Ever since they were purchased by Roman Abramovic, Chelsea's solution has been to buy their way to success. They typically eschew home-grown talent for expensive, ready-made players. Chelsea spent in the neighborhood of $300M USD last summer to beef up their team, and the results have been extremely mediocre. They were arguably a better team last year using a lot of their younger, home-grown players.

I think that Chelsea created the modern buy your way to success model that has successfully been used by Manchester City and PSG--clubs that went from OK to great after pumping in hundreds of million dollars. The problem is that those teams often require expensive re-builds or refreshes. I have a lot more respect for teams that can find success using a core of home-grown players with the infusion of outside talent that fills a particular need. Manchester United and Liverpool both have a good long-term track record in that regard.