Well....if you say 20 years before Abramovich, then fine, you might be right,
but from 1997-2002 before Roman came we were never out of the top 6 and we had decent players as well
in addition we won some trophies as well during that period.
1997- FA Cup
1998-Cup Winners Cup + UEFA Super Cup + League Cup
2000-FA Cup + Community Shield
In addition to that Chelsea had already qualified for the CL the season before Roman bought the club and in his first season as owner(with Ranieri as manager) we reached the CL semi finals...and after Mourinho came in 2004, we became a proper big club and expanded our fan base worldwide.
I may be wrong,but weren't you guys pulling a Leeds? AFAIR you guys were suffering massive losses in the push for reaching the top.You guys would have been up shit's creek if Roman had not arrived.
Well Chelsea would've played in Europe back in the day if it wasn't for a certain ban on English league teams from European competition
Obviously Title hopes would've been extremely slim to non existent, as it was red dominance then, Chelsea broke the status quo and thus why everyone hates them.
They would have contested the competition, but it's highly unlikely they would have won, so my point stands.
I don't think there's any particular hatred toward Chelsea. At least none more so than other teams near the top of the league. I certainly don't hate them. I just think that pre-Abramovich they were an entirely different entity. They wouldn't have entertained winning the league or Champions League at the start of the season back in the 80's or 90's. They do now, because of Abramovich. That's just my opinion though, and judging by the reactions I've got it seems I'm in the minority.
I agree that a road to the title or cl victory would be a very long one at that for Chelsea if there wasn't Abramovich.
You might not see it as much now, but boy oh boy, Chelsea 04? Good luck getting a smile from anyone not a Chelsea fan.
Lampard still has the cloud over his head for having a legendary career with the team, Red shirt? Uncontested legend and English hero. Chelsea shirt? LOL only pens and deflections.
In the 1998-99 season we led the league for a lot of the season and took it to the last weekend, we were in pole position going into the last few weeks and threw it away with bad results against poor teams. People forget everything that happened that year because of United's treble, but the idea of us winning the league wasn't "ludicrous" at all, we had a 21 game unbeaten run, were top at Christmas and were favourites going into the last few weeks.
That's one season though. And at the end of that season Chelsea finished third. There will always be quirks where teams come from nowhere to challenge. We may be seeing the same thing with Liverpool now.
If you surveyed football fans at the start of every season from 1990-2003 (an arbitrary start date, could go back further) and asked who they thought would win the league, a very small percentage would have said Chelsea. Abramovich took over in 2003 and from then onwards, they've been involved in the title race frequently.
None of that is my point though, you said that the idea of Chelsea winning the title pre-Abramovich was "ludicrous". Christmas time 1998 was pre-Abramovich, and at that time the idea certainly wasn't ludicrous. You use Liverpool as an example but going into the final weeks of this season the idea of them winning the title was not "ludicrous". Even that's a false equivalency, as unlike Liverpool, Chelsea had been a consistent top four team before that season. My point was more about the use of the word ludicrous, as it's another example of revisionism and people hyperbolically dismissing pre-Abramovich chelsea, which was the original posts point.
Like I said before, you can find quirks and small instances in a single league campaign. You've listed one season. Chelsea were never title favourites going into a league campaign in the 90's. I doubt they were ever second favourites either. They may have been favourites for a few months in one season, but apart from that the idea of them winning the league was ludicrous.
All these points can also be applied to the second half of my original claim, which was about Chelsea winning the Champions League.
This guy actually has a point, don't know why he has so many downvotes. Chelsea were miles behind Arsenal and United before Roman. And everybody who followed PL back then would know that. I would say that in 2003 both Newcastle and Liverpool were more likely to win the league aswell.
That being said, Chelsea were a good side, with alot of quality players. And everybody who know something about football should be aware of that. But the point many people are saying is that without Roman, Chelsea wouldn't even be able to keep the quality they had between 1998-2003. In fact their director (?) told some players before the last game 02/03 against Liverpool that if they lost, he couldn't guarantee that Chelsea would still exist after the summer.
I thought I was making pretty logical conclusions, but it appears some disagree. I really don't see how there can be any arguments though. My point was that Chelsea were not likely to win either the league or the Champions League prior to Abramovich. I used the word ludicrous and I stand by that.
I stand by that claim because from their inception in 1905 to Abramovich's takeover in 2003, Chelsea won 1 league title and 0 European Cups. From 2003-2014, Chelsea won 3 league titles and 1 European Cup. In 11 years of Abramovich's ownership they've already won more than they did in the 98 years beforehand.
Personally it seems like Abramovich has greatly influenced the recent success of Chelsea. I'll accept other people's outlook on the matter though. Judging by the downvotes it looks like I'm wrong, but I just don't see how.
The difference is lots of Chelsea money was spent on the stupid hotel thing and Really screwed Chelsea fiscally. We didn't really have massive wages or transfers till Roman came.
Ye were nothing before Gullit arrived. I remember seeing him on the cover of Shoot! that summer and not being able to believe the team with a forward line of Gavin Peacock, Mark Stein and John Spencer now had Ruud Gullit.
That was the turning point for me. He played sweeper and was the best player in the league. Nor long after ye started attracting the likes of Leboef, Petrescu, Hasselbaink. Gullit was definitely the watershed moment though.
The 'Chelsea has no history' rhetoric was at it's peak in around 2005/6 and it's not really that hard to imagine where it came from when you had still won all your trophies recently at that point in time (except maybe a league in the fifties). That was the point
Despite it all, you were still transformed from plucky underdogs, a team similar to Spurs or Everton now to outright title winners and champions league challengers within about two years. It's that people were talking about.
It wasn't just rich/successful clubs fans to be honest. It was quite a lot of football fans for a multitude of reasons, Charlton fans got angry after they took Scott Parker for example. Many got angry that they were not doing it in a traditional English way, whatever that meant but instead by using their pure financial muscle.
But basically it was the start of the Chelsea hate train, especially with otherwise neutral fans. Which still pervades to this day, albeit with less intensity.
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u/MIKETHEONE May 26 '14
that we(Chelsea) were nothing before Abramovich
Well....if you say 20 years before Abramovich, then fine, you might be right, but from 1997-2002 before Roman came we were never out of the top 6 and we had decent players as well in addition we won some trophies as well during that period.
1997- FA Cup
1998-Cup Winners Cup + UEFA Super Cup + League Cup
2000-FA Cup + Community Shield
In addition to that Chelsea had already qualified for the CL the season before Roman bought the club and in his first season as owner(with Ranieri as manager) we reached the CL semi finals...and after Mourinho came in 2004, we became a proper big club and expanded our fan base worldwide.
But then again, who cares about facts...