A great read thank you. As we all know nothing is quite what it seems but from where I’m standing it does look like a complete mess. I do find it hard to believe that successful people can appear to get so many things wrong. Communication is essential in whatever this process is and that is sadly lacking. It’s not always about winning trophies etc it’s about feeling proud to support Chelsea football club. That’s not possible at the moment.
Roman never said anything. He was an unknown quantity onto which we (fans) projected our ideas. And because the team was successful, these ideas were largely positive. But to repeat - he was pretty much a closed book.
On transfers - again, the club (pre-Boehly, never said anything about them whilst in negotiation).
And yes, perhaps the current owners could say more - BUT we could also remind ourselves that 99.9% of what we read on social media is ‘cack’, not accept rumour as truth and get excited or angry as a result.
Football isn’t politics so perhaps the consequences of assuming hearsay to be truth don’t really matter. But I still think we would all do well to accept the ‘reports’ we read with a huge pinch of salt.
Thanks. I guess football discourse will inevitably descend into the same ‘murk’ as online politics - it’s a shame. I’m sure the current owners are far from
perfect but to me, if you stop and think, the ‘club in chaos’ narrative (bread & butter for journos) is very largely not built on facts.
Eg squad size - I spent yesterday evening desk researching PL club total squad sizes back to around 2014/15. Conclusions: our squad size under Roman was generally comparable to now; and broadly in line with other clubs.
Once again, I agree with you, there’s so many comments, negative ones, about the current ownership and the sporting directors. That’s not to say they haven’t made mistakes because they have and I’ve said so in the past.
However, people seem to forget the mistakes we made in the transfer market during Roman era, some of which we still having to deal with now. The fact that we’re being investigated by the Premier League because of the actions of the previous ownership.
By ignoring some of these and other issues during that period is easy to do when you hit the murky social media comments that you reference.
I don’t want to take away anything from the era that preceded the current ownership as it gave all of us incredible joy and happiness and we achieved way more than we ever anticipated we would as a club. We could only dream of the success that we have had, but we now need to put that success into context and not shoot the new owners at the first opportunity.
Again they have made mistakes and I acknowledged that.
I agree with a lot of your points- I do think the owners are ambitious and want success on the pitch and they do have a plan to make the club self-financing and sustainable long term as we no longer just have Roman pumping in his billions to save the clubs finances when they over spend. Something had to change. Wage structure is much improved and the frustrating buying of multiple young players is aimed at income generation going forward. And you’re right that their many mistakes in the process so far , their lack of communication with the fans, treatment of CG and TC, lack of results in last 2 years, failures such as the lack of shirt sponsors, the “project” and the time it’s taking, chaos in the transfer market- all this is going to damn them in the eyes of the fans.
At the end of the day Lack of success on the pitch, results in lack of acceptance of mistakes off the pitch. It’s the reality of football. Chelsea fans are not known for their patience. Like you say the only to get them on side is to start winning again. Let’s hope it’s soon!
Thank you, The Score for the time and effort you obviously took in preparing this article which I’m sure you were aware was going to get some negative comment back. As you’re probably aware, I have also taken criticism for being too positive, to supportive of the owners and not seeing all the negativity for others do in the sporting directors. You’re 100% right and I agree with you that mistakes have been made along the way.
However, can remember the multiple mistakes made by numerous owners in the years gone by. Will at least from the supporters perspective! This is nothing new. The fact that we’ve won nothing for two years after 20 years of success just elevates and highlights everything to a more significant height. This lead to a level of toxicity that we’ve never seen before because of the growth of social media.
Rome wasn’t built in a day and everyone quickly forgets where the club was when they took it over and they clearly was a lot more in terms of problems behind-the-scenes then we all knew. Everyone forgets the mistakes that Roman made along the way because it was his money, he kept cutting the checks and this kept the problems hidden to a large extent. All the clearing out all the players in the last 12 months Will problems that are Rose during and because of, the Roman era.
I repeat again I definitely think big mistakes have been made and a fast track learning process has not necessarily helped along the way. I agree that the way that TC and CG have been treated is unnecessary but I also suspect there’s more to it than we all know like you suggest. Both players have known for 12 to 18 months that their time was running out at Stamford Bridge, no one can deny that was in the media.
I agree that there is the opportunity to use the Chelsea platform for someone from the ownership to honestly sit down, answer the criticism that has been made (asked for questions to be answered beforehand) and to set out a clear pathway for the next 2 to 3 years. I like you cannot believe anyone thinks they’re not ambitious, just look at the money they have invested, wrongly rightly in our eyes. However, when was the last time an owner or chairman genuinely sat down and communicated with their fans. I have taken the time this week to speak to parts of the fan bases in Liverpool, Manchester (post cities), Arsenal, Tottenham West Ham, Crystal Palace, and Brighton. Only the last, Brighton, said that they were regularly communicated with and had a positive outlook on their ownership. All the others said that they were never communicated with all very rarely. This is not meant to be defensive but just the reality and let’s be honest. When did we ever hear from Roman? Yes, we heard regularly from Ken Bates and most of us wished we hadn’t!
Enclosure thank you for your effort, the genuine time I’m sure this took to draft, re-draft and then think about it again before you submitted and please do not stop submitting these excellent reviews and commentaries
I had a small amount of optimism going in to the window, but honestly it seems like it must be a mad house over there. They don't seem organised in the least, we still need about 10+ outgoings and honestly they are all over the shop in this transfer window. I feel for Maresca, the amount of players in and around that team with no idea if they are coming or going is shocking. The treatment of Gallagher and Chalobah has been appalling on top of that. They've had all bloody year to prepare for this summer and it looks as if they are just winging it.
Here’s the problem… whenever anyone says ‘trust the process’ they are asking people to basically trust the long-term view (and inevitable pain in the short term) based on a track record
In other words… we’ve got a track record doing this process, so trust that we will do it again
The problem is, the owners have zero track record in football. Your article talks about the fact they are successful businessmen and that is completely and utterly irrelevant… being successful in Finance and being successful in Sport are different, just like being successful in Recruitment and being successful in Pharma
We’ve seen almost zero evidence that these owners have the slightest clue what they are doing… all I’ve seen is a bunch of people without a strategy, who wing it one window to the next
Petrovic being the case in point… PR last summer that we’d scouted him in the Serbian league, only to change the coach (and the entire playing style) meaning he’s available for transfer. If the owners have always had this grand vision for Pep style football, they why sign a GK who can’t play that style?
I know why… because they don’t have a grand vision. They just know people like Score (and countless others who believe their PR) will lap it up.
I think in trying to appear balanced, you've ended up being far too generous to them, and even Finklestein. They no doubt want success and there might be "a plan", but all the evidence at the moment points towards the execution on the plan being shockingly bad. This is without mentioning the lack of any stadium development update, the monumental financial losses BlueCo have made, the selling off of club assets, the proposed "multi club" model which has amounted to two clubs, with one (Chelsea) taking on all the risk by signing all the prospects, taking away the subsidised away travel, and the treatment of Neil Bath and Jim Fraser, along other things I've probably forgotten, because the list is too long. If Finklestein had any impact on the actual running of the club things might be different, but I don't think any Chelsea fan with real influence would have allowed the owners and directors to operate this way. Ultimately after two years in their positions, I can only see Finklestein and Charone as a makeshift complaints department for the board, who'll speak to fans and maybe feed back concerns to the owners, but without any ability to do anything about the concerns. The club is a mess and I'm sorry, as fans we shouldn't be trying to be charitable and labelling it as "balanced", when there's a new mess being made under this ownership on an almost weekly basis right now.
spot on Michael. People are more interested in trying to be 'balanced' and get brownie points for saying 'hey look im the rational one here'. But in all this they gloss over the fact that it has been an absolute shit show under Clownlake. All your points above are true. Unfortunately the owners and some of their fans will only understand this once we hit rock bottom. All these poor squad making decisions will ultimately blow up in their face. Its a horrible horrible way to run the club.
cant believe that after 2 years of being a shit show people are still writing articles to find positives with these owners.... look around and let me know one club who is run like this?
seems like naivety has no bounds.
But i guess we have to hit the rock bottom first before people realise and finally call out this ownership and stop falling for their PR machine.
Danny is a fan but his end of season note was a bit disgraceful as in there was no acknowledgement of the work done by Cobham, no mention of its importance and no mention of people like Connor / Trev etc who not only captained us last season but are Chelsea through and through.
If you read the article, there’s plenty critical in there. There’s plenty critical in many of the articles I’ve written.
I just refused to get drawn into toxic negativity or toxic positivity. It’s not as bad as some seem to think, it’s also not brilliant either and big mistakes have been made. Thats very fair.
i read the article and there is literally very little they have got right.
Recruitment, sales, loans, sponsorships, injury issues... is an absolute mess. Look at the money spent. Pretty much all their appointments have failed to do a capable job. There is no club in Europe that is being run like ours. Its a shit show and calling it as such does not mean its (negative) toxicity.
Umair as The Score said everyone is entitled to their opinions, as you are and have status. Whether you agree with the content or not the article is extremely well written and I have to believe has a lot of thought and preparation in it before it was issued. We all need to understand there are differing views within the fan base respond respectively to each other I’m not create the toxic, that we find on Twitter/X. None of this takes away from the reality and the fact that you are firstly entitled to the views you have stated, whether everyone agrees with them or not and there are others that agree with you. What I would say is that I know Daniel you’re having sack close to him for many years and engaged with him ((I’m not Friend). What I do know is he has not taken on his role as a non-executive director to just be the mouthpiece of the owners. He is much better than that, an excellent communicator and has enough knowledge of the PR world through his own job not to get caught up in reporting other peoples words
A great read thank you. As we all know nothing is quite what it seems but from where I’m standing it does look like a complete mess. I do find it hard to believe that successful people can appear to get so many things wrong. Communication is essential in whatever this process is and that is sadly lacking. It’s not always about winning trophies etc it’s about feeling proud to support Chelsea football club. That’s not possible at the moment.
Fair article, although I’d point out:
Roman never said anything. He was an unknown quantity onto which we (fans) projected our ideas. And because the team was successful, these ideas were largely positive. But to repeat - he was pretty much a closed book.
On transfers - again, the club (pre-Boehly, never said anything about them whilst in negotiation).
And yes, perhaps the current owners could say more - BUT we could also remind ourselves that 99.9% of what we read on social media is ‘cack’, not accept rumour as truth and get excited or angry as a result.
Football isn’t politics so perhaps the consequences of assuming hearsay to be truth don’t really matter. But I still think we would all do well to accept the ‘reports’ we read with a huge pinch of salt.
Sound words Fraser. Much aligned with my own thinking.
Thanks. I guess football discourse will inevitably descend into the same ‘murk’ as online politics - it’s a shame. I’m sure the current owners are far from
perfect but to me, if you stop and think, the ‘club in chaos’ narrative (bread & butter for journos) is very largely not built on facts.
Eg squad size - I spent yesterday evening desk researching PL club total squad sizes back to around 2014/15. Conclusions: our squad size under Roman was generally comparable to now; and broadly in line with other clubs.
But that’s not much of a story I guess.
Once again, I agree with you, there’s so many comments, negative ones, about the current ownership and the sporting directors. That’s not to say they haven’t made mistakes because they have and I’ve said so in the past.
However, people seem to forget the mistakes we made in the transfer market during Roman era, some of which we still having to deal with now. The fact that we’re being investigated by the Premier League because of the actions of the previous ownership.
By ignoring some of these and other issues during that period is easy to do when you hit the murky social media comments that you reference.
I don’t want to take away anything from the era that preceded the current ownership as it gave all of us incredible joy and happiness and we achieved way more than we ever anticipated we would as a club. We could only dream of the success that we have had, but we now need to put that success into context and not shoot the new owners at the first opportunity.
Again they have made mistakes and I acknowledged that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor
I agree with a lot of your points- I do think the owners are ambitious and want success on the pitch and they do have a plan to make the club self-financing and sustainable long term as we no longer just have Roman pumping in his billions to save the clubs finances when they over spend. Something had to change. Wage structure is much improved and the frustrating buying of multiple young players is aimed at income generation going forward. And you’re right that their many mistakes in the process so far , their lack of communication with the fans, treatment of CG and TC, lack of results in last 2 years, failures such as the lack of shirt sponsors, the “project” and the time it’s taking, chaos in the transfer market- all this is going to damn them in the eyes of the fans.
At the end of the day Lack of success on the pitch, results in lack of acceptance of mistakes off the pitch. It’s the reality of football. Chelsea fans are not known for their patience. Like you say the only to get them on side is to start winning again. Let’s hope it’s soon!
Thank you, The Score for the time and effort you obviously took in preparing this article which I’m sure you were aware was going to get some negative comment back. As you’re probably aware, I have also taken criticism for being too positive, to supportive of the owners and not seeing all the negativity for others do in the sporting directors. You’re 100% right and I agree with you that mistakes have been made along the way.
However, can remember the multiple mistakes made by numerous owners in the years gone by. Will at least from the supporters perspective! This is nothing new. The fact that we’ve won nothing for two years after 20 years of success just elevates and highlights everything to a more significant height. This lead to a level of toxicity that we’ve never seen before because of the growth of social media.
Rome wasn’t built in a day and everyone quickly forgets where the club was when they took it over and they clearly was a lot more in terms of problems behind-the-scenes then we all knew. Everyone forgets the mistakes that Roman made along the way because it was his money, he kept cutting the checks and this kept the problems hidden to a large extent. All the clearing out all the players in the last 12 months Will problems that are Rose during and because of, the Roman era.
I repeat again I definitely think big mistakes have been made and a fast track learning process has not necessarily helped along the way. I agree that the way that TC and CG have been treated is unnecessary but I also suspect there’s more to it than we all know like you suggest. Both players have known for 12 to 18 months that their time was running out at Stamford Bridge, no one can deny that was in the media.
I agree that there is the opportunity to use the Chelsea platform for someone from the ownership to honestly sit down, answer the criticism that has been made (asked for questions to be answered beforehand) and to set out a clear pathway for the next 2 to 3 years. I like you cannot believe anyone thinks they’re not ambitious, just look at the money they have invested, wrongly rightly in our eyes. However, when was the last time an owner or chairman genuinely sat down and communicated with their fans. I have taken the time this week to speak to parts of the fan bases in Liverpool, Manchester (post cities), Arsenal, Tottenham West Ham, Crystal Palace, and Brighton. Only the last, Brighton, said that they were regularly communicated with and had a positive outlook on their ownership. All the others said that they were never communicated with all very rarely. This is not meant to be defensive but just the reality and let’s be honest. When did we ever hear from Roman? Yes, we heard regularly from Ken Bates and most of us wished we hadn’t!
Enclosure thank you for your effort, the genuine time I’m sure this took to draft, re-draft and then think about it again before you submitted and please do not stop submitting these excellent reviews and commentaries
I had a small amount of optimism going in to the window, but honestly it seems like it must be a mad house over there. They don't seem organised in the least, we still need about 10+ outgoings and honestly they are all over the shop in this transfer window. I feel for Maresca, the amount of players in and around that team with no idea if they are coming or going is shocking. The treatment of Gallagher and Chalobah has been appalling on top of that. They've had all bloody year to prepare for this summer and it looks as if they are just winging it.
Here’s the problem… whenever anyone says ‘trust the process’ they are asking people to basically trust the long-term view (and inevitable pain in the short term) based on a track record
In other words… we’ve got a track record doing this process, so trust that we will do it again
The problem is, the owners have zero track record in football. Your article talks about the fact they are successful businessmen and that is completely and utterly irrelevant… being successful in Finance and being successful in Sport are different, just like being successful in Recruitment and being successful in Pharma
We’ve seen almost zero evidence that these owners have the slightest clue what they are doing… all I’ve seen is a bunch of people without a strategy, who wing it one window to the next
Petrovic being the case in point… PR last summer that we’d scouted him in the Serbian league, only to change the coach (and the entire playing style) meaning he’s available for transfer. If the owners have always had this grand vision for Pep style football, they why sign a GK who can’t play that style?
I know why… because they don’t have a grand vision. They just know people like Score (and countless others who believe their PR) will lap it up.
I think in trying to appear balanced, you've ended up being far too generous to them, and even Finklestein. They no doubt want success and there might be "a plan", but all the evidence at the moment points towards the execution on the plan being shockingly bad. This is without mentioning the lack of any stadium development update, the monumental financial losses BlueCo have made, the selling off of club assets, the proposed "multi club" model which has amounted to two clubs, with one (Chelsea) taking on all the risk by signing all the prospects, taking away the subsidised away travel, and the treatment of Neil Bath and Jim Fraser, along other things I've probably forgotten, because the list is too long. If Finklestein had any impact on the actual running of the club things might be different, but I don't think any Chelsea fan with real influence would have allowed the owners and directors to operate this way. Ultimately after two years in their positions, I can only see Finklestein and Charone as a makeshift complaints department for the board, who'll speak to fans and maybe feed back concerns to the owners, but without any ability to do anything about the concerns. The club is a mess and I'm sorry, as fans we shouldn't be trying to be charitable and labelling it as "balanced", when there's a new mess being made under this ownership on an almost weekly basis right now.
spot on Michael. People are more interested in trying to be 'balanced' and get brownie points for saying 'hey look im the rational one here'. But in all this they gloss over the fact that it has been an absolute shit show under Clownlake. All your points above are true. Unfortunately the owners and some of their fans will only understand this once we hit rock bottom. All these poor squad making decisions will ultimately blow up in their face. Its a horrible horrible way to run the club.
cant believe that after 2 years of being a shit show people are still writing articles to find positives with these owners.... look around and let me know one club who is run like this?
seems like naivety has no bounds.
But i guess we have to hit the rock bottom first before people realise and finally call out this ownership and stop falling for their PR machine.
Danny is a fan but his end of season note was a bit disgraceful as in there was no acknowledgement of the work done by Cobham, no mention of its importance and no mention of people like Connor / Trev etc who not only captained us last season but are Chelsea through and through.
If you read the article, there’s plenty critical in there. There’s plenty critical in many of the articles I’ve written.
I just refused to get drawn into toxic negativity or toxic positivity. It’s not as bad as some seem to think, it’s also not brilliant either and big mistakes have been made. Thats very fair.
i read the article and there is literally very little they have got right.
Recruitment, sales, loans, sponsorships, injury issues... is an absolute mess. Look at the money spent. Pretty much all their appointments have failed to do a capable job. There is no club in Europe that is being run like ours. Its a shit show and calling it as such does not mean its (negative) toxicity.
Umair as The Score said everyone is entitled to their opinions, as you are and have status. Whether you agree with the content or not the article is extremely well written and I have to believe has a lot of thought and preparation in it before it was issued. We all need to understand there are differing views within the fan base respond respectively to each other I’m not create the toxic, that we find on Twitter/X. None of this takes away from the reality and the fact that you are firstly entitled to the views you have stated, whether everyone agrees with them or not and there are others that agree with you. What I would say is that I know Daniel you’re having sack close to him for many years and engaged with him ((I’m not Friend). What I do know is he has not taken on his role as a non-executive director to just be the mouthpiece of the owners. He is much better than that, an excellent communicator and has enough knowledge of the PR world through his own job not to get caught up in reporting other peoples words
It truly is unbelievable to read some of the articles in the internet lol