Well, I'm going to miss him anyway...
The disappearance of The Special One from the English game was matched by the appearance of oodles of cash to Dietrological Gold clients who were advised on the 66/1 available on Mourinho being the first Premiership managerial casualty of the new season while everybody else was bleating on about Martin Jol and Juande Ramos.
Chelsea are going to miss Mourinho also.
By some distance, Mourinho was the most astute manager in the league in his ability to react to real time occurrences on the pitch. His skill in dovetailing his intuition with pre-match analysis resulted in Chelsea achieving much more than should have been the case when one considers their dysfunctional hierarchy and organisational structure. Two Premiership titles, two Champions League semi finals and a handful of peripheral cup competitions and trophies are just reward for the tactical nous of Mourinho in his time in West London. It is astonishing that he achieved so much in such an atmosphere as exists at Stamford Bridge. Personally, I'll also miss his blunt arrogance when fending off the banal irrelevencies of media journalism.
Mourinho resigned on Wednesday night and contacted the senior players to inform them of his decision prior to going into his meeting with Abramovich. Inevitably, Chelsea, in their terse hastily-assembled one sentence press release, claimed that mutual consent was the dynamic but the lack of a proper and immediate response from the club together with any reference in the press release to what Mourinho had achieved for Chelsea is suggestive of reaction rather than anything approaching a proactive strategy. Whenever the Chelsea hierarchy interact with the press, reading between the lines is the sole path to reality, end of story...
The experience of Chelsea offers a prime example of why the Arsenal board and management are totally correct in their opposition to the attempted takeover being perpetrated by alleged heroin dealer, Alisher Usmanov. Usmanov upped his stake in the club to 21% on Monday by purchasing the shares of Birol Nadir and Lansdowne Partners although it is understood than Stan Kroenke is not willing to sell out to or join up with the Uzbek oligarch which considerably alters the dynamics behind a hostile takeover. David Dein is pushing, in his position as chairman of Red And White Holdings (R&WH) - such a quaint footballing title - for a reinstatement on the board which may result in the Arsenal chairman, Peter Hill-Wood, having once again to speak with the fork-tongued one despite recently refusing to meet with Dein saying that he's already put up with "25 years of listening to him". As the old board are solid, Usmanov is dependent on hoovering up the shares of minor shareholders and it is indicative of the type of individuals that have bought into Premiership football on the fringes as opposed to the more major stakes that these very people are now the major concern of The Arsenal Supporters Trust (AST). By selling to Usmanov, these shareholders are preparing the ground for a major takeover battle with the likes of Sky, Usmanov, Dein, the Russian betting markets, the mafia and, entertainingly, Bjorgolfur Gudmundsson (the real owner of West Ham United) on the one side and, in the other corner, we have Wenger, Fiszman, the AST, the Arsenal fans, the Queen and Mother Teresa.
Below, I'll go on to explain why I think that the Arsenal/Chelsea dichotomy is entirely indicative of where the English Premiership currently resides and I'll also share the reasons why I believe that Chelsea are rotten to the core which, with the absence of their one strategic genius, will lead to difficult times ahead.
But first, I'd like to explore the links between Gudmundsson, Magnusson, West Ham United, Landsbanki and the dynamic towards a takeover of Arsenal. Gudmundsson is the Mr Big behind the Hammers. Although, to date (a situation about to change), Eggert has been given his year in the spotlight, the puppet strings are undoubtedly wound around Gudmundsson's fingers. A reformed alcoholic who narrowly avoided prison when receiving a suspended sentence in his native Iceland in the 1990's for tax fraud, Gudmundsson made his billions (Forbes Rich List Number 799) by moving into the cowboy territory that was post-Soviet Russia and turning a Leningrad soft drinks company into a St Petersburg brewery with rumours of very close links to the Russian mafia - a point enhanced by his telecoms business in Bulgaria where, I know from the personal experience of working and living in next-door România, the mafia is ubiquitous in business. It was, no doubt, during his time in Russia that Gudmundsson met with Usmanov. Gudmundsson's Landsbanki are the bank serving as brokers to R&WH assisting in their strategy to buy up Arsenal shares prior to launching a hostile takeover. In effect, this results in the warped matrix that indicates that the powers behind West Ham United are aiding the change of ownership of another Premiership team. Now I'm sure that there must be some Premier League rule against this sort of thing although, with Richard Scudamore and his bunch of crooks in charge at league headquarters, one may never be certain. And, it should be remembered that the Premier League are intrinsically tied to West Ham and Pini Zahavi's MSI through their shared roles in the corruption that allowed the Hammers to avoid relegation last season.
Despite his profits via banking and brewing and his tax fraud and his business links to both the Russian mafia and a baby-boiler, perhaps, somewhere in the background, there is something that provides a picture of Gudmundsson the man. Here is one such image. Gudmundsson is married to Thora Hallgrimsson, who was previously married to and had four children by George Lincoln Rockwell, the founder of the American Nazi Party. Gudmundsson was so riled when Edda, a publishing house that he personally owns, were publishing a book detailing his wife's close links to aryan supremacists that he had the whole publication pulped. Gudmundsson then proceeded to attempt to buy DV, a daily Icelandic tabloid, simply to close it down because of its coverage of the missing chapter relating to Thora. Bless.
Anyway, getting back to the real point behind this post. Chelsea and Arsenal represent the opposite ends of the Premiership continuum. Chelsea have attempted to buy success by selling out to the worst type of money; Arsenal have succeeded, with the aberration of Dein, to put football before the global betting markets. Via the enlightened transfer policy of Arsène Wenger, Arsenal have spent, in nett terms, virtually nothing in the player market compared with the quarter of a billion pounds that has leaked from Abramovich's wallet. And what have they got for their money? Short-term success. Chelsea have bought three years of unparallelled (for them) achievement by buying over-priced players at their peak (ie they are about to go into decline), players linked to the agents and murky underworld associated with the club and, in particular, Mourinho's input when it was allowed. Chelsea are now stale. How much would you get on the open market for the likes of Lampard, Shevchenko and Ballack now? Even Michael Essien has been underperforming.
The organisation is rotten, there is no kinship just an atmosphere dominated by the short term dollar and making as much illicit money on the side as is humanly possible. Chelsea are very closely and compromisingly associated with underground Moscow bookmakers. The main agent hovering in the wings, Pini Zahavi, has an arrest warrant hanging over him in Brazil for alleged money laundering and Kia Joorabchian, of Carlos Tevez/ the Premier League/ West Ham United fame is always in the shadows. Positions are filled by cronyism as Abramovich layers the hierarchy with yes-men who will respond to Roman's rants. Avram Grant and Frank Arneson were brought in behind Mourinho's back and it is they and Abramovich who must take the ultimate responsibility for the lack of professionalism in the transfer market. It is also them who will be in charge at Manchester United on Sunday (the first $1 billion global betting market?). In a glorious piece of spin and/or self-promotion, Carlos Queiroz chose yesterday to announce that he might be tempted to step down as Manchester United number 2!
Abramovich has been reported as saying that he wishes for Chelsea to win more stylishly. Perhaps he should take lessons from the Iraq national team hierarchy when Saddam's son would have the players feet beaten for poor performances. But, there is a serious point here. Chelsea are not going to achieve creatively beautiful football on the pitch when the culture and atmosphere within the club is, at best, rancid and, at worst, criminal. Players are not going to risk their future career prospects for such an entity and team spirit at Chelsea is non-existent. Abramovich cannot buy everything, including love. He also is unable to buy the Champions League. As we recently pointed out, not since 1990/91 has a non-G14(18) team won the European Cup/ Champions League. Chelsea are not part of this elite club and are not on the reserve list although they will, however, no doubt be one of the lucky clubs receiving a call when the G14(18) expands to fifty clubs in a few months time.
We would suggest that, on a business level, the worst strategy for Chelsea would have been to undermine your prize asset and, yet, that is what Roman Abramovich has decided is, actually, the best course of action. Shevchenko only came to London because Abramovich wanted him and the £30 million transfer fee was on the idiot side of shrewd. Mourinho picked the team that he believed would perform best on the pitch and, quite reasonably, the sulky Ukrainian was often left out. It is our understanding that Mourinho was highly pressured by Abramovich to select Shevchenko for Chelsea's last two games after his goal-scoring performance for his national side against Italy. Mourinho, knowing that a partially fit player returning from a heavy duty international encounter at the other side of Europe would be a liability, objected but was overruled resulting in the two debacles that have been the last two matches of Mourinho's tenure. In those matches, at home to Blackburn and the mighty Rosenborg, Chelsea's attack, led by super-Shevchenko, have had 39 shots on goal resulting in just one goal. In this indirect way, Abramovich brought Mourinho's resignation on himself.
Compare with Arsenal... Arsenal are top of the league, sauntered past double UEFA Cup winning Sevilla 3-0 last night in the Champions League and are playing stunning total football reminiscent of the great Ajax team. And the majority of them are just kids. No links to underground betting markets are to be found here. Strategically managed and, with Dein's exception, responsibly owned, Arsenal have managed to create a culture of creativity and togetherness which results in everybody pulling in one direction for the good of everybody. The post-game huddle is a psychological stroke of genius and the style and performances of today's Arsenal are a striking example of the benefits of keeping the mafia money out of the game. Unfortunately, as we posted recently (see: http://footballisfixed.blogspot.com/2007/08/arsnes-arsenal-about-to-go-arse-over.html), we believe that certain Premier League bosses are actively engaged in aiding the takeover of the Premiership by the highly liquid global football betting markets and the status of Arsenal, by necessity, will have to be undermined. We expect numerous outrageous refereeing decisions against the Gunners on grim northern playing fields in the coming months!
The Premiership offers such a broad range in club structures that one might think that, in an supposed democracy, government might wish to intervene or liaise with the footballing authorities regarding individuals like Abramovich, Usmanov, Shinawatra, Gaydamak, Hicks, Gillett, Yeung etc and their strategy of turning of English Premiership football into a massively abusive and corrupt international betting market. Sports Minister Gerry Sutcliffe's refusal to go anywhere near the Shinawatra affair together with Gordon Brown's dismissive response to the letter he received yesterday from Michel Platini would suggest otherwise. Platini continues to struggle against the realpolitik of the UEFA family. Platini wrote letters to all European governmental leaders asking for their help in saving football from the influence of money men whom he claims are ruining the modern game. Platini quite reasonably states: "A serious threat hangs over the development of European football: the malign and ever-present influence of money". His argument has been rejected by the prime minister and Downing Street last night issued a statement maintaining that the issues raised by Platini were best dealt with by the Premier League.
Not when the Premier League is working alongside the malignant money, it ain't, pal...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
