Rafa Plays Into Fergie's Hands

So much has happened since my last blog entry that I could write all day and still have surplus news, well not really news any more I guess.

The best place to start has to be in the Liverpool press conference room where Rafa joined previous title-hoping managers, Wenger and King Kev, in the mind-games malarkey with Fergie. Fergie always wins, perhaps so often that his kosher is in need of doubt?

The premeditated statement was appropriately labelled 'Rafa's Rant' but the Spaniard was just the voice of many people's opinion and he will have certainly won a few friends last Friday afternoon, even if his one with Fergie died out.

We all know how much whiskey-nose Fergie loves his red wine after a match and I wouldn't be foolish in suspecting that Rafa will not be on the Scot's invitation list for a post-match beverage when the two title contenders clash on the 14th March.

Meanwhile Chelsea face a tumbling season which started so well and Big Phil is becoming the latest manager to face a media rollicking after a string of poor results put the World Cup winning coach under scrutiny.

Rumours of a rift between the English contingent and the foreign imports are surfacing and despite the Chelsea camp denying it wholeheartedly the performance on Sunday does not show much evidence to the claim.

Big Phil has problems to deal with at Chelsea

The London club were spineless and with little options on the bench in the offensive frame of mind meant that when they went one down it seemed impossible for Chelsea to grab any momentum and crawl back into a game they thoroughly deserved to lose by the full time margin.

Another rumour lurking around the back pages is Roman Abramovic's reported loss of interest with his toy that has progressively tired as each year has wore on in his 5 year reign. The evidence behind this? The fact that, seemingly, the Russian billionaire is unwilling to invest any more millions into new singings, that are desperately needed to save any title hopes. Furthermore, the £12 million raised from sending left-back Wayne Bridge up north to the blue half of Manchester has, reportedly, gone straight into Roman's savings. The credit crunch could be hitting Roman's empire more strongly than others, but a simple £20 million for a new forward is surely still pennies to a multi-billionaire?

On the other hand, Chelsea's target of becoming self-efficient and to break even by 2010 could play a substantial part in the lack of spending but another Chelsea goal, of becoming the world's greatest club by 2014, would indicate the need for expenditure.

How exactly do you measure becoming the world's greatest club? Winning the World Club Championship would, theoretically, indicate this but ironically the clubs in competition for this supposedly prestigious trophy are not of a world-class status.

So winning the Champions League in 2014 would prove that Chelsea are the world's best club? Maybe in that particular season, but no Champions League winning team has retained the trophy which would surely be needed if Chelsea are to gain prestige amongst the trophy saturated cabinets occupied by the likes of Manchester United and Real Madrid.

One guidance in setting targets tends to be to make them measurable. Is becoming the best club in the world by 2014 measurable? I'm not convinced it is and if it is, Chelsea have a long way to go before scoring that goal - or any goal for that matter!