[size=x-large][size=large]By selling Mata, Chelsea are saying United are a spent force. They are wrong… this will be the beginning of the end of Moyes' crisis[/size]
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The last player to move between Manchester United and Chelsea was Juan Sebastian Veron. Sir Alex Ferguson probably didn’t think them serious rivals at the time.
That went well. Veron, at £28.1million in July 2001 the most expensive player in British football, was not a success at Manchester United, despite Ferguson’s expletive-littered protestations to the contrary.
Sold for £15m in 2003, he flopped at Chelsea, too. He lasted one season, played 14 games, and scored one goal, on his Premier League debut in a win at Liverpool.
Injury intervened, and it was all downhill from there. When Jose Mourinho arrived a year later, among his first acts was to send Veron to Inter Milan on loan. He never returned.
Juan Mata is different in that Chelsea are making a substantial profit on the deal. Mata cost £23.5m and will be sold to Manchester United for around £37m.
In these days of financial fair play, such a dividend is not to be sniffed at, and to show a profit of more than £13m on a player who cannot get in the team is excellent business.
Mata would probably have been sold in the summer anyway, and after another five months in the cold, possibly at a loss. Chelsea are taking advantage of United’s desperation by forcing a high price. It turns out that Sunday’s 3-1 win was worth a lot more than three points.
And yet Chelsea are also taking a huge risk. In essence, they are coming to the same conclusion as Ferguson 10 years ago: that this rival, although wealthy, is not a threat and one player is not going to affect that.
They are saying that Mata, like Veron, is not good enough for our team and his impact will therefore be limited. And they are saying that an ineffectual squad of footballers cannot be turned around in a matter of weeks, or months, and the consequence of this sale will not be felt for some time.
And on all counts, bar the pure business side, they are wrong. Veron was not really a failure at Chelsea. As a player he bombed, but as a sales tool, he was quite brilliant.
Imagine if Roman Abramovich had not spent his first year in English football acquiring marquee names at extreme prices.
Imagine if, when he initially approached the young manager of Porto, all he had to show for his 12 months in charge was the same group he inherited from previous owner Ken Bates. What would that have said about Chelsea’s ambition?
Special managers are not attracted by owners content to stand still, and nor are special players. So that first summer, Chelsea recruited Veron, Glen Johnson (£6m), Geremi (£7m), Damien Duff (£17m), Wayne Bridge (£7m), Joe Cole (£6.6m), Adrian Mutu (£15.8m), Hernan Crespo (£16.8m) and Claude Makelele (£16.6m).
They did not win the league, or any other title, but when they went to Mourinho, he knew they meant business.
It is the same with Mata. Had this transfer window passed without major recruitment at Manchester United, and the club had then failed to qualify for the Champions League, how much harder would it have been to rejuvenate the squad in the summer?
Now, there is evidence that Moyes, and the owners, will do whatever it takes. By breaking United’s transfer record they will signal their intent to address this slide.
United will not be allowed to slip to the periphery, like Arsenal before the recruitment of Mesut Ozil. They will spend, they will scrap, they will successfully pursue players from the top echelon of the game.
Whatever Mata achieves in a red shirt this season, he is the poster boy for optimism. Last week, Moyes was the man who couldn’t persuade Leighton Baines to leave Everton — now he is the manager who signed Mata. Why have Chelsea afforded him this fortunate break?
It would be easy to blame the demands of financial fair play, were there any suggestion from Chelsea that it played a part in their thought process. The heart-warming version is that the club respected Mata’s ambition to play in the World Cup; the hard-nosed alternative that it was simply too good an offer to turn down.
Mourinho made it clear that Mata’s first-team opportunities would be limited, Chelsea got the game with United out of the way to guard against any nasty surprises, and did the deal when United were at their neediest.
Yet even if that were the case, why solve United’s problems now? Chelsea were emphatically the better team on Sunday. United’s defence was poor, and their front line ineffective, but it is the midfield that should be troubling Moyes. Now was surely the time to rub it in.
Creative players with Mata’s gift are rare. United would find it hard to rebuild in such a competitive market, yet with Adnan Januzaj on one side, Mata on the other and Wayne Rooney and Robin Van Persie fit again, a far more substantial team begins to take shape.
Maybe Mourinho recognised this and noted that United still had Arsenal and Manchester City to play this season, but it remains a big gamble, not least because there is always the chance that Mata hits it off with Rooney, lifts his mood and decides his future. Either way, this should be the beginning of the end of the crisis at Old Trafford.
United may be down right now, but a club of that size is never out. Liverpool have not won the Premier League since its inception but they have been European champions. Even if the League is beyond them now, Manchester United are still competing in two cups.
Moyes is deluded if he thinks United would have the same cachet without Champions League football next season, but they possess a significant financial resource through a commercial arm that sets them apart, and can throw money at a problem in a way their rivals can’t, with UEFA’s blessing.
United have been crying out for a player of Mata’s substance. All the more reason not to sell him, then. It will be cast as a bold move, a brave move, and proof that United are no longer seen as a Premier League force by Mourinho — but in selling Mata, the Happy One may just have woken up a little too chipper for his own good.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2543521/MARTIN-SAMUEL-Chelsea-saying-Manchester-United-spent-force-selling-Juan-Mata-They-wrong.html#ixzz2r6ot6rYg
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Fully agreed. Surely Chelsea can't be this stupid, are they on drugs or what?
