Chelsea are simply awesome. Not awesome in the way a teenager were to describe the definition of ‘cool’ but awesome in the sense that their wanton goal sprees against West Brom and Wigan have left many people shaking their heads in wonder and with an impending dread for the months that will unfold. It has left no doubt that the Premier League is merely a series of mismatches between expensively acquired and technically assured Goliaths and expensively acquired but nevertheless limited Davids. Can anything further be read into Blackpool’s annihilation by Arsenal at the Emirates after their opening day jubilation, other then a sense that this is a League comprising a small elite of technocrats and artisans putting lesser mortals to the sword on a weekly basis?
The arguments for parity are worthy. If there was a cap on how much a club can spend on new players or what they pay their current staff, perhaps we would see a more level playing field. Players would consequently make their career choices based on a club’s prestige and history rather than the promise of weekly fortunes and extravagant luxuries. Or they might even seek the challenge of playing for an unfashionable side and see how far such an endeavour would take them? A West Ham supporting friend of mine this week lamented the club’s current predicament when compared to the truly exciting clutch of young players that came up through their ranks in the early part of the last decade. He was clear in his belief that had the likes of Jermain Defoe, Michael Carrick, Joe Cole, Rio Ferdinand, and Frank Lampard stuck around and developed a sense of team loyalty and a sense of thumbing their noses at the bigger beasts, then maybe the club’s recent history would have been very different to the stagnant quagmire they currently reside him.
