The jokes have started early. Rumours coming out of the US that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is making or has made a bid to buy Manchester United have been met with gags such as “Amazon buys Man U, and immediately delivers the title to their neighbours”. What a sad state of affairs, then, that arguably the biggest football club in the world, with a history as storied as any footballing royalty in Europe, like Juventus, Real Madrid or Barcelona, should be such a source of ridicule. But, then, Chelsea - their opponents today at Old Trafford - aren’t exactly all that far away, themselves, either. Not that I’m suggesting for one minute that The Blues should be considered in the same company, history-wise, as their Mancunian rivals, but it is curious, going into today’s encounter, just how many parallels exist between the two clubs, and not just the shared experience of José Mourinho as manager.
Watching the Manchester derby the other night, I genuinely felt sorry for Ole Gunnar Solskjær - super-sub in his playing days at United and effectively brought in off the managerial bench in December to become, first, caretaker manager at Old Trafford and, since the end of March, permanent head coach. For a rival fan, Solskjær in his day could infuriate with his ability to be brought on by Sir Alex Ferguson late in a game and score the kind of vital goal that secured United’s imperious reputation in the 1990s and 2000s. But since Ferguson retired, that reputation has proven unmaintainable. On Wednesday night, however, the genuinely likeable, articulate and intelligent Solskjær looked crestfallen as Manchester City first broke the deadlock with Bernardo Silva’s 54th-minute strike, and then sub Leroy Sane’s low shot a few minutes later to humiliate David De Gea. It was a game that bluntly symbolised the power shift in Manchester: United, still retaining an army of vastly expensive players (Luke Shaw earning five times more in a week than a teacher of ten years' standing earns in a year...), some of whom there only by entitlement, up against a similarly enriched City line-up coached by Pep Guardiola, justifiably the most admired manager of his generation. City may have bought their way to the summit with Sheikh Mansour’s Emirati riches, but that’s the way it goes. You can no longer stand on ceremony in modern football, as United are finding to their cost.
Compare them, then, with Chelsea. Until Roman Abramovich came along in June 2003, buying Chelsea on the back of their final game of the 2002-2003 season, in which Jesper Grønkjær dramatically volleyed in to beat Liverpool 2-1, thus securing Champions League football for the following term, the club’s legacy was, to be fair, patchy. A single league title, in 1955, a couple of FA Cups and the European Cup Winners Cup twice since 1970 was all they had to offer, with a veneer of glamour generated by a celebrity following in the late 1960s and early 1970s. When away fans sing “where we you when you were shit”, I know exactly where at Stamford Bridge I was standing. Without, though, trawling over the Abramovich era in depth, Chelsea in 2019 are in a weird place: an owner rendered indifferent due to his visa problems (and contemplating offers for the club); a stadium overhaul on permanent hold; a string of successful (and some less so) but short-lived managers since 2005, with the jury out on the current one; the prospect of a UEFA-enacted transfer ban and a squad in desperate need of overhauling, including some highly-paid European stars approaching the point when the club’s policy on over-30s means that they will be frustrated in being offered a contract of longer than 12 months. Throw in the inevitable loss of a star player (Eden Hazard), and the chance that the currently injured starlet Callum Hudson-Odoi might also leave in the direction from where his head has been turned by German club interest, and you see a club that could fall apart in football terms…as well as corporate terms. The turbulence building up around Chelsea is not all that far removed from the mood in camp at Old Trafford.
So, with the fight between Tottenham, Chelsea, Arsenal and Manchester United for third and fourth spot increasingly looking like two bald men fighting over a comb, with all four dropping points as easily as they win them, with just three more fixtures left in the season, the encounter today between The Reds and The Blues, is a real head-scratcher. Chelsea, of course, have been a nightmare this season with their visits to North-West England, their fixtures with Everton and Liverpool highlighting a mental inability to play the second half with anything like the intensity of the first. But, then, you have a Manchester United that has struggled to convince ever since Solskjær was announced with crowd-pleasing intent as the club’s full-time manager at the end of March. And that includes last Sunday’s abject, 4-0 capitulation to Everton at Goodison Park.
Today’s game may just prove to be a damp squib: two beleaguered (relatively speaking) teams, drained mentally and spiritually, trying to summon the energy to win a hotly-contested Champions League spot at the arse end of a season where two other teams are outperforming everyone in just about every dimension. By contrast, go back 11 years and United and Chelsea were meeting at the Luzhniki Stadium in the 2008 Champions League final. Two English teams at the very summit of European football. One, a team with a sainted reputation in world football, the other, an arriviste outfit managed by an unlikely champion-in-contention, Avram Grant. While it may have been decided by John Terry’s unfortunate slip on the penalty spot, these teams were a credit card’s width apart in terms of talent. Today, they might have the talent, but that talent is doing little to justify such a tag.
Both teams today are managed by individuals yet to prove their case, though in fairness, the likeable Norwegian in the red corner has only had a month or so. Both, though, are painfully and obviously lacking the leadership figures that made them each a different proposition in Moscow in 2008. Then, United had Rio Ferdinand, Paul Scholes, Cristiano Ronaldo, Wayne Rooney, Edwin van der Sar and Nemanja Vidic, while Chelsea had Terry, Frank Lampard, Didier Drogba and Michael Ballack. And today? As much as I like César Azpilicueta as a right back, he has been made Chelsea’s skipper by default. He’s not a leader on the pitch, being somewhat anonymous at a time when Chelsea’s players need a kick up the backside. For Azpiliqueta, read Ashley Young in the exact same situation at United. These are, of course, isolated, individual problems out of the many more that exist for United and Chelsea. When you add them up, the great portent of today’s fixture starts to diminish. Quite a bit. Yes, it will be an encounter between a couple of prize fighters, albeit prize fighters who’ve lost their punch and with it, their fear factor. And that’s why it could be a downright let down.
In fact, whether United or Chelsea succeed in reaching that coveted fourth spot (and it’s still numerically possible for third to be reached, too), both sets of fans should be prepared for disappointment. Because whenever they play their European football next season - on a Tuesday or Wednesday, or the less illustrious Thursday night - who owns these clubs, who plays for these clubs, who runs these clubs and even who manages these clubs are all, right now big, open questions. To have one of those questions looming might be troubling, but to have all four? That’s an awful lot to have at stake at once.
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