Conte may have blues over Chelsea signings... but there’s more to City gap than just cash
THE next time you are at Stamford Bridge, remember to take a cap, throw in your loose change and pass it around.
Times are hard, but make sure you help out the less fortunate than you.
Poor old Chelsea, it seems, are among those too hard-up to compete with Manchester City.
Plucky Antonio Conte is trying his best, but simply does not have the cash to meet Pep Guardiola on a level playing field.
“I have great ambition, but I don’t have money to spend,” complained Conte, ahead of today’s visit to the Etihad Stadium. Which, of course, simply is not true. Conte did not get Alvaro Morata, Tiemoue Bakayoko, Danny Drinkwater and Ross Barkley free in some sort of giveaway promotion.
But we get his drift. In terms of net spend over the past two transfer windows, Chelsea are a considerable way off City – £68.1million to £191.7m. There is, though, little difference in THIRTY-FIVE women tried to attend the same football match as FIFA’S president Gianni Infantino last week… and were “arrested”. Get your head around that. For some reason, the most the respective wage bills because, ahead of those two transfer windows, Chelsea already had an expensively assembled squad.
And one that won the title easing down and with a total of 93 points.
I am a huge fan of Conte, would love to see him remain at Chelsea and in the Premier League.
Guardiola has been gushing about Conte these past few days and rightly so, but the Italian cannot hide behind a financial excuse for his team’s poor defence of their crown.
Chelsea have 16 points fewer than they did at this stage of last season. By any standards, that is limp resistance to the admittedly inexorable form of City.
It is too easy for Conte and others powerful man in the world game was watching Esteqial versus Persepolis, the Tehran derby, with Iran’s sports minister Masoud Soltanifar.
Iran’s rulers have forbidden women from going to football to use City’s spending power as a shield for their own inadequacies this season. Jurgen Klopp does not quite go down that route, but often reminds us that Liverpool cannot attract and keep top players purely with money. “It is about the football and how we treat them,” he says. True, but it is still about the money as well. Including wages, the total outlay on Virgil van Dijk will exceed £100m. City have invested hugely in players, that is indisputable, but the figures are inflated because of the premium such a wealthy club has to pay. Call it a Manchester City tax. Kyle Walker, for example, would not have been the best part of £50m of anyone else’s money. O n l y
IT will be used in the World Cup this summer, but it doesn’t look like VAR will be used in the Premier League next season. There are obviously serious issues with the system, but why delay the inevitable? City’s. The club might have spent comfortably more than anyone else in this past year, but it has spent it comfortably better than anyone else.
At £43m from Monaco, Bernardo Silva did not cost City too much more than Bakayoko cost Chelsea from the same club. There is no doubting who got the better deal.
It might not be Conte’s fault, but Chelsea’s smaller budget has been spent far less wisely than City’s bigger budget.
And it can only be reiterated that Guardiola – of the Big Six bosses – is currently unrivalled in his ability to improve players.
Finance is, of course, a big factor in his and City’s success, but it should not detract from the work Guardiola has done.
Nor should it protect Conte from the scrutiny such a tame defence of a title brings.
There is a gulf between City and the rest, between City and Chelsea, and it’s not just down to the money.