Means something to Chelsea now also it seams.
Chelsea missing out on Romelu Lukaku, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Co proves that times have changed at Stamford Bridge... Roman Abramovich's new transfer rules mean they no longer go the extra mile
More than any other individual, Roman Abramovich changed the financial landscape of the modern Premier League transfer market, creating the feverish moneypit it has become today.
In his first year as Chelsea owner in 2003, the club's outlay on players grew from £500,000 to £153million and the spend-spend-spend era throughout English football was under way.
But times have changed at Stamford Bridge as the failure to land established targets Romelu Lukaku, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Fernando Llorente and Ross Barkley have underlined in the current window.
Having once swept all rivals aside – remember the British transfer record fees for Andriy Shevchenko and Fernando Torres, the pursuit of Ashley Cole and gazumping of Tottenham for Willian – Chelsea now operate within strict rules laid down by Abramovich and enforced by his eyes and ears at the club, director Marina Granovskaia, chairman Bruce Buck and director of football Michael Emenalo.
Now established as a European super-power, the business model is paramount at Chelsea with a cap on a spending and revenue streams from loaning players out. And if the manager is unhappy about missing out on transfer targets or having a relatively small squad as a consequence, then so be it.
It's not a new idea for Abramovich. He has regularly changed managers while keeping a core group of players and senior executives in place.
Where some see a managerial revolving door, others see a stable structure and results, five Premier League titles including the 2010 Double and a Champions League, suggest the Londoners have got it right.
Yet times are changing and Conte and many supporters will be worried by developments in this transfer window.
Yes, Abramovich can still sign off on big deals and the capture of Alvaro Morata from Real Madrid, rising to £70million, was the second-biggest in the window behind Lukaku.
But Chelsea will no longer go the extra mile to make deals happen. They will not forsake loan fees to help Conte have a big enough squad. Hence when the Italian was scratching around for players on the opening day against Burnley, Kurt Zouma, Tammy Abraham, Ruben Loftus-Cheek and others were already elsewhere
Time will tell if Chelsea's policy still works. But the undeniable fact at the end of the August window is that they missed out on key targets. They were all for different reasons but for 2017-18 Lukaku will be wearing the red of Manchester United, Llorente the white of Tottenham and Oxlade-Chamberlain the red of Liverpool, instead of the blue of Chelsea.
#As for Barkley, his late u-turn about moving to Stamford Bridge on deadline night summed up the whole chaos of the window.
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