cosmicway

Half the world wants to buy Chelsea. Compare this with AEK Athens in the year 2000 (respectable team - easily reached the C.L. stage of 16 those years). The prospective buyers were: - One funny lawyer who likes appearing in tv panels and start fights. - A so called "king of the sardines" who turned up to be an office boy in a travel agency in Panama. - A Greek American from Chicago who said he was a billionaire but could not sign a cheque for a small deposit.

Have you seen this in the Mail ? https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-10600271/MARTIN-SAMUEL-Chelsea-knew-Roman-Abramovichs-money-came-time-pay-bill.html?_host=www.dailymail.co.uk&login&param_code=AQCZ0cUgKuMRZKvEDAUGOAbNV94btfZGpjmX3XhoL5K5HUIMmu5ewglJmRrRuoqw8-3fQZS4vVRfGXnwGccAnGeGf_WafRYBk_Mkt6jdBmbuX4QuSF2DHMj3fimgbDgErCDCfkowiUjg1v-qnB2pe3wKGT9M6M_jwp92JX87AiyAdBHctxT7vHW2pr8FV4F2xWS_SoTad2mNpCI52swHhj35DKDlQ9fBDoiNkdps7ZKWGINwaTxdEZ9SardBFLiBsB3POOe_8FGfyH8A3TC_n7UDwisFqKrCsDTxR491MruTSO6s21esWTz3ex9ocXZ-C32Dtdwx550u2g3PObpQP4FyBRo7hO5ExT5Ewuvonw8c7nErLeEenLuWrcOtWxx91-oNL7om3kcnFu1kcZwA750N&param_state=eyJyZW1lbWJlck1lIjpmYWxzZX0%3D&param__host=www.dailymail.co.uk&param_geolocation=row&base_fe_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dailymail.co.uk%2F&validation_fe_uri=%2Fregistration%2Fp%2Fapi%2Ffield%2Fvalidation%2F&check_user_fe_uri=registration%2Fp%2Fapi%2Fuser%2Fuser_check%2F&isMobile=false#readerCommentsCommand-message-field

Every cloud has a silver lining: https://www.livescore.com/en/news/transfer-talk-romelu-lukaku-inter-milan-Chelsea-latest-news-2022031310391289733/

The superleague is nonsense but it makes sense to somewhat limit the size of domestic leagues in favour of more European football. For example 16 teams in the English premier instead of the present 20.

The other important European club with Russian ownership is Monaco. Is there anything going on in France ?

Maybe they believe we hide some weapons.

When communism was toppled the major Soviet industries were denationalized, a la Thatcher between 1979-1990. So Abramovitch and others who had some money bought them but at a highly reduced price than what would be normal. I don't know why Yeltsin accepted this but he did it. So the oligarchs became rich and it was natural for them to have some relations with the country's leadership (who in similar position does n't ?). Among them there are I suppose all sorts of different opinions: Proinvasion, neutral and against. Abramovitch looks like neutral. The Greek-Russian one who is quite a character now declares he is against the invasion or so I heard. The Italian Gazzeta dello Sport says that teams targeted by the sanctions besides Chelsea are Monaco, the Dutch Vitesse and PAOK Salonika is a question mark according to them. Also Bournemouth's Maxim Denim appears to be outside the scope of the sanctions. I don't know if we had German oligarchs operating in UK-USA at the start of world war II and what happened then.

Those are in jail and their leader who was also an antivaxer caught covid real bad. Them characters are weird. You know that former dictator Papadopoulos did n't like them at all. There was a film director at the time, called James Paris. His first film was a slap comedy called "No mister Johnson" - when LBJ was president and before the junta. I said "what rubbish is this - must be some kind of commie movie" but as it was Saturday afternoon and had nothing to do I went to see it. Mister Johnson was then an American ads man who was shooting commercials for a tomato juice brand. A pretty Greek actress was the girl who advertised the tomato juice in the tv ad. But it was too exploitative, it said "this tomato juice will make you into a superman". So the girl becomes angry and she says "I 'm not taking part in exploitative ads". After some fighting about the tomato juice the American changes his ways, stops making exploitative ads and marries the girl. Awful. Then this James Paris changes his ways and becomes the no 1 enemy of the Papandreous. When Papadopoulos takes over he becomes the "national film director". In those seven years James Paris shot about ten war resistance movies and part of the cast was also Fernando Sancho - the hero of the spaghetti westerns. Silly movies really. In one the resistance fighters take over the Retimo castle from the Germans. All the Germans are wiped out and when things look difficult for the Greeks, hand grenades are tossed and the Gerries are taken out. The Greeks seem to have an infinite supply of grenades and the Germans none ! But it shows you Papadopoulos and his dictator brothers had no liking for nazis at all. Thirty years later I don't know where the golden dawnies cropped up. One day I bought two of their mags from downtown. In one there was a story about a heroic German submarine in the war, in the other a poster saying "Hitler 1000 years". My father became very angry and he tore to shreds the "Hitler 1000 years" but I managed to sell the other one on Ebay. I also have a newspaper but it's not worth anything they tell me. In this they are after the two black strikers Oforique and Olissadebe who -in their opinion- are monkeys and should be in the zoo.

I don't think Abra spent all that much last summer on transfers. I make it a net 20-25 million or am I wrong ? More money were spent of course in contract renewals and salaries and he was prepared to land the cash for Haaland but Borussia objected.

Government are effectively the interim owners of Chelsea football club and Abramovitch has no reason to disagree, given his earlier stance on the matter. It's in the interests of the said government to allow the club to function as smoothly as possible and also to select the best company to buy the club at the right price. Trips to Munich by hitch hike and other such horrors we hear have no place, because such things are not even directed against Putin or the oligarchs anymore.

It's mostly the haters making noises now. They say we were built with dirty money from the beginning, we are not a real big club like ... Arsenal and Liverpool and we should be punished with virtual extinction.

If Johnson listens to the haters he's going the send Chelsea to the Isthmian league. But if some decent company buys us why ? As for Abramovitch don't say he was really the splash and dash man in recent years. Twenty years ago maybe. After Antonio's first season I even called him "mister crabs" (crabs in one's pockets - you get it). So unless we go Isthmian league or unless we are bought by some penniless person I don't see the (immediate) problem.

In the mid nineties I was in a tv program and there was that guy who said he represented the Liverpool supporters. When I said "my team is Chelsea" he says "ha', what a sympathetic team from London". But why sink you recon ? Maybe it was a Herculean task to bring us from the status of <Everton>, <QPR> to the present day status and may be this was an improbable achievement for anyone else, but why a new wealthy owner bring us down now ?

Re. transfers it depends who the next owner is, how soon ad what are his aspirations. In 1987 the club of Olympiakos Piraeus was in dire straits. Enter George Koskotas a young bankster and during the January transfer window only he manages to stun the world with some super players. Lajos Detari and Juan Alberto Funes were just two of them. The rest of the story was sad however. Koskotas was found to be defrauding his bank, made a spectacular escape to Brazil, expelled, had to land on US territory then extradited to Greece. His brother Stavro disappeared and was never seen again (believed to be hiding in a jungle in Colombia). However George Koskotas is rightfully regarded as a hero by Olympiakos Piraeus fans. Their next prez went to prison too. He was the one who gave his Lear jet to Koskotas to make it to Brazil but later he was accused of other economic misdemeanours. The next one was Sokrates Kokkalis. The company of Sokrates is the one who manufactures the betting shop terminals in many countries of the world. Those were computers with keyboards initially, now with screen sensors. But Kokkalis was an East German spy. In his early years he used to send a report to Stazi every day and his reward was 65 US dollars for each report. His Stazi nicknames were "crocus" and "cascadeur". But in the case of Kokkalis the file stayed dormant in the offices of the Justice department for years and years and meanwhile Olympiakos were winning championships. A little while before the statute of limitations expired an opposition mp stormed the building and demanded the case to proceed. But they locked the drawers and ushered him out (that mp is now a pro-Putin ex mp but anyway). The reports sent by Kokkalis to the Stazi were nothing spectacular really, but most of the time he kept writing stuff to get his 65 bucks. In one of them he said "hot meeting between the prime minister and the archbishop over church properties today - clash is expected". Incidentally the father of said Kokkalis was the doctor of the communist mountain guerillas in 1949. The socialist party of Greece (PASOK) gave the street behind the US embassy his name. The current president is something of a mystery too. He 's a ship owner and one of his vessels, the Noor1, sailed from Malaysia to Piraeus full of stuff. Midseas the interpol warns Greece about it. So they allow the ship to dock and watch who comes to collect the stuff. It was hidden inside hollow pieces of marble and it was collected by a close friend of the Olympiakos president. So the police arrests this guy and confiscates the narcs. But the Olympiakos prez says "what do I know ? he used my ship supposedly to bring marble and I had no idea". Is he telling us the truth or not ? Who knows.

Against giant killers Newcastle on Sunday, under police custody.

Our best attacking move was Hutchinson's throw ins - God bless his soul.

Yeah. They did it last year over the ill fated superleague affair, without of course any sort of prompting from Abramovitch (Abramovitch liked the superleague at first, then was convinced by the demos to pull Chelsea out). Where are they now ?

Typical Boris "trick de Votanic", together with Labour. How else make headlines and divert attention from previous associations with Putin's Russia ?

Abramovitch was never involved in pro-Russia propaganda or pro-Soviet propaganda when things was peaceful. He did not say "I 'm flying the Russian flag in London" he never invited a Russian team to commemorate the famous 1945 match. Why are n't they just happy he is selling the club and allow a normal time window to finish the deal ?

Greece escaped becoming Putin land by a hair's nostril in 2015. Brexit was not done yet, but somehow Tsipras who had stolen the parliamentary makority and Putin failed to agree on the size of the bailout loan. On July 5 2015 we went to sleep at 10pm thinking we were Putin land only to wake up at 6am on the 6th to find out it was off. Without EU the whatever disagreement between Tsipras and Putin would n't have mattered of course and we were going to have tanks in the streets now and bread with ration coupons. As I remember while all this was going on Boris was very happy.

And does that mean he is part of the invasion plot ? On what evidence ? It might be unorthodox for him to continue and he does n't want to declare himself a dissident, like Solzenicyn. But he resigned so where is the crime ??? Johnson with his dream of the dissolution of Europe is far more implicated. With the dissolution of Europe we are going to have 30% junta regimes, 15-20% communist and 40-45% Putin.

Look, this government wanted EU to collapse. Admittedly it was not their top target, because how bring it about in the first place ? The top target was the unicorns of course. But they tried to nudge things that way by as much as they could. What about the celebrations that were readied in case Marine Lepen won in France in 2017 ? Now they are naturally scared to offer military assistance just like Biden and just like the rest of the Nato countries, but they desperately want to get rid of the stain. If Abramovitch was connected to Putin by 10%, then Johnson and co were connected by 198%. Plus the Ukrainian refugees thing. They found a scapegoat thanks to that Labour character from Wales as well.

It's the lion of the British empire. Johnson's emblem is the fridge.

No. He did n't take any sides (except for the daughter who did). But followed the code of ethics and resigned.

Look, they could have introduced a committee to monitor the sale process so Abramovitch does not make a phoney sale to one of his employees. Or if they go for the jugular nationalize CFC and then sell it themselves. But it is only a diversion for their own mischiefs: It was Putin who created this government. There is also a -by the nature of things- majority of Chelsea haters in the commons.