WHEN news came out of Roman Abramovich’s takeover of Chelsea in July 2003 no one really knew what to expect. Would this mysterious billionaire Russian splash the cash and bring in the world’s best players or was the whole thing part of a bigger Hank Scorpio-esque plan centring on world domination?

Today in 2003 Abramovich showed he meant business when he got the chequebook out and signed the midfield pairing of Joe Cole and Juan Sebastian Veron for £6.6m and £15m respectively.

Headliner-writers and rumour-mongers were having their best summer in years following the takeover, as talks of £70m bids for Raul and £35m for Alessandro Nesta were the talk of Fleet Street despite Ken Bates’ claim that “it’d be madness to buy players and throw them in willy-nilly.”

Joe Cole had just suffered relegation with West Ham, so balked at the chance to join the revolution at Chelsea. Although blessed with the kind of natural talent that would make a wolverine purr, Cole still didn’t have the all-round game to force his way into the England team, but that would soon change under the tutorledge of Claudio Ranieri and then Jose Mourinho as Cole soon began to fulfil his potential, making him one of the best signings of the Abramovich era.

Veron meanwhile was a different kettle of poissons. Fergie had signed the Argentine from Lazio for £28.1m two years earlier, breaking the English transfer record in the process. At Old Trafford Veron had struggled to reproduce the kind of form that made Fergie break the bank. Flummoxed by the pace and power of the Premier League, Veron saved his best performances for the Champions League, but when Chelsea came calling United were all ears.



Fergie was willing to let Veron go for half the fee that United had paid for him, causing many to question Ranieri’s wisdom. Veron fared even worse at Stamford Bridge, making only 14 appearances for the club and earning himself a slot at the wrong end of The Times’ 50 worst transfers list.

Soon after his appointment Mourinho wasted no time in sending Veron out on loan to Internazionale and ‘the Little Witch’ can now be found back home Argentina, playing for his boyhood heroes Estudiantes, where he has found his form of old.

So despite having all the money in the world, it’s still a case of you win some, you lose some for Chelsea. Check out the many tricks and skills that J.Cole, the man with the shortest shorts in the Premier League, has to offer below and have a gander at what we were up to last year right here.

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