Good video about who Clearlake are and what their business practice is all about.

Pretty sure SydneyChelsea said all this from the jump.

Edited February 19, 20251 yr by Sconnie Blue

4 hours ago, Sconnie Blue said:

Pretty sure SydneyChelsea said all this from the jump.

Plenty of us warned about the bid once Clearlake became involved.

Also Simon Jordan has called any fans going against the owners as "ungrateful and plastics".

17 hours ago, Sconnie Blue said:

Pretty sure SydneyChelsea said all this from the jump.

In truth, they told us themselves, repeatedly within the first 12 months.

And the other truth is that any other venture capital fund would be exactly the same, so it makes no difference whether Clearlake comes or goes.

i heard the call on talksport and Jordan roasted him

19 hours ago, axman2526 said:

Plenty of us warned about the bid once Clearlake became involved.

Also Simon Jordan has called any fans going against the owners as "ungrateful and plastics".

Simon Jordan is a sanctimonious, pompous, self important, deluded, prick. . That descriptive list is endless.

7 hours ago, SydneyChelsea said:

In truth, they told us themselves, repeatedly within the first 12 months.

And the other truth is that any other venture capital fund would be exactly the same, so it makes no difference whether Clearlake comes or goes.

ONLY if another venture capitalist venture fund buys us who have the exact same transfer model and plan as ClearLake would it make no difference. . It doesn't have to be a venture fund. Someone like, er, I dunno, maybe a Russian ( or similar,,) who isn't interested in extracting wealth from our club could be a possible future owner ?

If you can't make top 4 after spending over a billion with the current state of this premier league which tbh is pretty awful then you have made some seriously bad decisions. Top 4 has to be given and not really seen as some big achievement, really shows how much the owners have f**ked up.

4 hours ago, The Rising Sun said:

Simon Jordan is a sanctimonious, pompous, self important, deluded, prick. . That descriptive list is endless.

Also a mate of Todd's.

On 20/02/2025 at 16:26, SydneyChelsea said:

In truth, they told us themselves, repeatedly within the first 12 months.

And the other truth is that any other venture capital fund would be exactly the same, so it makes no difference whether Clearlake comes or goes.

I am confused with fans who supported clearlake and now against them. They have been pretty open about their plan.

Edited February 21, 20251 yr by Bob stark

1 hour ago, Bob stark said:

I am confused with fans who supported clearlake and now against them. They have been pretty open about their plan.

I think most of the fans that supported Clearlake did so because the very early soundbites made them the best of a bad bunch.

• Ratcliffe - look what's happening at OT

• Ricketts - pretty much all were against.

• The Saudis - Never actually delivered with a bid and everyone was up in arms over human rights, simply because it was the middle east.

• Broughton - i think most thought these, whilst being closest to the culture of Chelsea just didn’t have the financial clout to keep us in the footballing elite of Europe. What a hoot that has turned out to be.

People's opinions will naturally change as the situation unfolds and I don't think people should necessarily be held to account for holding an opinion when presented with an initial sales pitch and mission statement that evolves into something quite different to how it was intended to be interpreted.

For example, making a statement that the club feel that investing in youth, having identified the cream of potential world footballing talent, sounds like music to our ears. It's safe to assume that the average fan would have interpreted this as a plan to integrate the next Neymar, Messi, Lamal, into our existing framework. Who wouldn't support that.

Going out and splurging large over the odds fees, in comparison, on medium level, average youngsters, that only have any visible metrics because they play in such weak leagues that you can be captaining the side at 18 with 30 games under your belt, bears little, if any resemblance, to the soundbites and statements initially made.

We want to make Chelsea fans proud, be fcked.

Edited February 21, 20251 yr by WhiteWall

I am not qualified to judge nor do I have information to judge if RA benefitted from Putin’s regime but when Russia invaded Ukraine he was sanctioned by the uk govt.

But I do think that there is blatant hypocrisy and the UK govt is a shining example of that. Today Rwanda is actively invading DRC plundering its resources but not a sound. Not to forget the deal UK wanted to do with a Rwanda for deporting migrants.

Forget that .. clubs like Arsenal continue to be sponsored by Rwanda but doubt anyone will talk about. Yet Europe lectures rest of the world on morality .. laughable really.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/feb/17/rwanda-backed-m23-rebels-capture-drc-city-bukavu

This isn’t knee jerk. We are finished, sh*te players, terrible manager and two incompetent sporting directors, we have spent like crazy and now can’t buy our way out of this mess due to FFP.

The Americans have finished us as a top club.

1 minute ago, SimonH said:

This isn’t knee jerk. We are finished, sh*te players, terrible manager and two incompetent sporting directors, we have spent like crazy and now can’t buy our way out of this mess due to FFP.

The Americans have finished us as a top club.

Unfortunately, I agree. This feels like the final nail in the coffin of our top 4 pursuit. 3 consecutive years without CL football, we are officially an overachieving mid table team.

35 minutes ago, yaz said:

Unfortunately, I agree. This feels like the final nail in the coffin of our top 4 pursuit. 3 consecutive years without CL football, we are officially an overachieving mid table team.

For all their talk about wanting to be better than Roman, we are now about to beat Roman’s record of seasons not in the champions league. (16/17) & (18/19).

The more worse it’s going to be 3 consecutive seasons even after being in the champions league when Clearsh*t arrived.

Will see how many "proper Chels" are left on Tuesday. How many have just given up?

9 minutes ago, Sconnie Blue said:

For all their talk about wanting to be better than Roman, we are now about to beat Roman’s record of seasons not in the champions league. (16/17) & (18/19).

The more worse it’s going to be 3 consecutive seasons even after being in the champions league when Clearsh*t arrived.

They came in cockily, even trying to suggest changes for the Premier League when they had only been owners for a minute. Of course, they had to go and rebuild the club their own way, destroying it in the process. Yes, changes were needed, but they needed to be managed by people who knew what they were doing. Not a bunch of scatterbrain decisions made on the basis of data.

Even after all that, when things started to look a bit rosier at the end of last season, they couldn't just agree to work with Poch with one more season, given that he had shown enough progress to suggest he was worth persisting with. But no, Poch wanted Conor to stay and they needed that PSR to fund the signings of some more 17 year olds.

So Aston Villa decided to put their needs this season first. They needed a striker, an attacking midfielder and a defender, and they went out and got them . Strengthening their squad for emery.

We needed a keeper, a defender. A midfielder and a proper striker. But nope, we loaned out players and then signed another kid for "great business "

some is you still think the sporting directors make that call ? Is all the owners and the model, which they must follow.

i think its on the sporting directors - its not their brief to buy players that either lose money, tie up money or dont fit in with the squad. The quality of the players is down to them, the 12 goalkeepers 48 wingers 0 fit strikers is down to them. Oh and the series of managers.

We should be blaming the owners for selling all our excellent players as the team performance suffers but we are not at that point yet. They are spending huge amounts if they reduced the spending and hired better sporting directors who were capable of selecting decent players we would be in a much better place.

Edited February 22, 20251 yr by OneTommyLangley

11 hours ago, Sconnie Blue said:

For all their talk about wanting to be better than Roman, we are now about to beat Roman’s record of seasons not in the champions league. (16/17) & (18/19).

The more worse it’s going to be 3 consecutive seasons even after being in the champions league when Clearsh*t arrived.

That's without the money they have spent in comparison and the frequency of managerial changes is easily up there with Abramovich. It is what worries me about them not sacking this awful manager. They will keep him just so they don't lose face.

Broadcasting rights.
Matchday revenue.
Commercial revenue.

This is how clubs make money. NOT on buying and selling players. The idea that our loathsome ownership is trying to make money buying/selling players is false.

Our only hope would have been if we remained in the EU and somehow some legislation was introduced on football ownership whereby clubs had to be owned by the supporters. Similar to Germany. But better. This did not happen. Football clubs are owned by Capitalists. The vast majority of them are American. This is not going to change anytime soon.

I always had a feeling, just due to basic human nature and American idiosyncrasies, the fellow US billionaires who owned PL clubs would have that bit of inner circle rivalry with each other. Like John Henry ‘giving it the big un’ at the golf course to Eghbali and thus, Eggy and Boehly then wanting to improve for bragging rights. ‘Who’s the smartest US owner’, who’s the American running sh*t in the UK, but no, clearly not. We’re in the hotel corner chair, Fenway Group are flashing their top of the table position, and Clearlake’s comeback is a shrug of the shoulders.

9 minutes ago, Term_X said:

I always had a feeling, just due to basic human nature and American idiosyncrasies, the fellow US billionaires who owned PL clubs would have that bit of inner circle rivalry with each other. Like John Henry ‘giving it the big un’ at the golf course to Eghbali and thus, Eggy and Boehly then wanting to improve for bragging rights. ‘Who’s the smartest US owner’, who’s the American running sh*t in the UK, but no, clearly not. We’re in the hotel corner chair, Fenway Group are flashing their top of the table position, and Clearlake’s comeback is a shrug of the shoulders.

Oh it is there. The bragging rights. And also the whole 'player trading' thing - which is a side hustle. We bought him for this and sold him for that. One Up-man ship.

But the main motivation is to sell the club in 10 years and make a bucket load of cash for their investors. This is not a sport that they are passionate about. They have more interest in a golf course. Hey why don't we have an all star game in the premier league? They really don't have a 'feeling' for the game.

Ideally they would want an NFL style league of guaranteed income.

But yeah, they want Chelsea to be a success and to make the 'play offs' and even win the Superb Owl. They want to enjoy the day in their corporate boxes. You British guys and your soccer. . .