Abramovich is offski

[Malagaram]

55 minutes ago, EtoileSportiveDeDerby said:

That's a lot of ruble

There is an awful lot of rubble being created by putin

[Day]

1 minute ago, Malagaram said:

Heard on news tonight that our goverment will do everything in its power to stop Chelsea going out of business,but why hasnt the same goverment done anything to help Derby County F.C.

To be fair, it’s the government that have placed the sanctions on Chelsea that could push them out of business, so they have the power to also make them more lenient. Where as we’re being governed by the EFL, there is no precedent where the government have come in and taken over such proceedings. 

[rammieib]

Anyone feel that the sale of the club should be permitted provided the proceeds go to a special fund to support and rebuild Ukraine afterwards? This is what Abramovich promised and hope that the £2 billion or so that would be raised through this sale will eventually go to Ukraine somehow.

I also understand in the murky world of finance, its never black and white!

[Gritstone Ram]

I personally feel that Chelsea has been built up on money that could have gone towards schools and hospitals in Russia. I think they should be sold and the money go to schools and hospitals when a government is in place that would make a difference.

[EtoileSportiveDeDerby]

6 hours ago, Gritstone Ram said:

I personally feel that Chelsea has been built up on money that could have gone towards schools and hospitals in Russia. I think they should be sold and the money go to schools and hospitals when a government is in place that would make a difference.

I would agree but at the moment going to Ukraine to rebuild it is the priority. At this rate Vlad and his army are just a wreching ball rolling around flattening entire cities

[GenBr]

15 hours ago, Unlucky Alf said:

It was reported by the BBC that their monthly wage bill is £38million x 12=£456million

Jesus Christ! Thought that sounded quote reasonable when you said £38 mill until I read it was per month!! That is bloomin ridiculous - could buy our entire club for a months wages over there...

12 hours ago, Malagaram said:

Heard on news tonight that our goverment will do everything in its power to stop Chelsea going out of business,but why hasnt the same goverment done anything to help Derby County F.C.

Because the situations are very different. If Mel Morris was sanctioned and had the club confiscated from him I'm sure you'd be hearing the same noises about us from the government. 

[Ram-Alf]

58 minutes ago, GenBr said:

Jesus Christ! Thought that sounded quote reasonable when you said £38 mill until I read it was per month!! That is bloomin ridiculous - could buy our entire club for a months wages over there...

Because the situations are very different. If Mel Morris was sanctioned and had the club confiscated from him I'm sure you'd be hearing the same noises about us from the government. 

Sorry not £38m per month, It is circa £28m per month which = £336million per year

Lakaku on a reported £335k a week ?

This is from the BBC

Chelsea's wage bill is round about £28m a month. We don't know how much cash they have in the bank. The most recent accounts we have are from June 2021 when there was £16m in the bank. Abramovich has been injecting money into Chelsea on a regular basis over recent years and presumably that won't be able to continue.

[Gaspode]

Abramovich has now also been disqualified by the PL from being a director of the club.....

[Zag zig]

10 hours ago, ketteringram said:

Blue is the colour.

Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch.

[GenBr]

2 hours ago, Unlucky Alf said:

Sorry not £38m per month, It is circa £28m per month which = £336million per year

Lakaku on a reported £335k a week ?

This is from the BBC

Chelsea's wage bill is round about £28m a month. We don't know how much cash they have in the bank. The most recent accounts we have are from June 2021 when there was £16m in the bank. Abramovich has been injecting money into Chelsea on a regular basis over recent years and presumably that won't be able to continue.

Might be worth putting a cheeky low ball bid in for some of their players like everyone has been doing to us. (if we were allowed to buy players that is)

[EtoileSportiveDeDerby]

What the government should have done is let them sell tickets and merchandise. Give the profits to charities operating in Ukraine or helping the refugees fleeing Ukraine. Pish poor planning by clueless government who are just after a headline/noise to hide  the shambolic visa requirements demanded of war refugees

[GenBr]

2 hours ago, EtoileSportiveDeDerby said:

What the government should have done is let them sell tickets and merchandise. Give the profits to charities operating in Ukraine or helping the refugees fleeing Ukraine. Pish poor planning by clueless government who are just after a headline/noise to hide  the shambolic visa requirements demanded of war refugees

If they sold merchandise and tickets the club would need that money to pay its staff. There wouldnt be any profits to give to Ukraine.

[EtoileSportiveDeDerby]

7 hours ago, GenBr said:

If they sold merchandise and tickets the club would need that money to pay its staff. There wouldnt be any profits to give to Ukraine.

Government decides, Put it in escrow account may be, Unprecedented times, unprecedented solutions

[GenBr]

1 hour ago, EtoileSportiveDeDerby said:

Government decides, Put it in escrow account may be, Unprecedented times, unprecedented solutions

Yes but somebody will have to pay the expenses of Chelsea to keep it going. If they're not allowed to bring any money you will only get a couple of weeks of merchandise sales before they go out of business. That wont do much for the people of Ukraine

[TuffLuff]

So that Panorama on Abramovich is quite interesting. No doubt it’s not really new info, but I learnt quite a bit about how he acquired his wealth and the deals that were put in place.

Chelsea fans may have to live with the fact that all their success these past 20 years will always have a side note of ‘where did the money come from?’

[Quagga]

6 hours ago, TuffLuff said:

So that Panorama on Abramovich is quite interesting. No doubt it’s not really new info, but I learnt quite a bit about how he acquired his wealth and the deals that were put in place.

Chelsea fans may have to live with the fact that all their success these past 20 years will always have a side note of ‘where did the money come from?’

This is what annoys me - It's absolutely not new.

I worked in the oil industry in Russia for several years, 15 odd years ago. Everyone knew how YUKOS was built up, Sibneft, Slavneft, Lukoil, Surgutneftegas, Sidanco, TNK etc. And it wasn't just the oil industry. There's a great book by David Hoffman that plots how 6 oligarchs got their cash (https://www.amazon.com/Oligarchs-Wealth-Power-New-Russia/dp/1610390709) Abramovich isn't one of those 6 because he was a bit off to one side. I could say more, but i'm sure the lawyers are watching.

And those auctions where businesses were sold on the cheap were part of the payback for supporting Yeltsin against his Communist challenger in the 1996? election. We i.e. the West knew that then, and so it's both hilarious and disappointing to see everyone channeling their inner Louis Renault and being "...shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!"

 

The final interesting point is that Hoffman picked the big interesting oligarchs to talk about: Alexander Smolensky, Yuri Luzhkov, Anatoly Chubais, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Boris Berezovsky, and Vladimir Gusinsky. All of whom bar Chubais are now either dead or in exile, and in reality Chubais was never an oligarch in how people in the West understand the term.

Edited March 15, 2022 by Quagga

[TigerTedd]

What’s sad is that the way football is going (actually very much due to abramovic) only the mega rich can afford to buy a football club. And there are very few mega rich people who didn’t get there doing something dodgy.

it’s a pretty obvious pattern. We’re getting more and more dubious people owning football clubs putting more and more dodgy money into the game, raising the the prices for everyone else and ensuring your average, everyday local millionaire couldn’t hope to own a football club. 

There needs to be a massive overhaul. I don’t know how you’d practically go about doing it, but the perfect scenario would be a 100% public ownership. All football clubs ran to a business plan set by the league, like ours, based on every club having the same share of the tv deals. Price caps, wage caps etc. then it’s a totally fair playing field, everyone has the same pot of money to play with. Then it’s a true test of a manager’s ability to make the most out of that pot.

And because some clubs will inevitably earn more than others, through merch and ticket sales, anything above and beyond that pot of money every club has can go back into academies and community projects. Imagine the good you could do with all the money in the game. 

[DCFC Kicks]

56 minutes ago, TigerTedd said:

What’s sad is that the way football is going (actually very much due to abramovic) only the mega rich can afford to buy a football club. And there are very few mega rich people who didn’t get there doing something dodgy.

it’s a pretty obvious pattern. We’re getting more and more dubious people owning football clubs putting more and more dodgy money into the game, raising the the prices for everyone else and ensuring your average, everyday local millionaire couldn’t hope to own a football club. 

The saddest thing is they way fans seem to embrace it. 

vs Newcastle, Chelsea fans chanting Abramovich, Newcastle fans chanting back waving Saudi flags. 

I honestly don't even know what the point of football even is anymore.

[BaaLocks]

13 hours ago, TuffLuff said:

So that Panorama on Abramovich is quite interesting. No doubt it’s not really new info, but I learnt quite a bit about how he acquired his wealth and the deals that were put in place.

Chelsea fans may have to live with the fact that all their success these past 20 years will always have a side note of ‘where did the money come from?’

It most certainly is not new info, look at the filming done on it - if you think you can fly round Russia like that today, good luck. That's the bit that sticks in the craw, we've known about this since at least the mid-1990s but only now that it is inconvenient to ignore it do we collectively want to thrash ourselves in anguish at how it was let to happen. If Putin had not invaded Ukraine nobody would have given a tinker's cuss about this. And the other bit is how we now go back and look at things that happened in the madness of the end of the Soviet Union through the lens of modern accounting and principles and say it's oh so wrong when we were collectively more than happy to have some of those billions make their way to our shores via Mayfair apartments, Lamborghinis and football clubs. It's a bit like some of the analysis of 1970s comedies that are done on Channel 5 on a Saturday night and everyone goes 'that's horrific' - well, yes it was, but sadly it was inside what was acceptable at the time. We might not like it, trust me many Russians certainly don't, but a few people got very, very (one more very) rich through loopholes that might now be judged as totally wrong but at the time were all the madness of the Wild East. 

[TigerTedd]

54 minutes ago, BaaLocks said:

It most certainly is not new info, look at the filming done on it - if you think you can fly round Russia like that today, good luck. That's the bit that sticks in the craw, we've known about this since at least the mid-1990s but only now that it is inconvenient to ignore it do we collectively want to thrash ourselves in anguish at how it was let to happen. If Putin had not invaded Ukraine nobody would have given a tinker's cuss about this. And the other bit is how we now go back and look at things that happened in the madness of the end of the Soviet Union through the lens of modern accounting and principles and say it's oh so wrong when we were collectively more than happy to have some of those billions make their way to our shores via Mayfair apartments, Lamborghinis and football clubs. It's a bit like some of the analysis of 1970s comedies that are done on Channel 5 on a Saturday night and everyone goes 'that's horrific' - well, yes it was, but sadly it was inside what was acceptable at the time. We might not like it, trust me many Russians certainly don't, but a few people got very, very (one more very) rich through loopholes that might now be judged as totally wrong but at the time were all the madness of the Wild East. 

Are we going to go through this all over again in 10 years, when Newcastle have become club world champions for the third time. And will Newcastle fans care either way if that’s the outcome.

it’s crazy that on the one hand we’re denouncing this, while simultaneously allowing it to carry on. 

the premier league, the government, whoever, can’t have it both ways. You either care where the money comes from, or you don’t.