Silly, spendthrift, squandering Chelsea. More money than Scrooge McDuck. Less sense than his nephew, Donald. They sign kids, stockpile them, hand them life sentences — sorry, contracts — and think it will succeed. How deluded.
That was the narrative, not least after their 2024 Carabao Cup final defeat by Liverpool when schadenfreude was hardly in short supply towards the billionaire bottlers in blue.
They were mocked as wasters, charlatans in charge of a creche, nowhere near the winners they used to be as fans howled at their failure.
Win on Sunday night in the Club World Cup final, however, and after all the questioning of their approach, Chelsea would be within their rights to ask a certain one of their own.