Perception & Reality: The rocky relationship between owners and fans

And what IS the plan?

I routinely get called a brown envelope for the owners nowadays. Which is laughable if you read some of my articles on this site.

I’ve lost count of the times I’ve criticised the sporting directors, suggested we hire an elite sporting director, and told the owners they need to talk directly to the fans. Not to mention my frustrations at the treatment of certain players and not signing proven players in key positions.

People want to know if you’re “pro-owner” or “anti-owner”, my view is I’m pro Chelsea Football Club and what’s good for Chelsea, nothing else. No one is above criticism, and no one is bigger than the club. Including the owners and directors.

Ultimately everyone is entitled to their views and have a right to be heard, and I know people from the club read this site.

As fans we often form opinions emotionally, because we have an emotional connection to the club - we’re “emotional investors” as someone from the Chelsea Supporters Trust put it in a podcast last season. The only problem with doing this, is these opinions can end up being so fuelled by anger or frustration, they can become simplistic, lacking context and nuance. I’ve been guilty of doing this myself, and still can be quite often. My issue with those arguments is they’re easily dismissable by the club - whereas well reasoned, rational, contextual arguments with possible solutions, are more likely to be listened to and acted on.

I’ll be honest, I’ve been pretty annoyed at how the situations with Conor Gallagher and Trevoh Chalobah have been handled this summer. It's not even the decision to sell them, I can deal with that, but on the surface, the treatment of them both has been poor in my view, given their loyalty and service to the club and performances last season. The shambles with Conor Gallagher now potentially returning to England and training with the U21s (alongside Trev), is a mess, and there’s no way to dress that up.

Which brings me to my first point. Sometimes the perception of what the club, owners or sporting directors are doing isn’t always the reality. There’s always was to communicate things which can make things sound worse than they are, or indeed better. Sometimes there’s things which can’t be known. So whilst my perception of what’s happened is its awful, and disrespectful, we don’t know the entire truth. Sometimes the story we get in the media is true, sometimes its a version of the truth well written.

I’ve never been one to believe all pro-ownership news is PR and all bad news is true, that’s utterly ridiculous. But it takes a lot of nuance to read between the lines and see what the truth is - especially when communication with the wider fanbase is relatively poor.

However, in this case, it really does seem a complete mess, and two loyal servants of Chelsea have been treated poorly in my view.

I know the club will have their own views on what's really happened, on why their decisions are justified and there may be things none of us know. I respect the club’s perspective, even if I don’t always agree with it.

Which brings me to my next point. Judging from my observations on social media, trust in the ownership and sporting directors has now been totally lost by a huge percentage of the fanbase, to the point where even if the truth came out and it was favourable to the club, many people wouldn’t believe it or only give grudging credit to the owners. A lot of fans are now so angry and frustrated, and become so disillusioned by the ownership they just don’t trust them anymore.

The club, via people like Daniel Finkelstein, have communicated well with fan groups like the CPO, Chelsea Supporters Trust and the clubs own Fan Advisory Board. But certainly the wider fanbase outside of this, certainly on social media, has lost a lot of trust in the ownership.

A few I speak to regularly go so far as to feel the ownership, and Behdad Eghbali in particular, see the whole of Cobham as a cash cow to fund signing random youngsters who will never play for us, and we will just sell for profit. This group of fans believe the owners have no sporting ambition at all, with their goal being to destroy the club and make us solely a profit making operation.

I hasten to add, this isn’t my own view or even close.

My view, in contrast, is that the owners are ambitious. They want to win, they want Champions League Football, they want trophies. They are trying to make Chelsea a self-sustaining club financially, whilst achieving long term sustained success on the field, winning major trophies, and playing CL football whilst compliant with financial rules. All noble ambitions, with a long term perspective. I believe they see investing in young talent as the best long term way to do this. Selling some (not all) academy talent - as Man City, Arsenal and other big clubs do for the same reasons, and selling on the excess of the young talent we sign for profit, is part of a strategy to ensure financial sustainability for Chelsea, even without CL football.

I just think its been handled badly and communicated poorly. I think there’s been some poor decisions, some reckless ones and some situations have been handled badly.

Back to my earlier point on perception v reality - several fans I speak to and see online are frustrated with what they see on the surface, whatever the truth is behind the scenes. With no communication from the owners about why types of decisions are being made, the ambition of the owners and their strategy, it leaves clear space for people to come up with their own assessments, using the only evidence they have.

On the surface, to agree a deal for a player, then that deal to fall through, then Chelsea go for a player we refused to sign last year in a position we are strong in, looks chaotic and unplanned. Now the reality may be different (and I feel like it may be more complex than it seems), but it doesn’t matter. All that matters is the optics, and as far as optics go, nothing at Chelsea screams “elite, well run, top class professional football club who is serious about winning and treats players/staff well”. Again, behind the scenes, this could be very different.

The point is, that’s the perception, from rival fans and pundits, not just Chelsea fans. Another example is not having a shirt sponsor in time for the season two years in a row - this is an area where fans expected the ownership to be absolutely elite, and on the surface it looks unprofessional. Again, there may well be reasons for it, which explain it, but the perception is one of a poorly run commercial operation (which I don’t believe we have, given the staff we’ve hired).

Ultimately in the long run, this could, eventually, begin to do harm to our ability to attract elite players, staff and sponsors. Truth, actions and perception all need to be of a slick, elite, world class professional outfit geared towards success.

On the pitch, it doesn’t help that Chelsea are now two years without a trophy and two years out of the Champions League, so fans are growing more frustrated purely with events on the pitch, yet alone off it.

The drama of Samu Omorodion, Joao Felix and Conor Gallagher has just increased the perception by some that there’s no plan or strategy at all. I heard one fan labelling our owners “chancers” who don’t know what they’re doing.

I disagree strongly with this assertion by the way, our owners may deserve criticism for their running of Chelsea, but there’s no question in the world of business and finance, they have been wildly successful and it's certainly not by “chancing”.

I’ve personally never been a fan of the appointment of Chris Jurasek as CEO and think its done a lot of damage. Respectfully, whilst he’s hugely successful in business, he has no experience in sport, and this showed early on when he joked about Chelsea fans as “customers” which is a genuinely awful statement, and frankly fans have every right to ignore anything he has done since. Since he has come in, some fans have told me they feel their intelligence is being insulted by some of the communication on matters which he is in charge of. Chelsea should be appointing a CEO with experience in the football world, appointing Jurasek was a poor decision in my opinion.

For example, Man Utd have appointed Omar Berrado as their CEO. He’s run Man City for years, with huge success. On day one at United he wrote to the fans in a respectful tone, offering to meet them and listen to them. That’s how to run an elite football club. Gestures, respect and tone like that from someone with a proven record in football and business, reassures fans and keeps them onside.

In terms of Chelsea, I know there IS a plan, which I’ve gone over many times, and tried to explain briefly earlier.

I don’t blame anyone for ignoring me when I try to explain it now. People have waited two years and because on the surface at least, it can appear a mess at times. Two years is a long time for fans to wait, certainly longer than Chelsea fans have had to wait previously for success.

To be fair, we have heard from the club on this. Non-executive director Daniel Finklestein has been a proper Chelsea fan for over 50 years and season ticket holder for almost as long. He outlined a little of the ambition and plan of the owners in the last home matchday programme of last season.

You can disagree with him if you like, you can even think its ridiculous or PR, that’s your call. But I know for a fact, Daniel cares about Chelsea as much as any of us, and I don’t believe he would sign up for anything if he didn’t believe it was good for the club. So anyway, here’s his comments:

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“We want trophies. We want the Champions League. And these things will come.

We have a project. Not just talk of a project, but a real project. We’ve been buying the next generation of the world’s best football players, and these players are coming to Chelsea. They are turning down other big clubs and big money offers because they can see we have a project. Just below the surface are some of the world’s greatest stars in the making. Players just waiting to play for Chelsea.

To build a sustainable, viable, Chelsea that competes for the very top prizes we have had to restructure the squad and restructure the club too. Change had to come. The change of ownership and the rules of the Premier League demanded it. And change will always be disruptive.

But the suggestion that these changes have been random or chaotic is - and always has been - quite wrong. There has been a strategy from the beginning, it's just taking time to come to fruition. Which is inevitable.”

Daniel Finklestein

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Think of it what you will, but there it is. For me, I trust Daniel. He’s very smart, a man of integrity and he really loves Chelsea, so I know this isn’t PR rubbish, it’s the truth. It's up to you whether you believe him or not.

That said, I still personally still believe Behdad Eghbali and Todd Boehly should be speaking to the club channel about their plans for Chelsea, explaining some of the decisions, explaining their view on the academy, their long term ambitions, a stadium update, and apologising for things which need to be apologised for, in a respectful way. I think an apology and explanation for some decisions over the past two seasons is way overdue. Just for basic accountability.

I just think that would help diffuse things a little and stop some of the wilder speculation. SO much of the confusion and anger on issues like the ones I outlined earlier above would be cleared up with some healthy, respectful communication with the wider fanbase, outside the known fans groups (where the club have done an excellent job).

The most important thing in football though, is what happens on the pitch. If Chelsea have a good season, perform well, make the Champions League places and win a trophy or two, that will help the fan mood tremendously. Not to mention, it will undoubtedly help us attract big commercial deals we’re looking for.

Chelsea have had two years without a trophy, and that needs to change.

No doubt despite all the criticism in this article of owners and directors, I’ll be accused of being in the owners pockets again. All I’m trying to do is provide a balanced view based on evidence. The ownership and directors do deserve some criticism and there should be accountability for their decisions.

Ultimately in my view, what all of us fans want, me included, is a competitive Chelsea team which challenges for the top honours consistently, plays regular Champions League football, does the badge proud and wins major trophies. Let's all hope this season we get closer to finding that again.

The Score