as Mourinho at his most insensitive and vindictive. "You don't do that unless you are trying to send a message," said pundit Danny Murphy on the BBC's Match Of The Day. "[Mourinho and Mata] have a lot of history at Chelsea and he has embarrassed him in front of his supporters and his family. He is basically saying to him you are not important and he has done it publicly. I can't see him still being at the club at the end of August."

Nor, probably, would Mata himself, who joins the likes of Bastian Schweinsteiger, Daley Blind and Marcos Rojo as casualities of the new United manager's apparently ruthless trimming of a squad he inherited from van Gaal. Mata, for the record, has remained remarkably sanguine and professional, posting pictures of himself with the Community Shield trophy on Facebook and Twitter.

There are arguments, however, that Mata never recovered the form he had at Chelsea since his-then club record £37.1 million transfer to Old Trafford in January 2014. He has, since then, only started 75 Premier League games for United, with suggestions coming out of Old Trafford that van Gaal shared Mourinho's concerns about the midfielder's pace and defensive contribution.

That, however, won't wash with Chelsea fans, who saw in Mata a clever, creative player who thoroughly deserved his consecutive player of the year awards, and whose intellect and articulate, cultural interest endeared him so. Before Mourinho's return to Chelsea in June 2013, Mata had been Chelsea's creative heart under André Villas-Boas, Roberto Di Matteo and Rafa Benitez, contributing goals and some vital assists. As "@BlueTaintedNick" put it on Twitter yesterday, "How many players left at peak and retained the affection like Mata?". The answer is not many, but they'd be led by Lampard, Drogba, Gianfranco Zola, Eidur Gudjohnsen and, without hesitation, Mata.

For all our affection for Mata, his relationship with Mourinho may simply be down to preference and chemistry. In Mourinho's case, Mata isn't his preference and, it is patently clear, there is no chemistry. But while Mourinho may have his tactical reasons for not favouring Spaniard, the way he has gone about expressing them - now twice - leaves much to be desired. Over three-and-a-bit and two-and-a-bit seasons, we sang the Special One's praises from the rafters of Stamford Bridge, on trains and planes to European destinations, and in the face of overwhelming evidence of his sociopathic tendencies. We defended him - rightly - from the massed ranks of envious trolls as we watched the silverware come tumbling in.

But now he's at Manchester United, do we turn on him, and especially over his treatment of a much-loved former Chelsea player? Probably, but that shouldn't come as any surprise. It's what the tribality of football demands.

Money and football - it's back to business

Picture: adidas

48 hours ago we were celebrating the closest thing modern professional football has come to altruism - the "fairy tale" (© all newspapers) of Leicester City winning the Barclays Premier League. The common view has been that Leicester, unlike the footballing behemoths they beat to the title, did so on modest funding and a humble team ethic that reflects their genial manager, Claudio Ranieri (best not, though, dwell on events at the end of last season at Leicester and that video...).

We shouldn't too carried away. Leicester don't - and weren't, going into this season - exactly represent a rags-to-riches story. The media may have painted their victory as some sort of David-and-Goliath mismatch, but we're hardly talking about part-time postal workers and milkmen taking on the elite. Certainly the Leicester players will have increased their personal values with this season's unlikely, odds-shattering title win, and no doubt some will progress from millionaire status to multi-millionaires. And that's when the trouble will start.

The Premier League - and the incredible money Sky and other television deals pump into it - has been with us now for 24 years. In that time we have seen the car parks of clubs ostentatiously transformed by the sight of de rigeur Ferraris, Porsches, Range Rovers, Lamborghinis and other symbols of the ridiculous wealth bestowed on young men barely out of school-leaving age. On Instagram we see pictures of their homes, their minor palaces in Oxshott, Weybridge, Wilmslow and Alderley Edge. On social media, commentary of Monday night's party at Jamie Vardy's house has focused as much on the opulent chandelier hanging in his kitchen as the team spirit demonstrated by the Leicester players watching the Chelsea and Tottenham draw.

We are quick to judge: how often have I heard and read people complaining about Chelsea's players this season doing very little to justify the incredible salaries they're paid. But there is justification to it. After all, whether we pay exorbitantly for season tickets (as I do) or we buy the products advertised on the television channels that are paying to show the games, we're paying for all this.

It's a touchy subject. Good, then, of Manchester United's Juan Mata to admit in a Spanish TV intervew that his £150,000-a-week wages are "obscene". Mata is one of the most likeable and intelligent figures in the game. Rather than spending his spare time on the golf course, in card schools or chasing women who are not married to him around nightclubs, he has, since his arrival in England, demonstrated a cultured side to the professional footballer, engaging in his new surroundings and frequently writing eloquently about them on his highly readable weekly blog One Hour Behind. He is also an extremely gifted midfielder - I would still love to see him back at Stamford Bridge - but also one who has been able to burst out of the footballing bubble to view it for what it is.

"With respect to the rest of society, we earn a ridiculous amount," Mata said in the interview with the Spanish programme Salvados. "I'd happily take a pay cut if there was less business involvement in the sport. Football is very well remunerated at this level. It's like we live in a bubble. Compared to the rest of society, we earn a ridiculous amount. It's unfathomable. With regard to the world of football, I earn a normal wage but compared to 99.9 per cent of Spain and the rest of the world, I earn an obscene amount."

Mata said he could sympathise with spectators growing jaded with their clubs, especially if the cost of watching doesn't match the performance delivered by the teams themselves. "I can understand what they're talking about," he told Salvados. "The business side of football makes it seem as though the owners are now more important than the fans. It's not like the football of old; there wasn't as much press coverage before," adding, somewhat tellingly: "or as many interested parties looking for their cut."

"Every player thinks he's Maradona when he joins a big club," Mata went on. "That happens to all of us but then you start to notice it in the younger players. You see kids who think they're rock stars, wearing extravagant clothes and driving fancy cars... and sometimes you have to take them aside and have a word."

Perhaps Mata's wisdom should be imparted to Dominic Solanke, the 18-year-old Chelsea youth team striker who has been on loan this season at Vitesse Arnhem. Solanke has demanded a pay rise to take his earnings from £7,000 per week to £50,000, almost double the average annual salary in the UK - and he's still an Under-21 player yet to break into the first team (much like many of his academy peers at Chelsea).

Understandably, Solanke's demands have been met with outrage. Chelsea, however, may have to consider that they have brought it on themselves, with a reputation for paying high salaries. In the current Chelsea first team, 22-year-old goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois is on £120,000 a week, Cesc Fàbregas is on £156,000, Diego Costa £185,000 and Eden Hazard a whopping £200,000. Even Radamel Falcao is trousering £140,000 a week in his loan deal from Monaco, and no one has seen or heard from him since he came to Stamford Bridge.

According to The Times today, Chelsea are going to stand firm on Solanke's outrageous claim, threatening to demote him to the academy squad unless he adopts a more realistic view of his worth at this stage of his career. The paper claims that Chelsea want to set an example, so that their younger talents don't let money cloud their development as players. It's an admirable approach. Young football players should continue the traditions of apprenticeship, and not simply see their senior peers - some of whom are barely much older - cruising about in exotic cars and expecting to enjoy the same trappings of success so immediately.

We will never escape the vulgarity of money in football. Few fans will have a problem with their favourite players showing off their wealth, as long as they deliver on the investment we all make in them by performing to the best of their ability on the pitch. The clubs, though, have a responsibility. The relationship between them and us fans can only stretch so far.

On top of ticket price hikes, there have been stealthy increases in the subscription costs of the TV companies who cover the games (on top of the advertising revenues that ultimately we pay for). And there are all the other things that make being a football fan a wallet-shredding ordeal: yesterday Chelsea unveiled its new 2016-2017 home kit - not exactly the best design I've ever seen from adidas, coming somewhere between a silk nightie and children's pyjamas, and advertised by a particularly thuggish-looking Diego Costa - for which you could end up paying more than £105 for the full-replica adult shirt with the name of your favourite player on the back. Add another £5 if you also want the official Premier League badge on the sleeve. "Absolute madness. Pure greed," tweeted Stan Collymore.

I may not be an expert on sports clothing but I can hardly imagine that a shirt, no doubt made in a Far East, low-wage country, will have a bill-of-materials that adds up to that sort of money, not even a shirt with adidas' proprietary "Adi Zero" technology, whatever that is. One can only hazard a guess at what the profit margin is on the shirt - even more if you consider that you'd also be advertising Yokohama tyres in the process of wearing it, seeing as they paid Chelsea £200 million to be on the front.

Whether you're a fan, a club or a player, football is an expensive business. And you don't always get out of it what you put in. A matchday ticket in the Premier League this season averages £30.68 (for reference, Chelsea's range from £52-87), with season ticket prices averaging at £513.95 for the cheapest and £886.21 in the more expensive categories (and remember, that's average). We Chelsea fans pay some of the highest season ticket prices in the league: £750 for the cheapest, £1250 for the most expensive. And the 18 - yes, just 18 - home league games our tickets have entitled us to haven't exactly given much joy this term.

Which brings me back to Leicester City. They may be owned by a Thai billionaire, but they have achieved their remarkable success this season with equally remarkable modesty. On August 8, the opening day of the season, the entire Leicester squad represented a total outlay of £45 million.

Compare this with the investments of the teams who'll end the season below Leicester: Raheem Stirling alone cost Manchester City £49 million, out of a total spend of £153.50 million. And all that got them was fourth place in the Premier League and a Champions League semi-final. For comparison,  Manchester United spent £108 million and lie fifth while Chelsea spent £66 million - in defence of the 2015 title - and are currently ninth. Interestingly, Arsenal's spend was just £10 million and they're now third. Tottenham shelled out £66 million, but their net spend was only £5.7 million, and they're second. Make of all that, what you will.

Of course, we all accept - reluctantly - that the money in football will never return to something more sensible. The argument about how much a footballer earns versus how much a nurse earns may have its merits, but it is ultimately a pointless exercise, no more so than trying to work out how Tom Cruise earns $25 million per film. It is clearly nuts that football salaries in countries like Italy and Spain are in complete disproportion to the social struggles and high unemployment these proud and passionate footballing nations are currently struggling with.

We know it's all about market forces. We know that if a Chelsea won't stump up the wages, a Real Madrid or a Juventus will. But it would be nice, for once, for our football clubs to stop taking us fans for a ride, and behaving with a little less greed and a lot more modesty. Then we might start buying those shirts again.