Hate the new owner so much

we should have known that, American owners are mostly crap in owning a football club

 

when United is purchased by Qatar we can kiss goodbye to any tiny chance of winning any domestic trophies when there are clubs that with mega wealth like United City and Newcastle

17 hours ago, Dean said:

- finally, even if we assume football is all about money and nothing else, we are on much shakier ground here than many realise. Clearlake, Boehly boast a lot of paper wealth, but how “real” is it? I suspect it’s to a significant degree (not completely as Todd and co are by many accounts very able and bright) the product not of their business acumen but a decade-plus period of history that was extraordinarily favourable to people taking risk with borrowed money. 

This has always been my main concern with Boehly/Clearlake's bid and I don't think people fully appreciate what a house of cards the Boehly/Clearlake strategy really is.

Economist Patrick Boyle discusses 'blitzscaling' strategies that orignated in the dotcom boom here. The hallmarks include:

• Targeting 'assets' that can be rapidly scaled
• Huge (borrowed) investments that inflate market value 
• Rapidly engaging in practices that are on the border of legality/rules and seeking regulatory approval after ("disruption")
• Focus on growth rather than pure profit/business fundamentals

A lot of the companies that benefitted from such strategies (Netflix, Uber, food delivery companies etc) haven't turned a day of profit and have no sustainability other than essentially an artifically inflated share price. 

If the above sounds famililar, it's because we should have no doubt that Boehly intends to use those strategies to inflate the market value of the club before a sale. Boehly/Clearlake will profit in 10 years, but at what cost?  

We fortunate to be located in London.  If we weren't then Roman would never have noticed us. He wanted to buy Spurs at first, apparently. 

2 hours ago, cfcforeverfan said:

Hate the new owner so much

we should have known that, American owners are mostly crap in owning a football club

 

when United is purchased by Qatar we can kiss goodbye to any tiny chance of winning any domestic trophies when there are clubs that with mega wealth like United City and Newcastle

Its not just about the wealth though is it? Its about the way you conduct yourself as well.

This clown came rolling into town, created a media prescence of his own and was shooting his mouth off with ridiculous notions and attitudes that not only showed up his lack of the structure and standing of football in this country to an embarrassing level, but also by preaching how much better it would be to run things on an American sports franchise model he contrived to alienate and insult the football establishment and media fraternity whihc is the perception taht is portrayed to the country.

The  result of this is that every (non Chelsea supporting) pundit and media outlet continually mock every embarrassing episode which happen on a daily basis and now they are all gathered around the edge of the abysss poised breathlessly,hop[ing that Boehly the tw@t pitches us off into financial ruin and oblivion just to prove that the imposter doesn't belong.

And he is at it again now in the press. FFS man, read the room. Not only are your business management decisions clearly questionable, you continue to make such a c**t of yourself every time you open your mouth that we are all cringing. Its not about us being patient in the long term, we just want you to shut the fck up and let real football people to make the decisions in our club. Cretin.

That last bit was to Boehly, @cfcforeverfan, not at you 

Edited May 5, 20233 yr by WhiteWall

5 minutes ago, WhiteWall said:

Its not about us being patient in the long term, we just want you to shut the fck up and let real football people to make the decisions in our club. 

The only thing I am hoping is that the "football" people Boehly has selected are actually any good ! Vivell, Winstanley, Stewart, Shields and Macauley ... for me the jury is as much out on all of them as it is for Boehly at this point in the "process".

Certainly seem to be a lot of them, so I hope we aren't in a "too many cook's" scenario here ... Boehly's obsession with being "corporate" I guess ? You can't be a proper corporation unless you have endless senior managers mostly doing f**k all apart from creating pointless work and looking "busy" 🙂 

22 hours ago, Dean said:

- finally, even if we assume football is all about money and nothing else, we are on much shakier ground here than many realise. Clearlake, Boehly boast a lot of paper wealth, but how “real” is it? I suspect it’s to a significant degree (not completely as Todd and co are by many accounts very able and bright) the product not of their business acumen but a decade-plus period of history that was extraordinarily favourable to people taking risk with borrowed money. This paper wealth can evaporate quickly, as has been proven many times (though we still never learn) and the chances of that happening have, in my view, greatly increased as a result of their reckless spending since they took over Chelsea. 

I would love to know more about the £800m debt they have already taken on. They've claimed it's not against the club but if I were to guess they've put it against the holding company that owns the club and therefore it's essentially the same thing but they get around the debt restrictions that Roman put in place before a sale.

If that is the case we already have more debt than any Premier League club currently and we've gone nowhere with the money we've spent. Tottenham have the second most debt but they have financed a stadium.

2 hours ago, enigma said:

We fortunate to be located in London.  If we weren't then Roman would never have noticed us. He wanted to buy Spurs at first, apparently. 

Spurs are also in London?

1 hour ago, WhiteWall said:

Its not just about the wealth though is it? Its about the way you conduct yourself as well.

This clown came rolling into town, created a media prescence of his own and was shooting his mouth off with ridiculous notions and attitudes that not only showed up his lack of the structure and standing of football in this country to an embarrassing level, but also by preaching how much better it would be to run things on an American sports franchise model he contrived to alienate and insult the football establishment and media fraternity whihc is the perception taht is portrayed to the country.

The  result of this is that every (non Chelsea supporting) pundit and media outlet continually mock every embarrassing episode which happen on a daily basis and now they are all gathered around the edge of the abysss poised breathlessly,hop[ing that Boehly the tw@t pitches us off into financial ruin and oblivion just to prove that the imposter doesn't belong.

And he is at it again now in the press. FFS man, read the room. Not only are your business management decisions clearly questionable, you continue to make such a c**t of yourself every time you open your mouth that we are all cringing. Its not about us being patient in the long term, we just want you to shut the fck up and let real football people to make the decisions in our club. Cretin.

That last bit was to Boehly, @cfcforeverfan, not at you 

Man, you have eloquently captured my feelings and thoughts of the clown Boehly.

He needs to just sit in a corner, shut the f**k up and wait till his investments pay up. As it will, if he allows the people that know what football is run things.

Just because it's a sport played with a ball don't mean you know sh*t about it. Just piss off, clown. 

2 minutes ago, OriginalS said:

I would love to know more about the £800m debt they have already taken on. They've claimed it's not against the club but if I were to guess they've put it against the holding company that owns the club and therefore it's essentially the same thing but they get around the debt restrictions that Roman put in place before a sale.

If that is the case we already have more debt than any Premier League club currently and we've gone nowhere with the money we've spent. Tottenham have the second most debt but they have financed a stadium.

I'm with you on all of that.

Its a real concern because when these holding companies come under pressure with repayments they start looking at how they can generate new income and while new sponsorship deals, including naming rights for The Bridge may help out to a degree, I suspect most of that was already built into their calculations. That debt is just ridiculous and as far as I can see they have paid way in excess of the real value of these players. Where is the real value in this club from a bankers point of view. Its in the stadium and not the team. Prime West London real estate. I have no idea where this leads but I suspect Clearlake have had their lawyers looking very carefully at the pitch owners agreement. I think the fans and the pitch owners need to stick to their guns and not allow the club to relocate.

Its not unheard of in the States for large sporting clubs to relocate and with all the bad decisions Boehly has made nothing is off the table at the moment.

1 hour ago, Sexyfootball said:

The only thing I am hoping is that the "football" people Boehly has selected are actually any good ! Vivell, Winstanley, Stewart, Shields and Macauley ... for me the jury is as much out on all of them as it is for Boehly at this point in the "process".

Certainly seem to be a lot of them, so I hope we aren't in a "too many cook's" scenario here ... Boehly's obsession with being "corporate" I guess ? You can't be a proper corporation unless you have endless senior managers mostly doing f**k all apart from creating pointless work and looking "busy" 🙂 

He is a clown. If he wanted to really be corporate he should have taken a leaf from how big Corp orgs. do things. 

Even if they do sack (they never announce as a sack but "decided/agreed to leave) the big dogs, they never just let them go immediately and bring in a replacement. They get a replacement who works alongside for a period to" learn the intricacies within that org" because there must be a transition as prerequisite to maintain business performance. Except its a poorly performing company and even then you don't just replace them with a new person as its a risk and threat to the organisation functioning at all. 

38 minutes ago, Andy North said:

I'm with you on all of that.

Its a real concern because when these holding companies come under pressure with repayments they start looking at how they can generate new income and while new sponsorship deals, including naming rights for The Bridge may help out to a degree, I suspect most of that was already built into their calculations. That debt is just ridiculous and as far as I can see they have paid way in excess of the real value of these players. Where is the real value in this club from a bankers point of view. Its in the stadium and not the team. Prime West London real estate. I have no idea where this leads but I suspect Clearlake have had their lawyers looking very carefully at the pitch owners agreement. I think the fans and the pitch owners need to stick to their guns and not allow the club to relocate.

Its not unheard of in the States for large sporting clubs to relocate and with all the bad decisions Boehly has made nothing is off the table at the moment.

Being owned by a private equity fund we know it's all about money for our ownership. There is no emotional connection to the club like Roman had, everything they do will be with the view of making money for themselves in the long run. If our owners could somehow make the most money by rebranding the entire club, selling the Bridge and moving elsewhere I am 100% sure they would do that. I don't think that will actually happen as I don't see how they could make more money by doing it that way but I agree with you that it's a scary thought.

This I also why I hate that argument where people say "the owners obviously want whats best for the club". No they very obviously want whats best for themselves, they don't give two sh*ts about the club other than making money off us.

Edited May 5, 20233 yr by OriginalS

2 hours ago, WhiteWall said:

Its not just about the wealth though is it? Its about the way you conduct yourself as well.

This clown came rolling into town, created a media prescence of his own and was shooting his mouth off with ridiculous notions and attitudes that not only showed up his lack of the structure and standing of football in this country to an embarrassing level, but also by preaching how much better it would be to run things on an American sports franchise model he contrived to alienate and insult the football establishment and media fraternity whihc is the perception taht is portrayed to the country.

The  result of this is that every (non Chelsea supporting) pundit and media outlet continually mock every embarrassing episode which happen on a daily basis and now they are all gathered around the edge of the abysss poised breathlessly,hop[ing that Boehly the tw@t pitches us off into financial ruin and oblivion just to prove that the imposter doesn't belong.

And he is at it again now in the press. FFS man, read the room. Not only are your business management decisions clearly questionable, you continue to make such a c**t of yourself every time you open your mouth that we are all cringing. Its not about us being patient in the long term, we just want you to shut the fck up and let real football people to make the decisions in our club. Cretin.

That last bit was to Boehly, @cfcforeverfan, not at you 

In response to this and other interesting posts.. couple of points or things I (think I) learned about the world of finance. 
 

- on the “long term”. When finance types talk about the long term, sometimes they mean it, but at least as often it’s just a ruse to get their investors to commit capital and (crucially) not withdraw it.

- on debt/leverage: when you’ve saddled yourselves and your assets with debt, you’re much more vulnerable to a downturn in the economy and less likely to be able to hold on for the long term. I don’t know the ins and outs of our debt situation or where it lies, to @OriginalSpoints. 
 

- there’s a very real risk of an economic downturn. In fact, it’s inevitable at some point. 
 

- there’s also a very real risk that the next crisis/downturn is one Boehly and co are extremely exposed to: one centred on private equity and venture capital (all crises are different and we haven’t had that yet).

 

- if that’s the case, then in reply to @SydneyChelsea interesting post, these guys almost certainly won’t be around in 10 years. I also think that whatever worked in the 2010s - an era of extraordinarily low interest rates - will not work now. I wouldn’t be surpised if they are out within a year (not a prediction). 
 

- I don’t want to be on here talking about finance stuff, but unfortunately it seems pretty relevant right now, more so than “which striker should we get” etc.. 

- disclaimer: I’m very biased against private equity. I think it’s the scourge of humanity - the real “vampire squid” - that destroys everything it wraps its tentacles around or sinks its blood nozzle (or whatever the technical term is) into.

Edited May 5, 20233 yr by Dean

2 hours ago, Dean said:

- on debt/leverage: when you’ve saddled yourselves and your assets with debt, you’re much more vulnerable to a downturn in the economy and less likely to be able to hold on for the long term. I don’t know the ins and outs of our debt situation or where it lies, to @OriginalSpoints. 

Debt is only going to increase too. We already have the biggest debt in the league as I mentioned and we haven't even started on the stadium.

I was under the impression that the 1.75b committment they promised Roman was going to be equity financed. But it's pretty clear by now that it will all be debt financed by JP Morgan and Bank of America among others.

On 03/05/2023 at 12:19, The Rising Sun said:

I must admit I must have missed the games when we "running like crazy";and dominating teams with our ";pressing game" under Tuchel or anyone else for that matter .

Then you need to open your eyes, tuchel was all about controlling possession. We once went 10 hrs without conceding a single goal under tuchels guidance. 

5 minutes ago, Conte said:

Then you need to open your eyes, tuchel was all about controlling possession. We once went 10 hrs without conceding a single goal under tuchels guidance. 

In that 10 hours, our CBS had 7,430,858 touches of the ball. The ball moved sideways 5,954,939 times. The ball moved backwards 10,894,003 times. The ball moved forward more than 3 meters in a single pass, just 7 times. 5 of those times were goalkicks, with Mendy hoofing it to the opposing player.

30 minutes ago, nonotnowjim said:

In that 10 hours, our CBS had 7,430,858 touches of the ball. The ball moved sideways 5,954,939 times. The ball moved backwards 10,894,003 times. The ball moved forward more than 3 meters in a single pass, just 7 times. 5 of those times were goalkicks, with Mendy hoofing it to the opposing player.

😭

Edited May 5, 20233 yr by Sconnie Blue

Todd and cos first signing the latest to, indirectly, criticize them:

https://www.skysports.com/football/news/11095/12873885/raheem-sterling-exclusive-chelsea-forward-says-season-has-been-one-of-the-lowest-points-of-his-career

 

3 minutes ago, axman2526 said:

Todd and cos first signing the latest to, indirectly, criticize them:

https://www.skysports.com/football/news/11095/12873885/raheem-sterling-exclusive-chelsea-forward-says-season-has-been-one-of-the-lowest-points-of-his-career

 

Not even sure it's very indirect. Basically telling them the organization they've put in place is pure sh*t and that the new manager need complete power.

Sterling certainly has a lot to say for someone who has utterly embarrassed himself these past several weeks. He was so bad against Arsenal I wouldn't of just subbed him out at half time, I would've Ubered him home. Out of my own pocket.  Don't go to the dugout mate, go home. 

Some good news, SwissRamble is estimating we need to raise only £92.5m to make sure we are not over UEFA’s allowable loss limit for the current FFP monitoring period, 

54 minutes ago, Conte said:

Then you need to open your eyes, tuchel was all about controlling possession. We once went 10 hrs without conceding a single goal under tuchels guidance. 

But you said Tuchel had us " running like crazy " and we dominated teams with our " pressing game "

Both of which I don't remember.

" Controlling possession" is NOT evidence of your claims about running and pressing.

You are right to suggest I "open my eyes" , it's been difficult to do  that at some of our games to be fair. 😴😴😴

6 minutes ago, Sconnie Blue said:

Sterling certainly has a lot to say for someone who has utterly embarrassed himself these past several weeks. He was so bad against Arsenal I wouldn't of just subbed him out at half time, I would've Ubered him home. Out of my own pocket.  Don't go to the dugout mate, go home. 

Some good news, SwissRamble is estimating we need to raise only £92.5m to make sure we are not over UEFA’s allowable loss limit for the current FFP monitoring period, 

Can we still spend though ?

5 minutes ago, The Rising Sun said:

Can we still spend though ?

Assuming we are saving our spending once the new fiscal period starts, so on or after July 1st. 

15 minutes ago, Sconnie Blue said:

Assuming we are saving our spending once the new fiscal period starts, so on or after July 1st. 

Cheers mate

On 04/05/2023 at 14:14, Sconnie Blue said:

Of course nothing lasts forever but I made it clear in argument that the formation of the Premier League changed everything. United won at the right time and with the money that was now being thrown around established themselves as a dominate club and worldwide brand for the next 20-25 years, when before that they witnessed relegation and hadn't challenged for the league in almost 30 years. Expectations and standards have been set on a whole new scale. Thus why I don't agree with Dean's assessment because by his logic these United fans should feel content with being where they are now as prior to Fergie they hadn't really challenged.  

I f**king love the FA Cup. 

Things definitely can get worse and I am expecting even the start of next season to be pretty rocky. Managing expectations I understand, but alternating them completely because of what the club were 30 years ago I don't agree with. 

One of the " big 5 " who were instrumental in the creation of the EPL " was ... Everton !  So things do change . Spurs were one of that big 5 too.

Obviously we weren't !

Edited May 5, 20233 yr by The Rising Sun
Info

12 hours ago, OriginalS said:

I would love to know more about the £800m debt they have already taken on. They've claimed it's not against the club but if I were to guess they've put it against the holding company that owns the club and therefore it's essentially the same thing but they get around the debt restrictions that Roman put in place before a sale.

If that is the case we already have more debt than any Premier League club currently and we've gone nowhere with the money we've spent. Tottenham have the second most debt but they have financed a stadium.

Do you have any actual proof for the claim that we are 800m in debt and that we are the Club with the greatest debt in the PL? Was that taking into account for in the amount of money they had to spend by contract, and have you accounted the intakes from sponsors, match day gains, merchandise, etc? I’m just curious as to how all of you know that much about the economics of a football club like Chelsea and all the ins and outs, unless you obviously are part of the club’s financial structure.

On another note, I thought that Marina was the root of all evil at Chelsea….