SOCCER:Roman Abramovich set out to buy thoroughbreds so how come Chelsea are merely the dark horses of the Champions League? There is only a sliver of ground to be made up in the quarter-final, but Valencia do have a little advantage following the away goal in the draw at Stamford Bridge. The Premiership title-holders are once more cast as plucky outsiders.
Jose Mourinho has given them a fanciful makeover to present his side as underdogs rather than overlords. The manager has his justifications and it has been absorbing to watch them scuffle and cope for extended periods without Petr Cech and John Terry. Currently, however, Chelsea's injury list is shorter than that of Valencia or of the league leaders Manchester United.
Mourinho has been hampered but far more was involved than bad luck. Chelsea's affairs have grown more Byzantine every year and their prospects increasingly opaque. In his first season the side would have squeezed through to the Champions League final had Eidur Gudjohnsen been more composed with his stoppage-time chance at Anfield. Last season shaky work in the group phase exposed them, as runners-up, to a fatal tie with Barcelona.
The Champions League is going better in this campaign, but the Premiership is beyond Chelsea's control. This is far from the domination Abramovich envisaged. He has tolerated, if not designed, the structure of a club where it is hard to tell how much influence any particular figure had in the making of a decision.
Now the squad looks like the product of compromises. How did a club of this standing come to have only two established centre orwards in Andriy Shevchenko and Didier Drogba? Wasn't it reckless to shed Gudjohnsen and Hernan Crespo?
Who supposed that three proven centre backs would suffice? Mourinho used to claim he wanted a small squad of multi-functional footballers, but he does not speak much about that any more. Though Khalid Boulahrouz was meant to be versatile, the manager is minded to select anyone rather than him in defence.
The midfielder Lassana Diarra is reassigned to right back and during critical matches with Tottenham and Porto, the midfielder Michael Essien was preferred to Boulahrouz at centre half.
The assumption is made that some players have been foisted on the manager. It is simple to believe Boulahrouz was acquired by the Dane Frank Arnesen, who has the chief-scout role as part of his remit. Certain case histories are more opaque.
Mourinho was not exactly in uproar over the advent of Shevchenko, in whom Abramovich had long taken an interest, but there have been periods of scepticism towards the £30m Ukraine striker who has so far scored four Premiership goals. On the other hand, the manager contends that statistics tell him Michael Ballack is to be counted among his "untouchables".
Everything is subject to rival interpretations. At the start of 2007, for instance, the press came to understand Mourinho's employers felt he ought to get more out of the squad. The manager himself would rather emphasise a bizarre period in which, say, the return to fitness of Joe Cole somehow has to be offset by Arjen Robben's unexpected knee injury.
Mourinho, seeming to take his summer pay-off for granted, is virtually demob happy, as he showed when announcing that he and his kids would be at Earls Court for the wrestling if there is no Champions League semi-final for Chelsea on April 25th.
But whoever follows him will have to prepare to grapple with the real Stamford Bridge bosses.
Meanwhile, Uefa's investigations into the violent scenes at Rome's Stadio Olimpico will also include the scrutiny of Alex Ferguson's criticisms about the referee Herbert Fandel.
"We will look into his comments," a spokesman said of Ferguson's verbal attack on the German official.
Ferguson had claimed his Manchester United side were "playing against 12 men" because of Fandel's officiating in the 2-1 defeat to Roma.
"The next step is to decide whether a disciplinary case should be opened," said the governing body's spokesman. "We need to gather the evidence and see exactly what he has said."
The announcement means Ferguson faces the possibility of a fine when, to many observers, his ire might have been better directed at Paul Scholes, a red card waiting to happen inside the first half. Scholes was reckless in the extreme, giving away four free-kicks inside the opening 34 minutes, but the Scot's argument was that Fandel was influenced by United's opponents.
Guardian Service
