The official Chelsea FC website has this interview with Peter Kenyon, which I thought would never end. I don’t want to give you the whole text, you can read it here. There were a few questions/answers that interested me – of course, on Jose, Roman, Chelsea’s ambition and Champions League, which I’ve talked about. Also on other news, we have some players to decide on their future soon, some players joining us back in training and Inter not co-operating with Man Utd in their pre-season honeymoon.

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Here are some of the questions from the long interview, which I thought are very important ones, given the current circumstances.

After some years of change since Roman Abramovich arrived, we’ve had a summer of real stability. How important has it been that José Mourinho’s still our manager?

I think it’s critically important and I think it comes off a season of lots of speculation which didn’t help and I think we got to a stage where nobody thought that José would be here apart from the people inside the club so it’s important from that point of view. But you know, I think what he’s been doing over the past three full years, building a foundation to take the club onward and upwards and I think that was the job day one, and its continued so I think this season is the combination of not just this closed season but what’s been put in place over the last three years.

Obviously the biggest signing financially was Malouda, there was a lot of talk about how much Chelsea would or wouldn’t spend. If a big player had become available would we suddenly have decided to go for him?

Again, we’ve been big news because we’ve spent a lot, we’ve been big news now because we haven’t spent any, the money has been available and both José and I have said it on several occasions, for the right player, the money was there and it is there so it’s not about being broke or restrained it’s actually looking at what we needed as a team to progress from where we were last season and last season was not a bad season.

We’ve won all the domestic trophies since José’s come, he won the Champions League the year before he came. Is it the Holy Grail?

I think it is one of the hardest trophies to pick up, to fulfil our ambitions as a world club, you have to win the Champions League. It doesn’t all rest on that this season, that’s not what it’s about, but two things what we’ve said is you have to win trophies on a regular basis, you have to win Premier League and Champions League more than once to reach those heights of being truly recognised as a world club and I think we’re well equipped and as always we’re confident going into all these campaigns because we’ve got a great squad and a great manager who knows what needs to be done.

Having read through the marathon interview, what I realise are:

(i) Chelsea management has a very long term view, though the titles contribute to the collective vision, they’re not in a hurry to win everything at sight. (ii) They have complete confidence in Jose Mourinho. He is considered as the key for Chelsea’s stability and a part of the core group of Chelsea. (iii) Instead of worrying about what Jose wins, they value his contribution to the team in terms of the winning mentality he has brought in and the foundations that he has laid to this winning group. (iv) Chelsea looks to grow big time. Lot of investments in Asia which would help the club support increase exponentially (v) Heavy investment in youth academy. Don’t be surprised if Chelsea playing eleven has about 5-6 homegrown players from our academy.

In other news, Dani Alves has said openly he wants to play for another team, Alexandre Pato to decide on his future in the next two weeks, TribalFootball, I repeat TribalFootball reports that Chelsea have upped the Drenthe bid to 7m pounds. And surprise, surprise – Robben would be back in training today alongwith Sheva and Diarra too. Yesterday, Steve Clarke made it apoint to clarify that Mikel was subbed in the Brondby match, not because of injury but only because of a tactical reason (read scrappy display). Call that the Jose Mourinho influence.

You might already know that Man Utd lost to Inter 2-3 at Old Trafford (trailing 1-3 at half time, not bad!) in a pre-season friendly. Nice to know that Vidic and Evra played a major part in letting in 3 goals at home, having played all 90 minutes. It’s only a friendly but it just goes to prove that there is a difference between playing Shenzen and Inter. At least the Reds scored two goals (at home against Inter’s defence) which from their point of view, is good. Chelsea would only be training until the big match on Sunday while Man Utd plays another friendly on Friday.

I’m sure you’d like to re-live the season that belonged to Didier Drogba. Here’s what you should bookmark: the video of Didier Drogba’s 33 goals last season. Don’t miss the scene of Drogba having champagne from the FA Cup. Enjoy!

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmjLmUDvpMM[/video]

Not time yet for the Community Shield build-up. Still need to see who might play, who might not be ready, what happens in the next couple of days before I jump in with the pre-match stuff. Before that, how much do you value this community shield match? Do you badly want us to win or this never counts in your books?

{democracy:61}

[tags]Chelsea, Peter Kenyon, Jose Mourinho, Roman Abramovich, Alexandre Pato, Daniel Alves, Arjen Robben, Manchester United, Community Shield, Diarra, Drenthe[/tags]