Eamon Dunphy has questioned Chelsea and Liverpool's owners over their supposed transfer policy on RTE 2FM's 'Game On' sport show.
Presenter Hugh Cahill posed a question to the soccer pundit as to how he thought Liverpool would fare if they had the same financial muscle as their fierce rivals Manchester United?
While Dunphy dodged the question, he instead he gave a withering assessment of Liverpool's 'Moneyball' transfer policy, and singled out Chelsea's sale of Nemanja Matic as particularly crazy.
There is a guy called [Michael] Edwards at Liverpool who is calling all the shots, making all the decisions and there is a five man committee that he reports to, but don’t be under any illusions, Liverpool spent less money than Huddersfield in the transfer window right, Huddersfield. So Liverpool are not in the ball game and won’t be in the ball game for the foreseeable future, forget them. You can’t do it, these guys believe in Moneyball, whatever that is? It’s a film, a movie based on baseball and they are crazy, what they’ll do is for example, Chelsea are doing the same thing, sell [Nemanja] Matic because he is 29 and buy [Tiemoue] Bakayoko because he is 23. There is value in that but there is no points in it.
Strong words from the pundit on Liverpool (and the movie, Moneyball), but is he overly critical of them since professing in recent weeks that he 'loves' Liverpool and that he is a supporter of theirs?
As reported here two weeks ago, Dunphy gave a damning acount of Chelsea's Tiemoue Bakayoko and while the midfielder scored in Chelsea's loss to Crystal Palace at the weekend, he has yet to impress the RTE star.
Dunphy however is clearly a big fan of Chelsea manager Antonio Conte, he feels the Italian has been shot in the back by his own club over their transfer recruitment last summer:
The real sad story this year is what’s happened to Antonio Conte at Chelsea. They’ve ignored him in the summer, sold players he didn’t want to lose, Matic being the most obvious one. They bought nothing. [Alvaro] Morata who in the last three seasons has averaged about 15 games a year whether it was at Real Madrid or at Juventus where he was on loan. So Conte has been destroyed by his own club. It’s called friendly fire in the army, you shoot the guy in front of you in the back. Now he won’t be there much longer, Chelsea set a standard last year and Conte did brilliantly and then they just broke the club.
Has he forgotten that it was only last month that Morata scored a hat trick for Chelsea in their demolition of Stoke City? It would appear to be the case.
Sharp words from Dunphy who was singing Chelsea and Conte's praises last month when the Blues defeated Atletico Madrid in Spain in their Champions League group. Although Manchester City look like this year's outstanding side, a lot can happen between now and May and with the calibre of a manager like Conte in charge, it would be foolish to write off Chelsea's season just yet.
Listen back to Eamon Dunphy on RTE's Game On 2FM here
