Blatter: Chelsea not invincible

Chelsea’s unlimited use of Roman Abramovich’s chequebook has not taken away the unpredictability of football, according to Sepp Blatter.

The FIFA president dismissed fears that the Barclays Premiership champions were spoiling the game by hoovering up the game’s top players.

Chelsea are nine points clear at the top of the table and are odds on to win back-to-back league titles, as well as being among the favourites for the Champions League despite being paired with Barcelona in the last 16.

But Blatter believes results in Europe this season have already shown the Blues will not have things entirely their own way.

“Even with money, you are not guaranteed supremacy,” he said.

“Football is unpredictable. Chelsea are not so strong that in a four-team group in the Champions League, they were not first. Liverpool finished first.”

Blatter’s point about Chelsea’s fallibility is backed up by an autumn dip in form.

They were knocked out of the Carling Cup by Charlton in late October, the first defeat at Stamford Bridge of Jose Mourinho’s 18-month reign as boss.

A week later Chelsea suffered a shock loss away to Real Betis in their Champions League group, and then saw their 40-game unbeaten Premiership run shattered in a 1-0 reverse against Manchester United at Old Trafford.

While Blatter was keen to stress that other clubs should not throw in the towel, he praised the management structure at Chelsea, where Frank Arnesen was added to the technical staff in the summer.

The Swiss contrasted it with the revolving-door policy at Real Madrid, where he believes the galactico experiment has run aground.

”With all respect to Mr Abramovich and his involvement in football, I think that Chelsea are such a good team because they have an outstanding manager and a very good technical director,” Blatter continued.

”You have another team in Europe where you have more star players than at Chelsea or Liverpool or Manchester United, and that’s Real Madrid.

“You can add star player after star player, but if the combination is not right you get what’s happened at Real.

“They have had three or four managers because it’s difficult to bring the players together. The team combination is more important than to have a lot of stars together.

“That’s the human face of our game.”