IT'S time to forget everything we thought we knew about running a football club.
Forget stability, forget continuity, forget financial prudence, forget carefully targeted player recruitment, forget inspiring management appointments.
Just tear everything to shreds, sell everyone out and then max out the credit card by buying football players.
Dozens and dozens of football players. Not just one new team of players, but two or three teams' worth.
Buy so many footballers that they can't all fit in the dressing room of your training ground.
Do you already have seven elite wingers? If another one becomes available, buy an eighth. You only live once.
Because Chelsea and Nottingham Forest are the two big overachievers of this Premier League season, with the Blues just two points off the top and Forest in the Champions League places, above Manchester City.
Both clubs have been busy like sailors wasting shore leave.
If you've previously gotten the impression from this column (or pretty much anywhere else in the media) that Chelsea's Todd Boehly is an American muppet, your mind is probably playing tricks on you. Boehly was always a football genius.
The nine-year contracts for unproven players. Stabbing more managers than Roman Abramovich. The transfer window truck is storming. Genius, everyone.
And any ideas you had about Forest's Evangelos Marinakis being a panic-buying shopaholic – a wild conspiracy theorist who hired that guy from Gladiators to mess with referees – must have been the product of your own overactive imagination.
Here's a big, cuddly Greek Santa, loaded with gifts, leading Forest to the promised land.
Since Boehly and his Clearlake team bought Chelsea in the summer of 2022, the club has signed 45 players for a total fee of £1.3 billion.
Since Forest were promoted to the Premier League that same summer, they have added more than 40 players for a total of around £300m.
And it works somehow at both clubs.
At 33, Forest's Kiwi striker Chris Wood is the new Erling Haaland. Chelsea star Cole Palmer was Pep Guardiola's blind spot.
Anthony Elanga and Jadon Sancho are more effective than any winger currently on Manchester United's books.
The Premier League is a madhouse. To succeed you must join the raging madmen, as Chelsea and Forest have done.
Restrained managers
What both clubs needed, it turned out, was an understated, unknown manager who could sort through the messages, build a core squad, play with eccentric owners and coach a damn good football team.
Neither Enzo Maresca nor Nuno Espirito Santo were wildly popular appointments.
Maresca had led Leicester to the Championship title but was no one's first choice to succeed Mauricio Pochettino this summer.
Yet the Italian was 20/20 in his view of Chelsea's best team, ruthless in his selection in pre-season, and now presided over a premature vindication of Boehly's seemingly unhinged regime.
Nuno replaced Tottenham Forest's promotion-winning messiah Steve Cooper after his car crash to a chorus of shrugs, just before the club were due to be deducted four points for breaching PSR last season.
The Portuguese boss with the charisma bypass is the opposite of Brian Clough. Yet he is in danger of becoming the best of Forest's 29 managers since the departure of Old Big 'Ead.
Don't feel like it
As with Maresca, it was a matter of removing dead wood from the forest and seeing Chris Wood for the Tricky Trees.
Of course this is a snapshot. No one expects Forest to play in the Champions League next season and no one expects Chelsea to win the title this season.
There are still PSR concerns at both clubs and there are still many unwanted players on long, lucrative contracts.
For every Palmer at Chelsea, there is a Mykhailo Mudryk. Boehly's gang are still paying Raheem Sterling £200,000 a week not to play for Arsenal.
And at Forest, for every Morgan Gibbs-White, there is a Jonjo Shelvey. But right now these two clubs – who seemed to give us a crash course in how not to run a football club – are doing the exact opposite.
Whatever you do, just try not to understand anything.
Andy is terrible
LIVERPOOL's thrilling 2-2 draw against Fulham will be a contender for Premier League match of the season.
That suggests that, to make things more interesting for everyone, the Reds should always be reduced to ten men within twenty minutes for no apparent reason.
A worrying aspect for Arne Slot is that AFTER the hard dismissal of Andy Robertson, his team was better than when the 30-year-old Scot was on the field.
Fullbacks don't tend to go over the hill, they fall off cliffs – as Robbo and fellow stalwart, 34-year-old Kyle Walker at Manchester City, have done.
Antonee Robinson, 27 of Cottagers, Saturday's man of the match, has a Scouse accent despite his international allegiance to the USA and would be an ideal replacement.
Except Fulham have no desire to do business with Liverpool after the Kop club signed youth players Harvey Elliott and Fabio Carvalho on the cheap.
Brit of a change
There can rarely have been a more predictable dismissal than Gary O'Neil's at Wolves.
It wasn't just two wins from 16 games, it was his players' slumps in successive defeats to West Ham and Ipswich that turned his side into Wolver tantrum Wanderers.
His departure came just before the equally obvious departure of Russell Martin from Southampton.
It means there are only two England bosses – Eddie Howe and Sean Dyche – in the top flight, along with just one other Brit, Kieran McKenna at Ipswich.
A complete eradication of homegrown bosses is in the offing. Unless the Etihad sheikhs decide it's time to break the glass on the emergency alarm and call firefighter Sam Allardyce?
He's a must pick
JORDAN PICKFORD's heroics in Everton's 0-0 draw at Arsenal on Saturday suggested that of all the changes Thomas Tuchel could make as England manager, the goalkeeping position will NOT be one of them.
He has as many caps as Gordon Banks and more major final appearances than every other goalkeeper who has ever played for England combined.
And with the Wembley debacle against Greece in October being perhaps his only truly poor performance in a Three Lions shirt, it could soon be time to show Pickford some appreciation.
Give Spoty Men a chance
IF the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award were for sporting achievement, it would go to Joe Root, who this year confirmed himself as England's greatest ever batsman.
If it were a matter of strength of personality, it would go to 17-year-old darts phenom Luke Littler, who has made the Ally Pally dart-throwing jamboree a global must-watch.
But it goes to athleticskeely Hodgkinson – not unreasonably so, considering she's an Olympic 800m gold medalist with a sparkling personality.
And note that the previous three winners were all women. Is it time for separate SPOTY awards for both genders – a form of positive discrimination just to give the boys a chance?
Not generous enough
While the focus has been on Rodri's injury, Kyle Walker's terminal decline, Phil Foden's dip in form and Erling Haaland's lack of goals, the re-signing of Ilkay Gundogan has escaped much criticism.
But Manchester City's decision to bring back the 34-year-old former captain – a year after he left for Barcelona – was an extremely retrograde move from such a forward-thinking boss as Pep Guardiola.
'Statistical anomaly'
TOTTENHAM have lost as many Premier League games as they have won this season, but after a 5-0 win in the principles derby at Southampton they can boast a goal difference of plus-17.
This wild statistical anomaly is a perfect testimony to Angeball's unique wonders.
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