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They were once seen as the brash, brazen kings of dysfunction.

When Roman Abramovich took over Chelsea a decade ago, they were the Loadsamoney of English football, waving their wad in your face.

Their manager, Jose Mourinho, waged a war against authority and poked his finger in the eye of football beyond the walls of Stamford Bridge.

Caught tapping up, they were a scandal waiting to happen, never more than a beat from controversy.

They were a club in a hurry and the game winced at the yells of their growing pains. But as the west Londoners threaten to turn this Premier League season into a cakewalk, a different picture of the club is beginning to emerge.

It is a picture of a club that has matured. A picture of an owner who understands more. A picture of a manager who no longer wants to be seen as the enemy of football.

The profits Chelsea will announce on Thursday are part of that picture, a sign of a more settled club that buys and sells more prudently.

But Abramovich is a big part of the new scene, too. The club has settled down and so has its owner.

(Image: Getty)

Here is a portrait of Abramovich, maybe as you have never seen him before.

When he wanders through his sprawling house in London’s Belgravia, there are plasma screens in every room. Each screen shows football. There might be 12 different matches on 12 different screens - football from every corner of Europe and the world.

It is part of the Chelsea owner’s ongoing process of education in a sport that continues to intrigue him.

He seems, to those who know him, to be busier than ever, involved in projects to regenerate an area of St Petersburg, as well as with his businesses. But his understanding of football and its nuances has increased, too.

He still has what is described a little euphemistically as “an extreme desire for success”, but he realises part of the attraction of football is its unpredictability.

He has talked about how one of his factories might churn out 30,000 widgets a day, relentlessly, flawlessly, faultlessly. But he has spoken with his confidants about how he loves the fact that football is not like that, that it is prey to human vicissitudes.

Players get sick, players have fights with their wives, players get injured, players don’t turn up for training, players shoot trainees with air rifles.

It happens.

Abramovich can accept that now.

It is a theme of Russian culture that you don’t look back. You look forward. But Abramovich has also modified his attitude towards Chelsea’s transfer policy and become more flexible.

In the past, he was imprisoned by another element of Russian culture that led him to want to hang on to players - possessions were few under Communism so when you got one, you tended to cling to it.

Abramovich may have been guilty for clinging on to players too long. Andrei Shevchenko and Fernando Torres are examples. Now he has learned to let go.

(Image: Getty)

His relationship with individual players was also held up as a sign powerful players could undermine the manager at Chelsea.

But the direct line that some of those players had with the owner has gone now.

There are buffers between him and the players - like his lieutenant, Marina Granovskaia, and technical director Michael Emenalo.

The days when John Terry and Frank Lampard used to holiday on Abramovich’s yacht are gone.

In fact, even a few years ago, when some of the players were in Monaco for a FIFA ceremony, there was great surprise when Abramovich phoned Terry and invited him and his team-mates to come for a drink on the yacht.

It was also a sign of the times that the invitation was reluctantly refused because the players had to catch a plane so they would be back for training the next morning.

It is not that Abramovich does not still have the highest expectations of everyone who works for him at the club.

In fact, when Chelsea were thrashed by Atletico Madrid in the 2012 Super Cup, there was alarm when Abramovich stalked into the dressing room in a cold fury.

After a while, he sat down next to then-manager Roberto di Matteo. Both men stared straight ahead in stony silence for five minutes.

Many of those who witnessed the scene believe Abramovich reached the decision to fire Di Matteo that evening.

Chelsea’s philosophy remains that if they had to choose between stability and trophies, they would choose trophies. But there is a level of harmony at Stamford Bridge now between Abramovich and Mourinho - and Mourinho and Emenalo - that did not exist before.

Mourinho is a calmer figure than he once was.

Provocation is not yet alien to him, but he has begun to think longer term. He has started to think about his legacy and about how the game will view him, which may be one of the reasons why he is beginning to focus more on the club’s youth players.

More and more resources are being put towards the club’s academy, and Mourinho is convinced that its players will start pushing for places in the first team.

Jeremie Boga, Dominic Solanke, Patrick Bamford, Isaiah Brown and Nathaniel Chalobah are all highly ranked by the Special One.

(Image: Charlie Crowhurst)

A few years ago, one teenage academy player came to see a couple of members of the club hierarchy to discuss a contract he had been offered.

He appeared flanked by an agent on either side.

“I’ve discussed your offer with my agents and I’ve decided it’s s**t,” the player said.

He left the club soon afterwards.

Those conversations tend not to happen anymore, particularly when agents discuss their clients with Ms Granovskaia.

Chelsea has moved on since then.

It’s not an angry young man any more. It is growing up.