Chelsea F.C. in 2005-06
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by user Bobo
Chelsea have enjoyed another dominant season, supplemented by some of the best players bought by any team over the last three years. Their time in the Premiership since the arrival of the Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich on the scene, replacing Ken Bates at the helm.
Let's not forget the circumstances in which this happened. Bates apparently "purchased Chelsea in 1982 for £1"... and through this he saw the team through so many problems, by the end of his reign getting the kids back up to regular top six finishes. By the end of 1982 they finished a mere 13 points above the drop zone. At that time in the league's history, however, even Shrewsbury were in the top flight. With Shrewsbury currently in League Two, those don't half seem like days past now.
By 1991, Chelsea were back amongst the elite, though, as league runners-up, denied European competition after English clubs had been banned from Europe courtesy of 1985's Heysel stadium disaster. Come forward ten years, and we're nearly at the end of our Ken Batesmanship. Abramovich purchased the club for £60 million, and immediately raided his back pocket for some of the best players the league has ever seen. Despite this, the young talent failed to deliver a league title in their first season. However, they finished in the semi-finals of the Champions League, and had the glory of knocking out Arsenal in the quarter finals.
In 2005, their centenary year, they celebrated in style by winning the Premiership once, and beating Liverpool in the league cup. The very same team, however, was the one they came up against in the Champions League semi-finals, at which point during this season they were knocked out.
The 2005-06 season has been rather a special one. Still on a high from their 100th birthday celebrations, the young guns have delivered another Premiership, albeit with fewer points (the same 91 points that Manchester United delivered in 1999-2000), and with a larger number of defeats under their belt. Still, Lampard has finished the season as the fourth-highest scorer in the Premiership, and no team has managed to do the double over them in the same manner as Blackburn Rovers did over Manchester United this year. And this season has yet again seen as spread a scoring tally as has been seen in every season since 2001-02, when Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink finished as joint-second highest scorer in the Premiership, just as in 2000-01 he finished with 23 goals to his credit.
Most recently, the team have purchased Michael Ballack, who could easily reach the peak of his form amongst The Pensioners. With such a surprisingly small club base (in fairness, according to Wikipedia, the club consists of merely 25 players in total..) they have achieved remarkably well.
And it's heartening amongst all this foreign spendsmanship to note that Chelsea's players of the season over each of the last three have been Englishmen Frank Lampard (twice) and John Terry, the former of which finished in second place in 2005 in the world player of the year standings. And to think Lampard started his career at Swansea City...
Boggles the mind. Next year sees Chelsea attempt to win the Premiership once again, something they frankly will do without breaking a sweat, as long as they buy quality backup come the reopening of the transfer market. Besides which, the sooner this John Obi Mikel saga is over, the better. It will mean that Chelsea spend another twelve million, we get ten million in compensation for having to wait this long merely to get our tummies tickled, and Mikel flourishes as a player in the squad that he most wanted to be at in the first place.
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