If your club ain't broke, don't fix it

Before I take in the second part of my journey in to the claret wilderness, it’s time to do a quick summer stocktaking on the team I originally started supporting back in 1994. United had just put four past Chelsea at Wembley. I’m still glad I chose the losing team on that fateful Cup Final day.

For all the usual schtick about Chelsea’s spending, this summer’s ‘spree’ has been, if I may be so crude, like that cruellest of farts…silent, but deadly. The signing of Florent Malouda was a promising move – early speculation suggests that this may be similar to the headhunting of Michael Essien, whose fee seemed tenuous at first through lacklustre early performances for the blues along with a mass of spectators not really sure what to expect. Indications are through Arjen Robben’s fidgeting over signing a new contract is that Malouda may be a permanent fixture.

The thing is - as Mourinho has pointed out rather bluntly - that this signing is the first one this year where Chelsea have actually paid a fee. The club’s intentions to break even by 2009 have led to the somewhat vain hope that free-transfer captures will prove to pay dividend in the meantime. Claudio Pizzaro has the best chance to prove that theory right on recent performances win the Copa America, while Steve Sidwell seems to have everyone clamouring to the notion that he was better off as a big fish in a mediocre-sized pond at Reading. Messers Malouda and Alves (with the latter expected to sign imminently) have been the only two arrivals with price tags attached thus far.

Some may be surprised by the flurry of activity this year in the increasingly business-like transfer market; my housemate quite correctly identified the fact that you can’t hear Carlos Tevez’s name mentioned on any recent sports bulletin without the phrase ‘transfer saga’ mentioned in the same breath. However, it’s actually quite understandable for 2007 to be the year for all this commotion. World Cups are usually the time for the papers to make wild screams at spectacularly over-inflated transfer valuations on players based on one or two form performances for their country.

Following the rather forgettable World Cup last year and the dust finally settling on Italian match fixing scandal, clubs this summer (with the lack of any major competition in Europe apart from the U-21 Championships) have had the opportunity to be left to their own devices.

Liverpool have always held my admiration, and their recent takeover bears hallmarks of spending to the same level as Abramovich minus the initial outcry of cash-flashing arrogance. Spending at Merseyside has an edge of panache, with the new owners Gillett and Hicks making a point of camera-friendly appearances and attaching their heartstrings to the club very early on. The addition of Torres is a massive coup for a club in desperate need of a striker to recapture the league title in the same way John Aldridge and Ian Rush did back in their pomp.

Up the road in Salford, the accountants at United are having a field day. Last season seemed on the face of it to rely on the Rooney and Ronaldo show, but this is simply an urban myth – they were just the two key performers in an organized show of team discipline that took the Premiership crown back to Old Trafford. Now, with the addition of Hargreaves, Nani and Anderson, to say the squad is strengthened is an understatement. The coffers have been prised open, and once the Carlos Tevez transfer saga is resolved, spending will have hit £50 million. Will all these signings provide a slight unnerving in the United camp? Sorry for the rhetoric, but I wouldn’t doubt the Glazers had a hunch that spending this year at Stamford Bridge would be a bit leaner than previous seasons. We can but see.