Roman Empire crumbling to pieces...

In this beautiful game, it's the most irrelevant and seemingly meaningless moments that have the most destructive of effects.

If Michael Essien had closed down Jason Koumas before the Welshman's cross was volleyed home by Emile Heskey at Stamford Bridge last April, Chelsea could very well be the reigning Premier League champions. If John Terry's posture when taking penalties leaned him forward instead of back, Chelsea could very well be the reigning European champions. If.

Would we be talking about a 'Chelsea crisis' if they were the domestic and European champions? Yes. Why? Because, if Manchester United were playing as poorly as Chelsea currently are, it would be reported as 'the end of an era'. For Roman Abramovich though, his (and this current Chelsea side's) era ended in September 2007.

When Jose Mourinho left the Fulham Road, it was reminiscent of the effect Elvis had on rock 'n' roll when the US Army came a-calling. This arrogant, pompous but wholly unique and adventurous creation ripped apart, abandoned by its talisman and leader.

Whereas rock 'n' roll could count on the emergence of dedicated followers and students to carry its weight and message to new generations, Mourinho was the past, present and future of Chelsea Football Club. He had built a side, moulded and sculpted it, observed as it challenged and overcame the tired and generic big-two of Manchester United and Arsenal. He revelled in how his team were ridiculed by many but praised by those that mattered. The Great One's individuality may have been taken as 'runt-of-the-litter' upon his arrival in England but since he's walked away, the Premier League has returned to a valley of dull mediocrity both on and off the field.

Both Avram Grant and Luiz Felipe Scolari's tenures at Stamford Bridge were bland and largely forgettable. The Israeli would counter-claim by pointing to the fact that his side came within two points and a lick of paint of winning both the Premier and Champions League. But it was never his side. The players belonged to Mourinho, the club belonged to Mourinho. It was the talent possessed by Terry, Carvalho, Lampard, Drogba et al that pushed Chelsea to the brink of greatness in May of last year, not the managerial nous of Grant.

Scolari tried in vain to make changes and put his stamp on the side. The acquisition of unreliable Deco last summer was the first attempt, his last being the the recent purchase of the patchy Ricardo Quaresma. Off the pitch, there were well-documented problems but more importantly, on the pitch, the side were a mess. The 3-0 defeat at the hands of Manchester United was not just embarassing but humbling. Mourinho's players - Ballack, Mikel, Drogba and Lampard skulked around Old Trafford disinterested and jaded. Scolari's big summer signing Deco was substituted at half-time.

With Hiddink seemingly a short-term solution, the onus falls on the shoulders of Roman Abramovich to decide whether or not he wants a leader once again. Whether or not he wants a team again. Like any empire, Chelsea needs to be dismantled before being rebuilt. But to do that, you need an emperor. Jose Mourinho remains the only one to have ever graced Stamford Bridge.

What not to wear...

And so AIG's financial situation across the water has ensured that yet another sponsor's name will adorn Manchester United's jerseys from 2011. The current sponsorship deal with the insurance 'giants' nets United 14 milion sterling a year and the ceasing of this particular relationship ensures that another fiscal organisation's involvement with a sports franchise comes to a rather abrupt end. AIG have already ended their involvement with the US Davis Cup tennis team.

Look a little deeper though and shirt sponsorship has long provided a 'quick peep' into distinctive social and cultural norms. If we rewind to the early nineties, it was the world of electronics that had global communities simultaneously agog and companies like JVC, Commodore and Sharp snapped up the big deals with then English First Division sides Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester United respectively. Though these clubs had begun to buy into the advent of overseas sponsors (as had, bizarrely enough, Coventry City through their affiliation with Peugeout), strong and traditional British 'ways of life', mostly beverage-related, found their names on the fronts of jerseys - most famously Carlsberg (Liverpool), McEwans (Blackburn and Glasgow Rangers) and Greenalls (Newcastle - who also pin-pointed Newcastle Brown Ale as a key shirt sponsor in the mid-nineties). It was clear that commercialisation was the last thing on club chairman's minds and the provincial town-isms belied what the Premier League would become - Middlesbrough's deal with the Evening Gazette was terribly endearing though somewhat worrysome and West Ham's partnership with Dagenham Motors was a script-writers dream.

Such innocence though existed in more 'exotic' locations too. On the continent, respective countries tended to adopt the same approach to sponsorship though on a more cosmopolitan level as clubs identifed key national treasures as their perfect partner. In Serie A, these tended to be famous national food companies - think Danone (Juventus), Parmalat (Parma) and Barilla (Roma). Memorably, Fiorentina carried the name of ice-cream makers Sammontana on their shirts during the mid-nineties. In the Bundesliga, the heavy-hitters paid tribute to Germany's powerful industrious heritage - Bayern Munich proudly wore Opel's name across the front of their shirts for well over a decade. When Mattias Sammer lifted the 1997 European Cup as captain of Borussia Dortmund meanwhile, it was the name of local insurance company Die Continentale that jumped out from those bright neon shirts.

But, the days of local or even national companies putting their name to a local side are long gone. As the financial malaise continues to eat away at the beautiful game, clubs have spent the last decade tying down lucrative sponsorship deals with whoever can provide them with the most income. Tradition, history, heritage seem to be buzz-words of a lost generation ago but, in fact, it was a generation ago when the process of meaningless affiliation begun. In the mid-nineties, Paris St. Germain maximised their profits by agreeing for two sponsors to adorn their red and blue torsos as the name of French beer-manufacturer Tourtel sat below that of, firstly, US computer company Commodore and the following season, Spanish car giants SEAT. Any trace of French shirt sponsorship with the club was wiped when OPEL came on board in 1995.

The 'lost years' for shirt sponsorship came with the new millennium with clubs attempting to appeal to Generation X+. Arsenal and Manchester United ended 14 and 16 year old deals with JVC and Sharp respectively and signed instead with SEGA and VODAFONE. In Italy meanwhile, the newly crowned Scudetto champions Lazio joined forces with Siemens after previous deals with Italian food company Cirio and the Bank of Rome. Inter's continued Milanese relationship with tyre magnates Pirelli is merely the exception that proves the rule.

Like Inter though, other clubs have taken great pride in the way they deal with shirt sponsorship, not least Catalan giants Barcelona. In September 2006, the infamously traditionally sponsor-less club agreed a five-year 'collaborative agreement' with UNICEF, the terms of which sees Barca carry the UNICEF logo on their jerseys while annually contributing €1.5 million to the organisation's projects. It had been believed Barcelona were ready to sign an agreement with Austrian online betting company 'BetandWin' (BWin) but the deal fell through when the club felt it would be uncomfortable to be associated with such an entity.

Real Madrid didn't seem to mind however - in February 2007, they signed a 75 million euro contract with BWin and with that, the modern-day ruthlessness of shirt sponsorship had been confirmed - the pure, evangelical, vacant strips of the greatest club in the world tarnished with the ugliness of such a morbid and irrelevant partner. The conduct of both Madrid and Barcelona regarding their respective sponsorship deals is striking and in an age when perhaps the relationship between a jersey and the name that's emblazoned across its front may not seem important anymore, it's refreshing to know that some people still care.

More on Kaka...

To keep with the football finances theme, here's a piece from When Saturday Comes back in 1995. When things appear gloomy, nostalgia, it seems, is the order of the day:

Remember Steve Daley? If you do, then it’s because his transfer from Wolves in 1979 cost Manchester City over £1 million and, arguably, Malcolm Allison his job. His wasn’t the first, or last, seven-figure move of the time, but Daley’s is the name most often recalled to sum up that frenzied period, principally because he was hugely overpriced: a good enough player for what was then the First Division, but never a serious contender for international caps. His name comes to mind because the transfer market is as mad now as it was in 1979. A bargain these days is any player moving between Premier League clubs for less than £2m.

The Collymore case illustrates one of the causes of the grotesque inflation in fees, a new outbreak of a particularly virulent disease that occasionally strikes at football and for which there is no known cure: macho shopping. Everton had barely finished parading the Cup around Wembley than chairman Peter Johnson was excitedly burbling to all and sundry about how much money would be made available to Joe Royle to buy players. The team had had their turn in the spotlight, and now the chairman wanted his. He let it be known that an £8m payout was well within his range and the press were told all about the faxed bid for that amount sent to Forest. A year ago, Everton or Liverpool could have got three or four Premier League players for the eight million they were prepared to spend on just one.

Other clubs not bankrolled by millionaires now feel under pressure to keep up. Alan Sugar, playing up to his self-appointed role as the sceptical outsider astonished by what he continues to discover about the football industry, recently suggested that the latest round of over-spending will widen the gap between the top few clubs and the rest, with championships and cups becoming the exclusive preserve of the elite within the elite. While some of the bigger clubs have made themselves vulnerable, as in 1979, those courting the largest disasters are the underachievers, eternally hoping for better things – more than half the Premier League, in other words. Sir John Hall and others repeatedly talk the language of free market economics in relation to football, and what we’re seeing now should be a familiar sight to economists everywhere – though one about which many of them tend to keep quiet. A passing historian has just told us that in the 17th century the Netherlands was brought to its financial knees by a frenzy of speculation in the value of tulip bulbs; that might be hard to imagine, but after Warren Barton and Stan Collymore’s England debuts, arguably it’s even harder to get your head around the idea that many football clubs are going bananas and risking huge sums of money on a couple of English players. But it’s happening, and the fever has spread to produce an interest in more exotic varieties as well. Worse still, it’s a racing certainty that some of these big transfers will go wrong: there just aren’t enough trophies or places in Europe to enable all this summer’s headline-makers to finish the season with smiles on their faces.

Just as it’s hard to sympathize with the ex-millionaires who threw themselves out of office blocks as a result of the Wall Street Crash, so those managers who get their fingers badly burnt shouldn’t come to us looking for tea and sympathy. But just as those (apocryphal?) American stockbrokers apparently landed on the occasional innocent passerby, so the inhabitants of the lower levels in football have something to fear. The annual turnover from transfers last season was squillions more than, to pick a year at random, 1992, when Blackburn got promoted, but a smaller proportion of it went to the lower divisions than ever before. And this summer has been worse.Several smaller clubs have reaped the benefits of sell-on clauses which entitle them to a share of the fee when a player they have sold moves on again. But if clubs are spending less time seeking out talent at lower levels then there is less and less likelihood of them unearthing players like Warren Barton (who was good value when he joined Wimbledon from Maidstone), Chris Armstrong (originally with Wrexham), or Stan Collymore (a Palace reserve whose career was revived at Southend).

In their panic to buy big, Premier League clubs just aren’t thinking straight. Did Arsenal, for example, really have to pay as much as £7.5m for Dennis Bergkamp? Consider his situation. He had an unhappy time in Italy and wasn’t going to stay. Where else might he go? Many European clubs are a short of cash at the moment or else have a full quota of overseas players, and he’s too young to wind down his career at home in Holland. His price would surely have come down quickly because, though Inter would be keen to recoup the money spent on Ince, they wouldn’t want to be stuck paying the wages of a reserve who didn’t want to be there anyway (a problem that could repeat itself with Ince – and may also be resolved by Arsenal again forking out in a year’s time).It is impossible to predict when the transfer mania will end. As with boom-and-bust cycles in real life, there isn’t an obvious solution, because people always want to believe that this time it will be different, and there’s no persuading them otherwise. So we’re going to sit back, stick pins in dolls of those managers and chairmen we’d most like to see get their comeuppance, and always wear hard hats when we go to grounds with nice, high roofs from which people can jump.

We've come a long way, baby...

Because of lots of different things going on, I've been incredibly lazy in getting around to regular updates over the last month - deepest apologies.

But let's get right back into it.

The 100million pound man:

So, it has come to this. Should any of us be surprised that in 2009, a player is reported to be the subject of a 100% serious 100 million pound bid from a Premier League club.? The answer is no but, that hasn't stopped miscellaneous red-top and broadsheet hyperbole from being in awe of the story.

The hard fact remains that everything is eventual. When Brian Clough signed Trevor Francis for a million pounds from Birmingham City in 1979, people scoffed - 'No player is worth 1 million pounds...ever'. Fast forward thirty years and the English Premier League, maybe even global association football in general, find themselves in a position whereby one million pounds gets you a modern day equivalent of a bag of jerseys.

It is interesting to note that it's only been in the last fifteen years that the logic regarding transfer fees has ceased to be even vaguely mentioned in the same breath as 'business acumen'. Rewind to 1993 and Alan Shearer moved from Southampton to Blackburn for a then British record of 3.3 million quid. Andy Cole smashed that record two years later when he joined Manchester United from Newcastle for 5.5 million plus Keith Gillespie...The reason why the Premier League worked within these financial restrictions was because there were clear financial restrictions in place - if clubs required to splash a couple of million on a player then they had to put two on the transfer list.

The way deals were done in England at this time was still incredibly innocent and naive - but in hindsight, refreshingly so. Sir Alex Ferguson tells the story of how Eric Cantona made the move to Old Trafford from Elland Road. The Scot received a call from Leeds United about the possibility of Dennis Irwin moving to Yorkshire. Ferguson dismissed the proposed move but enquired about Eric Cantona. By the end of the day, Fergie had got his man - no fuss, no red tape, no agent fees, no merchandising clause, no last-minute hijacking from other clubs.

So what has happened regarding the transfer of players? There's now a media circus when a deal is struck between two clubs for the most medial of footballers usually because the fee involved is the season budget for lower league clubs. Over the last five years or so, the money has moved to the Premier League. For decades, the best players in the world were drawn to Serie A, the Budesliga, La Liga but never England. Why move there? Old Blighty, stiff upper lips, crumpets and tea, the Queen - no thanks. These players preferred Ferraris, super-model girlfriends, mansions overlooking a Wonder of the World. Alan Shearer returned to his hometown and signed for Newcastle for 15 million pounds in the summer of 1996 - the deal was the world transfer record...for about two days. (The original) Ronaldo moved to Barcelona from PSV in 1996 for 18 million quid. Suddenly, a deal that Newcastle had been finalising and bank-balancing precariously for twelve months previous was ripped to shreds in the blink of an eye.

The Premier League tried in vain to catch up - clubs attempted to entice glamorous continental players. Instead, clubs got pros coming to the end of their careers - Fabrizio Ravenelli was a super signing for Middlesbrough - scoring a hat-trick on his debut against Liverpool. But it always seemed such an incredibly weird relationship between player and club - League of Gentlemen-esque. Ravanelli didn't exactly warm himself to the supporters or his team-mates by criticising the training regime and the area of Middlesbrough itself. Hutton Rudby was a long way from Turin and it was clear that clubs would need time to get the process right...

With the concentration of power now permanently fixed within the Premier League, it's taken the FA a decade to establish the League as the self-proclaimed 'best in the world' but are we talking quality of football or quality of life for its players? When Manchester City fork out 10 million quid for an out-of-favour full back Wayne Bridge (signed by Chelsea for 7 million when he was first-choice) and when Liverpool splash over 20 million on Robbie Keane, one can only look on in amazement. Even Manchester United were held to ransom by Spurs when they signed Dimi Berbatov - paying, at least, between 5 and 7 million more than they should have.

There appears very little research as to the overall costing of modern day footballers across the Barclays Premier League. Why? Because they don't have to worry about the price. Where does the proposed Kaka fee for 100 million plus originate? How does a club come up with a bid like that? When Zizou Zidane moved to Real Madrid for 46.7 million, the fee appeared bulked up with clauses and various other financial elements. 100 million seems like a figure plucked from thin air and it's incredibly worrying when the richest businessmen in the world conduct such unhealthy and bizarre business practices as fanciful and badly-researched as the proposed Kaka deal.

Half of me wants Kaka to come and play for City. Because when the deal falls flat on its face and the club are relegated, perhaps the lunatics will have eventually left the asylum.

The dream is over...

A bad day for Roy Keane, an even worse day for Sunderland.

Keane's two and a half year romance with the North East club has come to an end but there's no 'other woman', no errors of judgement. The relationship has just gone stale.

Is it the right reason? Only time will tell but for me, it's not. The psycho-babble emanating from Keane after the Bolton defeat was odd and a final nail in the coffin. 'Manager Roy' is an act, a far cry from his actual persona. He cuddles up to the press (perhaps with the notable exception of Richard Sadlier), cooing and oohing to them, attempting to fit in. All he does though is stand out. The 'honesty', the 'nice guy', the altar-ego. 'Manager Roy' is not a real person. It's a figment of an imagination and someone who's never looked comfortable playing the part. The real Keane is the snarling, downbeat perfectionist with the intense stare. The ex-manager of Sunderland was theatre, a constant performance. Has Keane been living a lie for the past two and a half seasons? Perhaps, but once again, we'll never know.

This was a very Keane-like thing to do. It seems rash, ill-timed and badly managed. Similarities will duly be drawn between Sunderland 2008 and Saipan 2002 but it's unfair to be so simple with the analysis. Dig deeper though and an interesting pattern emerges. With Ireland, Keane felt like he was in an untenable position and that his character had been forever stained. Personnel clashes aside, Keane felt that if he stayed, he was a hypocrite. With Sunderland though, the decision was not forced, no personnel clashes have been apparent and in Niall Quinn and the rest of the board, Keane had allies - making the Sunderland boardroom systemically different from the vast majority of their Premier League counterparts. Keane would like to think he has taken the moral high ground and walked away from Sunderland for the benefit of the club but, like Saipan, there are no benefits here. No one is rewarded in this situation - his decision has negative consequences for his team and supporters alike. In both scenarios, six years apart, Keane decided that his actions were selfless and in true anti-hero style, benefitting every one else but him. Unfortunately, he's been wrong both times.

Keane 'the player' lambasted his fellow team-mates who wilted when the pressure was on, when the big game passed them by. As a youngster when playing underage for Rockmount in Cork, Keane's mantra of 'the bigger they are, the harder they fall' eradicated his own reservations about his compact physique. This mentality served him throughout his career, particularly when laying the foundations at Nottingham Forest. Making his debut at Anfield and brushing off Steve McMahon early in the game was never intimidating - he had worked hard for this and wasn't going to let it pass him by. And he never did. Newcastle, St. James' Park, February 1996. Juventus, Stadio Delle Allpi, April 1999. Portugal, Lansdowne Road, June 2001.

Now however, he has settled for second best. He has wilted under the pressure and not stood up to the fight. Sunderland are far from being in an unredeemable situation. Just five points currently separate the club from the top ten and a quick glance in the direction of Roy Hodgson and Gary Megson and Keane would've seen the consequence of one defeat in five games. Are we led to believe that the current squads of Fulham and Bolton are better than that of Sunderland?

We're going to hear an awful lot about Keane's transfers over the next few days and the majority of it will be nonsense. In actual fact, the amount of money spent by Keane on this group of players is fairly reasonable considering their promotion two years ago and their TV rights. Some signings were incredibly questionable but other managers have bought far worse while at far bigger clubs. The acquisitions of Djibril Cisse and El Hadji Diouf were clever - troublesome on the pitch, guaranteed to enrage the opposition but, reliable. Diouf was one of Bolton's most effective performers last season, missing just 4 league matches for Bolton. Ciise meanwhile was prolific in France with Marseille and has scored some very important goals for Keane already this season. It's at the back where Keane has struggled badly and he needed someone a little more authoritarian than Anton Ferdinand in August.

The upshot of all of this is that Sunderland will struggle now. Many people said that the club were in a relegation battle but picking up six points in their next four games would see them rocket up the table and the Xmas fixture list has been very unkind to some clubs currently in the bottom half of the table. Sunderland though had a couple of very nice games to look forward to after United this weekend - West Brom at home, Hull away and Blackburn on Wearside. Six points from those games was very achievable but now, any point will be a bonus. A lack of stability and familiarity coupled with the 'bedding-in' period for the new manager and Sunderland will run out of time very quickly. At least two more players will arrive in January with at least two going in the opposite direction and things could turn messy very quickly.

For Keane, the future looks uncertain. He'll look at himself in the mirror tomorrow morning and tell himself this was the right decision. He'll take Triggs for a walk and maybe ask him for his take on things and he'll tell his Master the truth for he might be the only one who knows who the real Roy Keane is.

A worthy winner...

And so Cristiano Ronaldo has picked up the Ballon d'Or trophy and has been suitably rewarded for a sensational last twelve months. Unfortunately for him, another accolade will mean more queer-eyed and biased analysis and mis-guided scrutiny from people with a clear personal dislike for the Portuguese.

The deep-lying fact that Ronaldo scored 42 goals last season and almost single-handedly propelled United to the domestic title (Europe was a much more all-round team affair though you can't argue with THAT header against Roma or the opener in the Champions League final) is lost on every one of his detractors. They tend to focus on, amongst other things, his 'diving', pointless showboating and petulance. They preach that Ronaldo is a horribly poor example for young footballers to follow and that he is responsible for the decline of the beautiful game. What's really intriguing is that the majority of these 'experts' played in teams and during eras when to be the best meant being the best no matter what. In sport, no one remembers losers. Winning is what counts. Diego Maradona, Mexico City, 1986.

It's revolting to think that just last week, Eamon Dunphy referred to Ronaldo as a 'symptom of the cancer within the game'. Players like him are the reasons people attend football matches. The 'old pro' brigade have never attracted attention. People passionate about anything look to passionate people to show them the light and to entice and seduce them. Think back to the foundations of the Barclays Premier League...when SKY attempted to market games like Swindon against Sheffield United. Dull, grey, lifeless. Even the big sides' big names lended themselves to dreary and depressed personas - Rush, Shearer, Le Tiss, et al. With the influx of continental players, the league found a flair, a glamour and suddenly guys like Di Canio, Zola, Bergkamp and Cantona turned it on, turned us on.

When people refer to Ronaldo's negative traits, I feel like asking whether or not someone would prefer to watch an imperfect entertainer or a flawless robot, remembering that one is real, the other not. It's also worth noting that the greatest players that have played the game have all been far from perfect and it's the chinks in their armour that draw us toward them. Ronaldo is 23 years of age and as a young man, still has a lot to learn. Perhaps we should let him do so before being so quick to judge him. Perhaps it's about time we congratulate him on being so good.

That's the way to do it...

According to the Sun newspaper, millions of ITV viewers saw a naked Histon player as cameras filmed the team's reaction to their victory over Leeds and next round draw against Swansea.

Magnificent, I say. This is the type of romance the FA Cup brings and we haven't even reached the 3rd round yet. What next? The Barrow chairman and sub goalkeeper seen 'in flagrante' as cameras burst into the Riverside dressing rooms after the non-league side record a famous victory...

I reckon this is a harsh lesson for every TV station looking to document that 'real' moment of the outpouring of human emotion - when it's done in a football dressing room, lads could be wearing no clothes.

For anyone watching ITV's coverage, did you too feel compelled to join in with the Leeds fans chanting 'ITV are fucking shit'? Bring back the Beeb, lads.

Though, at full-time I also joined in with the Histon fans who sang, 'Leeds United are fucking shit'...Actually, that was only me. The Histon fans were too busy taking off their clothes and walking in front of the TV cameras...Hmmm...What a great idea for the Swansea game...