Many people said that the current Man City was like Chelsea a few years ago.
That was actually overestimating Man City and underestimating Chelsea.
Before the Abu Dhabi consortium took over, Man City had been a second-rate team in the Premier League. Even after fighting tooth and nail to return to the Premier League, Man City still played the role of the soft touch. That was why Manchester United had paid so little attention to this "noisy neighbor," making the Manchester derby practically meaningless.
Chelsea, however, was clearly different.
Before Abramovich took over, Chelsea had already been one of the Premier League's top teams, somewhat like the current Tottenham Hotspur. They were always hovering on the edge of the Champions League places, just one step short.
More importantly, Chelsea had always had a very clear overall management philosophy.
Many people only remembered Wenger arriving at Arsenal in 1996, but they did not know that a year earlier, in 1995, Gullit, one of the Dutch "Three Musketeers," had joined Chelsea on a free transfer. In 1996, he replaced Glenn Howard and took charge of Chelsea as both player and manager.
Also in 1996, Italian striker Vialli transferred from Juventus to Chelsea for ten million dollars. Two years later, in 1998, when Gullit was dismissed from his position as Chelsea manager, Vialli continued leading the team as player-manager.
From Gullit to Vialli, Chelsea had always been at the forefront of the Premier League's continentalization movement. They had also reaped the benefits of it, so after Vialli was dismissed, Chelsea continued along the same path and invited the Tinkerer, Ranieri, to manage the team.
Ranieri stayed at Chelsea for a full four years. It was only after Abramovich took over and invested huge sums of money, completely transforming Chelsea's overall strength, that Ranieri