Without a doubt, throughout the Bates era Chelsea were the most expensive team to watch in England bar none.
From a value for money point of view (if you looked at the thing from the perspective of "rational consumer" not football fan) watching Chelsea was not a good investment of your money. The ground was probably the most run down in the country, pitch miles away from the fans and the football was at its worst horrendous. Ian Porterfield era was probably as low as it got in terms of the quality of the team. As someone said from 87-93 virtually all of our properly talented players left (Durie, Dorigo, Speedie, Nevin, Townsend etc.) and we had some proper crap in the team - Cascarino, Joe Allon, Mick Harford and the like.
Getting Hoddle in the summer of 1993 really was the catalyst that gave us some credibility and made it obvious that the club was heading in a clear upward path.