Time for Chinese Super League clubs to get serious or it is going to be a long season despite what you have paid for it

Wallsend Boys Club, the small club from the North East of England famous as the birthplace of the likes of Peter Beardsley, Alan Shearer, Michael Carrick and Fraser Forster to name a few, were in Hong Kong last month to expand their footprint around the world.

The club is in the process of a document they are calling ‘The Wallsend Way’, which spells out what the club stands and tries to explain how they have started the careers of over 80 professionals including sevens internationals.

If China and president Xi Jinping are serious about raising the standard and status of the game in the Mainland, they might need to ask their colleagues from the South of the country to start quickly penning “The Guangzhou Way.’

The club in question is the current six-time defending Chinese Super League champions and 2013 and 2015 AFC Champions League winners, Guangzhou Evergrande.

Thanks to significant but well executed investment from the Evergrande Real Estate Group, Guangzhou have won the domestic title for six straight years starting from their first season back in the top-flight having been relegated in 2009 for their part in a match-fixing scandal and have also been crowned champions of Asia two times in the space of four years.