Why is Chelsea Football Club hated so much?
Obviously nobody in their right mind would deny that Roman Abramovich's investment has elevated Chelsea from the plucky underdogs who used to snag a knockout trophy here and there in the late 90s to one of the most intimidating teams that have won almost everything.
That being said, here's my take.
1. They've upset the established order. Look at Arsenal fans whining and complaining throughout this thread and elsewhere for the past decade or so. Chelsea have directly replaced Arsenal as the chief challenger for trophies in England. Arsenal and Liverpool fans have been left to sadly reminisce about their past winnings - while teams like Chelsea and City add trophies to their cabinet in the present. Frankly, I couldn't give less of a rat's rear end what was won in my dad/grand father's time - Look to the present and the future.
2. New, Overseas Fandom. The victors get the praise / backing of the masses. I sure as hell don't think that 300-500 million people live in Manchester - but that is the purported number of fans that United have. Chelsea can't have that?
3. Excessive Spending. FYI, there was no such concept called Financial Fair Play when Abramovich came about. No rules have thus been broken. Spending has been curbed in recent years so as to comply with FFP, else we'd have Cavani/Falcao - the last pieces of the puzzle. (Concepts such as amortisation have to be considered while reporting amounts spent and received. Do check out Jake Cohen's articles on SBnation which explains it a lot better than I possibly could.)
Recently 76 clubs have been ordered to explain their finances. Chelsea is NOT one of them. Well, well.
With the recent policy of buying highly rated talent and loaning them out, Chelsea are in a win-win situation. The best young talent make it into the team, and the ones who sadly couldn't make it get sold for a profit. Thibaut Courtois - easily the young goalkeeper in the world was bought for approximately 7 million - an incredibly low value - seeing how good he is today. Kevin de Bruyne was obtained for about 7 mill and sold for 20 million Euros. Not bad, considering he didn't score for Chelsea even once! And it's not as though these youngsters are brought against their will - they'd still have had to make it at their original clubs.
And if God forbid, there was a financial crisis - after selling off the players with massive wages, there are plenty of classy young talent ready to fill the void.
After all, it's cool if a team buys a bunch of stars, christens them the Galacticos, later breaks the world record for a transfer twice in one window, and eventually breaks the record again despite having the likes of di Maria and Jese Rodriguez at the same position as long as evil Chelsea don't do it. Bayern Munich poaching the best talents of their immediate opponents in the Bundesliga is perfectly acceptable, isn't it?
4. Paucity of English Talent. It is unfortunate that Chelsea doesn't have a greater number of local talent - but it's not as though England is the hotbed of such local talent. Look at the top young English talent at United - Welbeck and Cleverley. (Please muffle your laughter.) Arsenal, Liverpool and Southampton have some highly touted talents - but the jury is still out as to whether they are good enough to win anything.
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