The only certainty with money is impatience

THE two Italian coaches new to the Premier League must be baffled by how much attention can be focused on a handshake that might never happen but that’s how it is in English football at the moment.

The first public meeting between John Terry and Wayne Bridge may dominate the media agenda in this lunchtime’s clash between Chelsea and Manchester City, but for both teams there are more important issues at stake.

Chelsea are one point clear at the top of the table and, with Manchester United playing at Wolves this afternoon, can little afford to drop points, while pressure is building on City boss Roberto Mancini after two wins in their last eight matches amid reports of dressing-room unrest.

How the City board react to Mancini’s current plight will be interesting: they have already sacked Mark Hughes this season as they felt “the trajectory of recent results” was “below the requirement” of 70 points.

Factor in the player power issue and the Italian could consider his job well done if he lasts until the end of the season.

The comparisons with Chelsea are irresistible, the most obvious being that with money comes impatience. After his first full season in charge, Roman Abramovich sacked Claudio Ranieri for finishing second in the league; Sheikh Mansour at least gave Hughes 16 months before showing him the door. The worrying sign for Mancini, looking at the Abramovich example, is that every failure has been met with ruthlessness: Jose Mourinho left the club at the first sign of trouble (after three successive draws and an alleged fall-out with Terry) while Avram Grant, Luiz Felipe Scolari and Guus Hiddink all departed after failing to repeat Mourinho’s Premier League success.

Mancini’s claim that City could compete with Chelsea for the league title, made after just two games in charge, now looks like it has come from the Garry Cook school of embarrassing public comments. Cook is City’s chief executive who said of former owner, Thaksin Shinawatra, at the time on the run from human rights and corruption charges: “Is he a nice guy? Yes. Is he a great guy to play golf with? Yes. Does he have plenty of money to run a football club? Yes. I really care only about those three things.”

Cook has since apologised for that crass response, but has shown an unhealthy habit for making the wrong type of headlines, claiming that Kaka “bottled” an approach from Manchester City when they never even met the player; that City want to become ‘a global empire’ bigger than Manchester United’; and that they would beat United in the Carling Cup semi-final second leg (which didn’t happen).

Those comments, and his poor efforts to justify the approach to Mancini before Hughes’s sacking, bring to mind Peter Kenyon in the early days of the Abramovich era.

Kenyon spoke about “turning the world blue” and promised that Chelsea would be breaking even by 2010 and would be one of the world’s biggest clubs with at least two Champions League titles under their belts by 2014. He also promised that Ranieri’s job was safe when Mourinho and England coach Sven-Goran Eriksson were being lined up to replace him.

Some similarities are eerie: Abramovich’s initial statement was to sign a raft of high-profile players, including Joe Cole, Adrian Mutu, Damien Duff, Hernan Crespo and Juan Sebastian Veron, though the most important transfer was arguably losing Gianfranco Zola to Cagliari on the day after he took over (only because Zola had given his word and refused to change his mind).

And while City smashed the British transfer record for Robinho in August 2008, their Zola equivalent came when they released Richard Dunne on a free transfer just before spending £24m on Joleon Lescott. This was after Cook said following the takeover, “We need a superstar because, no disrespect, Richard Dunne doesn’t roll off the tongue in Beijing.”

Dunne, Irish fans need no reminding, has been one of the Premier League’s best players this season and his Aston Villa side may yet beat City to fourth place.

When Hughes was in charge, the club’s training facilities and infrastructure were modernised but the fear of missing out on fourth place this season, so crucial to Cook’s business plan, hastened the Welshman’s exit. Chelsea had at least finished fourth when Abramovich arrived, thanks to Jesper Gronkjaer’s winner against Liverpool on the final day of the 2002-03 season.

Chelsea fans have complained that the money has taken something away from the soul of the club but City, despite their riches, have managed to keep their core identity, that of self-styled unlucky losers, at least for now.

It is somehow the lot of the club to sign a striker for £17.5m, Roque Santa Cruz, only to see him complete two full league matches all season; for their other big-name signing, Emmanuel Adebayor, to score four in his first five games and then take another 14 for the next four; and for Carlos Tevez, their star performer of the season, to have to return to Argentina to tend to his sick daughter just as he hit a purple patch of 15 goals in as many games.

City may be the richest club in the world but they have shown this season that they have a lot to learn about life among the big boys; how to cope under the spotlight; and how to turn financial strength into success on the pitch. The irony is that it might take the appointment as coach of a former Chelsea hero, Mourinho, to end their 28-year wait for a trophy. But first Mancini needs to fulfil that minimum target of finishing the season in fourth.