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What If...Paul Scholes Wasn't Offside?

The history of English football would be very different if a Russian linesman knew how to do his job. No, not that one. If one of his countrymen could see, perhaps Chelsea would not exist...

Last Updated: 12/01/09 at 13:38 Post Comment

If Russian linesman Gennady Krasyuk could see properly, Chelsea would no longer exist. You think we're on the baccy they call whacky, don't you?

It's simple, really. Allow us to explain.

Manchester United versus Porto, second leg in the last 16 of the 2004 Champions League. United trail 2-1 from the first leg but are 1-0 up on the night thanks to a crisp Paul Scholes header from John O'Shea's fine left-wing cross.

Just before half-time, O'Shea drives the ball into a crowded Porto penalty area and Scholes pounces, one touch, control, second touch, goal and wheels away in... despair. Linesman Krasyuk has ruled the little ginger assassin offside. He is on, by at least a yard. Had Krasyuk not read the rules before the game? The rules that state: disallowing a United goal at home is an act punishable by a severe Scottish shouting to the face. What was he thinking?

If that goal had been allowed, United would have been 2-0 up, Tim Howard wouldn't have panicked in the last minute and gifted a tap-in to Costinha. Jose Mourinho wouldn't have sprinted like a well-dressed, moody-looking gazelle along the touchline to incite the crowd, Porto wouldn't have gone through and, quite clearly, wouldn't have been European Champions.

The once and future king, José, would have been just another manager who came and saw and lost at Old Trafford. There'd have been no throwing of medals into the crowd, no looking sexy and gorgeous in victory. No being thought of as God's gift to football, women and well-tailored clothing. No lovely coats. Nothing. José Who?

Roman Abramovich, a man whose football wish list is seemingly decided by whatever Russian and other Eastern European players he thinks are cool, or whoever else happens to be the flavour of the month, does not hire Mourinho as Chelsea manager when he tires of Claudio Ranieri in the summer of 2004. Why would he?

Instead, he hires the coach of the summer's Champions' League winner: Didier Deschamps of AS Monaco. The former Chelsea player is given plenty of money to spend, and he spends it badly, because Didier is a ropey old manager and hasn't a clue how to win the Premier League with a team of over paid prima donnas. As Avram Grant and not-so-big-now Phil have found out, it's actually quite hard, and you have to be a bit brilliant to do it.

Didier turns to the old boys network and Roman is delighted to see genuine legends of the game, like Zinedine Zidane, and long-time Chelsea targets like David Trezeguet and Alessandro Del Piero come to the club. Unfortunately, Deschamps can't motivate them and the only thing that seems to get his massive earners out of bed in the morning is infighting as to who has the most enormous contract. The club's wage bill is spiralling out of control, but success is not forthcoming because, as Manchester City have shown us, you can spend as much money as you want but it doesn't mean instant success.

So not for Chelsea the back-to-back titles and the incredible unbeaten run. There's no ads for American Express for Didier. No swooning middle-England housewives, no enigmatic press conferences, no worrying about bird flu. No looking like a movie star while prowling on the touchline. It all goes horribly wrong.

The Sun mocks up an image of him as one of Ken Dodd's diddy men. Because Didier sounds a bit like diddy. See?

Turns out that Chelsea had peaked under the poetic insanity of Ranieri. They slip down the league.

When they finish the 2005-2006 season in fourth place, Abramovich has seen enough. He fires Deschamps and, in a widely derided move, installs Andriy Shevchenko as player coach with Sergei Baltacha in a supervisory, Director of Football role. The players revolt. When a delegation lead by Frank Lampard protest, Roman tears up Lampard's contract and throws it in the bin. It would have missed but deflects in off a chair-leg. But worse is to come.

With the team labouring in mid-table and Abramovich facing financial and legal difficulties over some of his business interests, he decides to go underground. The ever-silent owner now disappears entirely from public view and is never seen again. Sick of football and now obsessed with post-impressionist art and beautiful women, he plots his exit from the game he has come to hate for not delivering him glory and public acceptance.

From a secret underground lair in the Ukraine, he puts the club on the market. There are few takers. £600 million in the hole, Roman decides to bail out at any price and when John Terry urinates in a vodka bar on a night out, Roman's had enough. Like a spurned lover, Roman sells the club, out of spite, to Ken Bates. For a pound.

Bates realises that he has a job on his hands attempting to service the club's debts, which run into the hundreds of million. He brings in "a safe pair of hands" as a partner as they try to turn Chelsea around. Peter Ridsdale.

Chastened by his experience at Leeds, Ridsdale conducts a slash and burn policy to try and save the club, Terry and Lampard are sold to Fulham, but he can't raise enough money to cover the club's debts. The administrators are called in.

On 23 December 2007, Peter Ridsdale reluctantly admits that the gates to Stamford Bridge will not open again. They have been sold for scrap. Chelsea FC is defunct.

So you see, if that Scholes goal had been correctly allowed, Chelsea would no longer exist. That Russian linesman has a lot to answer for.

Alan Tyers and John Nicholson

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