Andriy Shevchenko, it might be remembered, had a very good Community Shield in 2006. He’d just joined Chelsea for £31m. Nobody seemed in any doubt that this was a transfer initiated by the owner Roman Abramovich. There were questions from the start about how he and Didier Drogba could play together and doubts regarding whether José Mourinho wanted him, but after a 2-1 defeat in which he scored Chelsea’s goal and was by some way their most potent attacking presence, the assumption was that he would turn out to be an upgrade on Drogba, who ended up stuck on in the right.
As it turned out, Drogba hit 20 goals for the first time in the Premier League that season while Shevchenko, struggling with fitness issues, never settled, scored just nine times in two seasons before returning on loan to Milan; his acquisition a background detail in the cooling relationship between Mourinho and Abramovich.
