I got an email from Chelsea this morning. No, I'm not special enough for special media emails -- this one was just the standard newsletter that goes out to fans worldwide. This was the subject:
News: Chelsea's greatest player revealed
I was kind of hoping that meant we had a pre-agreement to sign Lionel Messi or something, but turns out no. The 'reveal' was that Didier Drogba had been named as Chelsea's greatest player of all time. Here's what they said...
More than 20,000 supporters had their say via a combination of an online vote, emails and postal entries to decide the No1 Stamford Bridge hero. And the winner was, with 6,902 votes... Didier Drogba.
"This makes me feel honoured and really proud because so many big players have been at this club before me - and also at the same time as me," said the Ivorian striker. "It's unbelievable."
I think they did get it right, incidentally (not everyone on We Ain't Got No History staff agrees) -- while there have been several great players before and during Drogba's time, nobody with the possible exception of Frank Lampard has been as influential in the club's success. When you combine the trophies, the outstanding play and his off-pitch work in the Ivory Coast, I think he emerges as the winner.
What I'm not sure about is the methodology here. An online vote of 'more than 20,000 supporters'? Please. That's not even a significant fraction of a percentage point of Chelsea fans worldwide, and online polls will skew towards younger, more internet-savvy supporters, which is to say away from the likes of Peter Osgood.
That's not to say that we could do much better, because this is also the internet and we don't get 20,000 poll votes. But we can at least be a little more vigorous than Chelsea were in looking for our greatest-ever player. So, let's do a WAGNH version. Nominate club legends in the comments, and we'll start from there.