Value for Money

After the excitement of the Olympics, there’s not much cooking on the spurting front today* and we cast a desultory eye over the weekend’s footy with scarcely a backward glance.

We’re sure that’s a phrase that’ll resonate with Andriy ‘Sheva’ Shevchenko, England’s most expensive player and the Chelsea striker who never was.

Today Sheva’s slunk back to Italy with his tail between his legs completed a move back to his spiritual home at AC Milan for an 'undisclosed sum' after failing to make much of an impression apart from on Chelsea’s treatment couch (which now has it’s own permanent memorial Sheva arse-print).

Why this formerly most lethal of strikers couldn’t translate his finishing skills to the PremierShip remains a mystery. Injuries played a part no doubt, but he cast a forlorn figure under Jose Mourinho and big Phil wouldn’t even grant him an audience with the bench this season.

At £30m quid and just nine goals from 47 Premier League games that works out at around 333k recurring per goal which is not exactly a good return on Roman’s investment.

Still we remember the glory days or Sergei Rebrov (another failure in England) and Shevchenko banging them in for the Ukraine and Dynamo Kiev and we wish him well at the Milan home for retired warhorses.

*We did have a strange anecdote concerning ex-Indian skipper and ‘Prince of Calcutta’ Sourav Ganguly and the Sound of Music to fall back on, but we’ll save that for a rainy day.