Kick them out of the Premier League along with City.
Disgusting club and disgusting fans, they've ruined London
Disgusting club and disgusting fans, they've ruined London
Chelsea face new questions over how Roman Abramovich funded success
- Thread starter UnitedSofa
- Start date
Agreed
This is why I support any club over Chelsea and City. They ruined the PL. Everyone knew Roman was a bent as they come but we had to put up with it. It's as bad as all those cyclists doping their sport. They have provided nothing of value to football but a bunch of cheating and crooked behavior. It's up to the PL to actually do something worthwhile about all of this. If there is no real punishment, it will just encourage more of it.
Spot on
Chelsea spent 100s of millions when JM joined in 2004 05 06. The amount they spent if they did that is insane now, back then it was simply unheard off. Cheated their way to titles just like Pep does on the back of law breaking funds.
Arsenal had spent 60 million I think those 3 odd years. Chelsea had spent quater of a billion
In 00s.
It was insane how doped up they were.
Worse case than City for sportswashing.
It's mad to think that had City and Chelsea not financially doped, Fergie and Utd would've won 7 straight titles from 06/07 to 12/13. And even then we only missed out on that by a solitary point and 8 goal difference.
You guys realise this court case is Granovskaia suing some football agent for alleged intimidation and malicious behaviour?
As much as I want us to win as much as possible, this would not have been good for the league. The dream scenario in my opinion, is you can get the PL to a place using FFP to control, at least somewhat, the ultra rich clubs where you have a top 6-8 of genuine title challengers. Chelsea and City's rise isn't an issue, the issue is how it's been achieved.
Common sense should have dictated a Putin linked Oligarch probably isn't financing his club through 100% legit means but a lot of people were probably given a lot of brown envelopes and the deal went through.
Marina 
Yeah agreed on that, but it still shouldn't have happened. We were the best team on merit and were essentially cheated out of titles/trophies by teams who didn't warrant it.
I have zero problem with Arsenal's recent rise, and respect it. Same with Liverpool. I'd not be able to complain even if they won the league this season and matched our 20 titles.
The thing with Arsenal I respect is they made the commercial decision to take a massive financial hit when moving stadiums. This is how football should work, a club has a period of relative success but them has to take a hit to be able to sustain it. This is what should have also happened with United, if you think of how much the Glazer's have taken out, it's about what we'd have paid to build a new stadium/completely renovate OT - so imagine the Glazers were just normal owners, and we'd not lost that money to them but put it into infra, this would have been our period like Arsenal had under latter years Wenger.
You seem confused, Pool only have 1 PL
Not necessarily worse, no, but the fast Abramovic's name is still regularly sung at Stamford Bridge definitely puts it up there.
Looking back, you have to wonder why the FA allowed Roman to get his foot in the door. Rumour was that he initially wanted United but was dissuaded and settled on Chelsea. Now I don't know if there's any truth in that but I do know that the FA blocked Sky from owning United but permitted a leveraged buyout by the Glazers who saddled a great sporting institution with some serious debt. The FA then allowed Sinatra to purchase City despite his shady background, then bent over and pulled their pants down for the Arabs to move in. I don't know about the PL doing anything too drastic to remedy things as they were part of the problem in the first place. Fit and proper anyone?
Leave Frank out of this he did it ‘his way’
If Chelsea and city both had all their PL titles revoked and re-awarded to 2nd place (if we're honest, this would be the outcome if it was all done fairly, even though it will never happen in the real world), how many more PL titles would United get?
Casimiero 3 match ban
Huge flaw in this way of thinking is you don't know where Jose goes instead of Chelsea, you don't know where Pep goes, where KDB goes, Drogba and so on. Unfortunately for Arsenal they took a back seat when Chelsea and City emerged.
We could've had an organic growth of the other big clubs Arsenal and Pool, perhaps Pep goes to Arsenal after Bayern and builds a strong title winning squad, he often talked about how he admired Arsenal while at Barca.
There's many different permutations of what could've happened if the doping at Chelsea and City didn't take place, we'll never know just how the cookie would've crumbled.
What rules were in place when Chelsea came on the scene that would invalidate their PL titles?
Or is this the "they didn't "earn" it" angle?
Couldn’t agree more mate
I do wonder how the league would have panned out without Chelsea and City’s money. Would we have had a Bayern like monopoly? Would Arsenal stayed elite? It’s quite an interesting butterfly effect.
I did something stupid. Oh well, that's life.Leave Frank out of this he did it ‘his way’
Ah fair enough
Arsenal were the biggest losers or the most negatively impacted club by Abramovich taking over Chelsea. They had just done the invincibles, then finished second to Chelsea in Morurinho’s first season, then they lost in the CL final the season after. United had a resurgence in 2007 and that turned the league into a 2 horse race for a while as Arsenal fell off following their stadium move. Without Chelsea takeover, I think Arsenal would have been back to back title winners and probably fared better in the years after the stadium move. And would the City takeover even have happened if the Chelsea one hasn’t proved to be an immediate success for Chelsea? City’s emergence proved particularly disastrous for Arsenal as they kept cherry picking their best players.
Chelsea fans still chanting Abramovich's name is embarrassing.
Without Chelsea and City the league would have been passed back and forth between United and Arsenal until SAF and Wenger's retirements. Maybe the occasional Liverpool Spurs victory
I don't see how this not happening is a tragedy to anyone but the fans of the aforementioned clubs denied trophies in theory
If there was/is any tragedy from the oil clubs, it's the marginal inflation in the transfer market that was caused by them throwing money around. I'm not sure of it's proportion to inflation caused by increased TV and sponsorship revenue across the board, but it was a substantial factor. But the harm is felt disproportionately. Smaller clubs now saw more competition for their talent and could charge more. Bigger clubs couldn't use their name alone to get talent, they needed to spend more.
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Without City and Chelsea's money Man Utd would have at least won 7 in a row from 06/07 to 12-13 given the only times tgey didnt win it during that period was 09/10 when they finished 2nd 1 point behind Chelsea and 11/12 when they finished 2nd behind City on GD.
I’d say the argument is without the artificially inflated spending power of Chelsea after the takeover, who knows how Arsenal and Liverpool’s trajectories would have been. We knocked Liverpool out of the CL semis twice in that period. Would they be sitting on 7 CLs if Chelsea weren’t there to stop them?
I don’t know how big a role Chelsea in the 2000s played in the PL’s explosion in global appeal, and by extension the ever increasing TV revenue’s but if I support Arsenal, I would feel a little aggrieved at how the last 20 years have gone. They could have squeezed another title or two out of that squad and then who knows what trajectory that extra success would have taken them.
United would be PL champions in 2006, 07, 08, 09, 10, 11, 12 & 13. Fergie would have 8 in a row and 9 in 10 seasons before retiring. Ole and Mourinho would have titles at United.
Liverpool would have a PL & CL double in 2019, and a domestic treble in 2022. We’d also have a league title in 2014.
Arsenal would get an extra one for 04/05.
This is working under the logic that all runners up were automatically awarded PL titles in seasons where City or Chelsea won it.
Thank you beautiful ladies
And another one for 22/23
It's almost as if none of them even read the article before getting all outraged about it.
We now know that some £150 million was retained from the proceeds of sale to fund any subsequent regulatory fines that is one hellva lot of wonga.
We can only deal with what is in the public domain and that is that Chelsea reached a settlement with UEFA for periods ending 2019 and that the matters discovered during DD were reported to both the FA & PL.
What we do know is that as recently as late 2022 Brighton self reported themselves re in correct reporting of sums to agents .
https://www.thefa.com/-/media/files...-and-paul-winstanley---13-september-2022.ashx
Most people will have forgotten or ignored the outcome but it is relevant
1) It was a PL club and didn’t suffer any sort of points deduction
2) The FA assumed responsibility
We don’t have a clue what was discovered during DD but bearing in mind the sale was in comjuction with HMG, , UEFA, EU, PL & FA it is almost inevitable that issues and implications discovered during DD were discussed with these bodies.
Someone with far more depth of knowledge than me points toward the first accounts prepared by the new owners and many issues such as impairment and exceptional expenses featured heavily . In effect the suggestion is that the PSR submissions will have been massively adjusted as a consequence of the manner of the takeover and in particular the true value of assets , loss of income and all the governing bodies awareness of issues that were self reported.
Finally club after club are guilty of not complying with FA/PL rules be it the way in which clubs don’t just bend agreements re image rights but the way in which, despite there being both HMRC guidance that is linked to FA rules , particularly around how clubs pay agents directly ( invoiced ) when they act on behalf of both their client and the club in effect the club pays and the player doesnt when their should be a benefit in kind in turn meaning these sums are paid not in accord with players contracts.That in itself should bring a PL/FA charge
https://www.premierleague.com/news/183876#!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/footbal...med back £,accountancy group UHY Hacker Young.
Man Utd have made reference to an ongoing issue with HMRC as have Newcastle.
Very few clubs have reported matters 100% and in reality most have not just bent HMRC rules they have likewise left themselves open to a football charge yet most clubs supporters can never accept that their squeaky clean club isn’t quite that.
There is a difference with stretching here and there and being outright bereft of observing the regulations which is what Chelsea and Man City have done. They have jumped the line in many ways here and it was clear they would do so from the start. I dont know why it was excused and allowed.
Chelsea were not Man city before they switched ownership. They were in the top 4 regularly from what I can remember. They could have made the jump simply like the other clubs, nobody would have begrudged them spending on a new stadium, improving facilities and spending a reasonable amount more on transfers. But that was not the case. There was instead a crooked Russian billionaire who used the money he ripped off his own people, taking control of Chelsea and running it while sticking his middle finger at the whole establishment and the preservation of the PL. He did absolutely nothing for football other than create a mess, bloated transfer fees and additional suspicions of mass corruption over the whole PL.
This defending of your club by putting a tiny cloud over the clubs who have done it right in the past while you have a hurricane over yours doesn't really work for me, but maybe I would do the same in your situation.
I somehow hope they take Chelsea's trophies away(doubtful). I don't want to see them redistributed, but this kind of behavior should be punished. They haven't learned any lesson from this.
As I say it’s easy to ignore your own club’s indiscretions clearly as an Arsenal supporter you believe that everything Arsenal have done is in accord with the regulations.
Tell me about Danny Fismans cash injection as disclosed by Tony Adam’s, tell me about the revelations disclosed in Ray Parlours divorce. Tell me where Usmanov got his money to buy shares created by way of the extra equity created to introduce Granda Media. Have Arsenal always done it the right way ?
The problem was yes that RA and his wealth was questionable but his real crime he dared challenge the stranglehold that Utd and to a lesser degree Arsenal had. As for RA not ever doing anything for football there is more than one view on that
No club when he came a calling to buy players said no we can’t take it they all were more than happy to use it as cash flow just like when City shipped up Arsenal accepted and used that money whereas if they were than concerned about its origins they simply should have refused to deal with Chelsea/ Arsenal But that would have cost them money. It’s hypocrisy but of couse it’s justified.
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There’s an article?It's almost as if none of them even read the article before getting all outraged about it.
Again, this is a deflection of massive proportions. Pointing some divorce proceeding compares?
I didnt want Usmanov's investment and we ended up paying him off way more than he ever invested. He was as dirty as your Russian crook. RA wealth wasn't questionable, everyone knew he was dirty. Same with Usmanov, but he didnt take charge of Arsenal thankfully as his bid failed. Had he taken charge of the club, and done the same stuff as your crook did then you would have a leg to stand on.
Bottomline is RA, a crook, took over your club and ran it completely in contravention of what was not only regulations wise accepted but also contrary to how you should build your club. He should not have been allowed to buy the club and I was shocked Usmanov was even allowed to buy his 10% or whatever it was.
This is not a victimless crime especially to us supporters. Transfer fees have jumped massively since RA came in, and we have all been paying for those fees since. Ok, he is not the only one guilty here, but you cannot spend a billion in a short time 20 years ago and not have a significant impact on the future of transfer fees. That is RA Chelsea's legacy here... it's rubbish mate.
"The problem was yes that RA and his wealth was questionable but his real crime he dared challenge the stranglehold that Utd and to a lesser degree Arsenal had."
No, he's been accused of good old-fashioned organised crime...
Roman Abramovich ‘part of £2bn organised crime scam’ (thetimes.co.uk)
As well as admitting to bribery...
Roman Abramovich admits giving bagfuls of cash to friend | Abramovich v Berezovsky court case | The Guardian
Your word “ accused “
Bribery or influence.
Yet till he was sanctioned he was never disqualified