Sorry seems to be the hardest word

After a week of madness, is the board's letter of 'deep regret' enough for fans to forgive?

It’s been a week to the day as I type this that Chelsea put their statement out that they would be joining the new breakaway European Super League.

The new venture lasted around a day before reliable reporters were breaking news before our match against Brighton last week that we would be pulling out of the league.

It lasted all of one day, I’ve eaten meals that have lasted longer…

I had been told during the day on Monday that Chelsea immediately had regrets and were already talking about pulling out of the league, once the backlash of the entire world it seemed came out, including from the English Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the future King of England Prince William, who both spoke out about their disgust in the league.

It was a crazy 24 hours in football, and the one positive about it all was how all football fans were collectively pulling together in the same direction to take action and make a stand, and regardless of what anyone says, it made a REAL difference.

Roman Abramovich rarely gets involved in the day to day decisions of the football club, because he has his own trusted advisors who he likes to run operations. Of course he has a say in what happens, he is the owner, but on business decisions he has employed his staff who he puts in charge of those types of operations.

One thing he does do though, is he looks at fan reactions and he respects it. He reacts to it, just like he did here. Roman is a fan of Chelsea FC just like us, he puts a lot of trust in his staff, and they’ve let him down.

The fans were unreal, and how refreshing it was to see all of our fanbase unite for one common cause and really make a difference.

We literally lived an iconic moment of history last week by being a club involved in that fiasco, it will go down in the history of the sport as a huge moment. The images of Petr Cech coming out to address the fans, will be hugely iconic.

Who knows what is next for the organisers of the Super League and the incredibly out of touch and deluded Florentino Perez, but right now he needs to change the name of his league to the El Classico league, because it’s only his heavily in-debt (shock) Real Madrid team and their heavily in-debt (again, shock) fierce rivals Barcelona left in his ‘Super’ League right now!

I’m sure he will be back with a new plan; after all, he desperately needs to save his club and rid it of the debt.

The Athletic reported that it was Chairman Bruce Buck and Exec Guy Laurence who were the drivers of our European Super League campaign, and the club have claimed they joined because they did not want to be left behind.

What a massive misjudgement, and for the first time in a long time, there was an official statement from the board released over the weekend, and although there was no apology actually written as intent in the letter, they did say they ‘deeply regret’ their actions and acknowledged that it was the supporters reaction that made them instantly change their minds.

The letter is rather long, but you can read it here if you missed it.

Is this enough for fans to forgive? Well to be honest I have spoken to many supporters young, old, match goers, and non-match goers alike, and I have to say that it looks split down the middle.

Many are still not happy and are not prepared to forgive our owners and board for this, many want to see heads roll.

My verdict?

I place some blame on Roman, but very very little. As I said, the running of the club and operational decisions and movements is left to the board, but Roman is also part of the board and it was a collective decision to join the Super League.

Was he poorly advised? Absolutely, and this is why I’d like to see the real instigators and decision makers leave the club now, whoever they are. As I said, the Athletic article focused on Buck and Laurence, so if this is true, they should go in my view. But they won’t.

I’m OK with the letter of ‘deep regret’ despite the actual word ‘sorry’ not being involved. I think they could have gotten more fans back on board with them if they had simply written the word in there, this is all some need.

But for me, I’m happy to accept the huge error of misjudgement and massive mistake, and I’m happy to move forward and concentrate on the on-field stuff.

Written by Simon Phillips (@siphillipssport)