Vesper

Kovacic was mugged at the top of the box and no call

fuck Anthony Taylor!!!!!

this plan did not block the view as they built down

2021-22 English FA Cup, Semifinals Chelsea Crystal Palace http://www.mysports.to/sports/2022/fa-cup-Chelsea-vs-crystal-palace-s1/ https://www.totalsportek.com/football/emirates-fa-cup/Chelsea-vs-palace-semifinal-match/

What happens next for Romelu Lukaku? https://theathletic.com/3247522/2022/04/17/what-happens-next-for-romelu-lukaku/ As Real Madrid president Florentino Perez left Stamford Bridge in triumph last week, the reporter intercepting him got a short and sweet answer about what the Super League die-hard had just witnessed. “El mejor,” Perez glowed with pride. “El mejor delantero del mundo.” The best striker in the world. After his seismic hat-trick against Paris Saint-Germain in March, Karim Benzema had told L’Equipe. “I think if I had tried to score again, I could have scored one or two more goals. When I look back at how I scored the third one, I’m so relaxed, I think I was in a moment where everything I was trying to do was going to go in. It’s rare, but sometimes it happens in a match to feel like that. I think that in the last 20 minutes I could have done what I wanted.” Benzema left the same impression against Chelsea. He perhaps could have had four but instead had to settle for back-to-back Champions League hat-tricks. The 34-year-old is in a state of grace at the moment and early shouts for him to win the next edition of the Ballon d’Or are growing louder. The contrast with Romelu Lukaku could not be starker. Chelsea’s club-record acquisition, the most expensive signing of the summer transfer window after Jack Grealish, started the first leg of the Champions League quarter-final on the bench. It was the kind of game he was bought to decide. Alas, Thomas Tuchel once again preferred Kai Havertz, whose goal against Manchester City in Porto last May made Chelsea European champions for the second time in their history. Havertz got Chelsea back into the first leg against Madrid, salvaging what Tuchel called “one of the worst first halves” he’d seen from his side during his time in charge. But Benzema then re-opened Madrid’s two-goal cushion, pouncing on a mistake by Edouard Mendy at the beginning of the second half just as the wily old fox had done to Gigio Donnarumma against PSG in the last 16 and Loris Karius in the 2018 Champions League final against Liverpool. Watching in the stands was former Chelsea manager Antonio Conte, fresh from winning Italy’s Coach of the Year award, the Panchina d’Oro, for a fourth time out of recognition of the job he had done at Inter Milan in ending their 11-year wait for a Scudetto. Conte recently revealed he lives by a piece of advice from Pantaleo Corvino, the sporting director from his hometown on Italy’s heel, Lecce. “He says you can make a mistake about your wife but not about the strikers and the goalkeepers.” Conte wanted Lukaku at Chelsea in 2017 and insisted Inter sign him in 2019. It was not a mistake. How could Chelsea signing him this summer be a mistake? Behind Conte at the Bridge was a member of Lukaku’s entourage who had driven him around Milan as the blue and black side of the city turned out en masse to celebrate Inter finally knocking Juventus off their perch. Next to him was Thierry Henry, with whom Lukaku has struck up a close bond over the time they’ve spent working together at international level. Lukaku and Henry speak regularly. “We’re addicted to football,” Lukaku told France Football last year. “We can talk for ages about a game in the Bundesliga between Augsburg and I don’t know who.” It must have been odd then for Conte and Henry to attend a game of that magnitude and see a player they rate so highly only figure as a €115 million option off the bench. Once the King of Milan, Lukaku continues to look lost on the King’s Road. When Tuchel turned to him in the find half-hour, it was the final roll of the dice. He had already brought on Mateo Kovacic for Andreas Christensen and Hakim Ziyech for N’Golo Kante as Chelsea switched to 4-2-3-1. The headers Lukaku then glanced wide, particularly the one where Madrid’s defence was caught off-guard by a deflected Cesar Azpilicueta cross, suffered in comparison with the expertly-taken pair Benzema scored. “In the second half we had 16 shots to one shot,” Tuchel observed. “You can always come back, you can equalise, you can win it but if you kill the game yourself after 48 minutes it is harder and harder of course. Still, we had chances in the second half to make it 3-2 which could be crucial but not today.” The manner of Chelsea’s performance — “far, far, far from our standards” — so upset Tuchel he didn’t sleep. He re-watched the game and between notes and eating chocolate in the kitchen pressed pause in disbelief at what he was seeing. The next morning Tuchel put himself through yet another viewing and became enraged all over again. Ordinarily in these circumstances, a coach may consider a change in the line-up or tactical set-up as a way to buck the trend. The weekend’s game against Southampton could therefore have constituted an opportunity for Lukaku. But he didn’t make the squad, Chelsea won 6-0 and a troublesome achilles flare-up ruled him out of the flight to Madrid. To miss out altogether on Tuesday night at the Bernabeu can’t have been easy, as Chelsea promised to complete a comeback for the ages only to succumb in extra time to that man Benzema. Afterwards, Tuchel said Chelsea could have “no regrets.” But on BT Sport, Joe Cole observed: “Real Madrid had Karim Benzema, a seasoned centre-forward, a No 9 that is just there. Chelsea had three No 10s playing there who are not quite as clinical. They have other attributes. But if you had a player… Lukaku was supposed to be that player. We talked about the jigsaw. Benzema puts those chances away for Chelsea and Chelsea go through to the semi-final.” Memories of Lukaku bundling over Arsenal’s Pablo Mari in August to open the scoring on his ‘second’ Chelsea debut now feel as long ago as his first spell at the club. For a fleeting moment, it was considered a tipping point. Chelsea bought a striker. Man City didn’t. Chelsea beat City in the Champions League final. It felt like it might be Chelsea’s year in the Premier League. Tuchel even joked about expecting Lukaku to score “50, 60 (goals) before winter.” By New Year’s Eve, though, he had only five in the Premier League. It’s Lukaku’s worst record in England since his move to Chelsea as a teenager from Anderlecht. Things weren’t this bad even in his final season at Manchester United, an experience he compared to being in “a tunnel”. Conte and Inter were the light at the end of it. In Lukaku’s career, his star never shone brighter than it did in Italy. He is the reigning Serie A MVP and last month belatedly received Italy’s equivalent of the PFA Player of the Year award. Lukaku's league record during his career A year ago he agreed with France Football he should be in the conversation as one of the top five strikers in the world. “Over the last few months, top five, yes!” he said. “There may be players who have scored more goals but… No, no top five is good. I don’t want to give a ranking but I’m one of them.” It was hardly a deluded boast either. Lukaku scored 34 goals in all competitions in his first season at Inter. It was the most prolific debut year in the club’s history, eclipsing even Ronaldo in 1997. He changed his diet and began to understand his body more. Inter set up a Wyscout account for him to study defenders. Conte taught him how to go into the red zone and made Lukaku work on his first touch and honed his play back-to-goal with the help of a ball machine and back-up centre-back Andrea Ranocchia. Inter played to Lukaku’s strengths in a mid-to-low block with carefully choreographed combinations between him, his strike partner Lautaro Martinez and the wing-backs, which were designed to get Lukaku running at goal, scanning the pitch, at pace, the same way Erling Haaland does for Dortmund. It’s enough to look at what Conte is doing with Harry Kane, Son Heung-min and Dejan Kulusevski at the moment. Kane’s playmaking is at the fore more than ever under Conte. It was the same with Lukaku, who didn’t just finish last season with 24 league goals but 10 assists as well. He joined Chelsea as a complete striker, never readier to dominate. The parallels he was supposed to draw were with Didier Drogba and Diego Costa. Instead, for now, he is being compared with Andriy Shevchenko, Fernando Torres, Alvaro Morata and Timo Werner. On social media, Lukaku’s woes have been attributed to the “Serie A tax” as if his numbers over the last couple of seasons were inflated by playing at a standard perceived to be lower than the Premier League. But Mohamed Salah boomed upon returning to England and Lukaku had already proven himself here with 112 goals in weaker teams than this Chelsea one. The crux of the matter is less reductive and more complicated. Lukaku arrived on the eve of the season opener against Crystal Palace. The move didn’t get done early enough for him to spend the summer working out with Chelsea. He’d barely returned to pre-season with Inter after holidaying in the US and Turks & Caicos following Belgium’s elimination from the Euros. He has since claimed it wasn’t his intention to leave and only did when Inter, mired in financial difficulty, didn’t offer him an extension. The plan was to stay for another couple of years and then move to Real Madrid, Barcelona or Bayern Munich. But the opportunity to join Chelsea emerged and he had unfinished business, so why not go back? The sudden turn of events, apparently conflicted and confused decision-making over his future, the poor reception of his departure from Inter’s ultras and the fact he joined Chelsea more or less without a pre-season was far from ideal, particularly given the weight of expectation surrounding his signing. Lukaku seemed to go through the same inner tumult as Conte, who revealed he turned down Tottenham in the summer because he was still too emotionally tied to Inter and had yet to process the circumstances that led him to break a special bond. The ankle injury he sustained when Malmo’s Lasse Nielsen ploughed through the back of him in October, followed by COVID-19, also disrupted his efforts and Chelsea’s to sync him up with his new team-mates during an attritional schedule for the club which made it nigh on impossible to play the same XI every game. Conte’s Inter, by contrast, didn’t have to play the equivalent of a Carabao Cup or Club World Cup and this time last year, were playing one game a week, leaning, more or less, on the same group of guys. Striking up the chemistry he had with Lautaro Martinez, either with Werner as a partner and a No 10 in behind, or with Lukaku as a lone striker and Havertz and Mount in support, has been fraught with difficulty in light of the need to rotate and the intermittent availability of some of Chelsea’s forward players. The precise fit with Chelsea, who play more or less the same system as Inter but a different style, has constantly come up too, mostly as Lukaku raised it himself in that infamous Sky Italia interview which was only released three weeks after the reporter was allowed into his London home, during which time Tuchel and Lukaku worked on the issue and thought they were on the same page. The shock it caused and questions it raised about Lukaku’s commitment to Chelsea only intensified the scrutiny of his performances. He hasn’t scored in the Premier League since it aired on New Year’s Eve. The last time he started a game in the league was against Palace when he managed seven touches in 94 minutes, a record low in the Opta annals. “As a coach, when you go and get Romelu Lukaku, either you’re going to have to make him adapt to how you play or you change your way to suit him,” Thierry Henry mused on CBS. “I didn’t think that was going to happen and for Rom to adapt to how they play, it takes time. It is not an easy one. “Now, is it normal that he had seven touches? No, that is also not normal regardless of if the coach likes you or not likes you. That shouldn’t happen but it did happen, so they need to move forward on that. It’s a tough one to read. They like to press. They like to be active and to change the front three and Rom likes to stay in the middle so it makes it very difficult for him to adapt to this situation. Again. Why did you go and get him?” Is anyone else going to come and get him when his only starts for Chelsea these days are against Plymouth Argyle, Luton Town and Middlesbrough in the FA Cup? On the day of the first leg of Chelsea’s Champions League quarter-final, La Gazzetta dello Sport splashed Lukaku all over their front page, going so far as to claim he has made a series of exploratory calls to sound out his old club about the prospects of a return in the summer. But while Lukaku remains in touch with his former Inter team-mates, his focus is on turning things around at Chelsea and being decisive in the Premier League, not just the FA Cup and Club World Cup. Before the release of the Sky Italia interview, Inter’s sporting director Pier Ausilio playfully entertained the idea of taking Lukaku back on loan. But the changed circumstances of the Italian champions shouldn’t be forgotten. Lukaku’s sale helped stabilise Inter’s finances last summer. Ultimately Conte walked away because the club was scaling back rather than kicking on. A replacement for Lukaku, Edin Dzeko, was sourced for next to no fee and while the Bosnia international isn’t getting any younger, The Athletic understands Inter’s primary target for the centre-forward position when the transfer window reopens is 23-year-old Gianluca Scamacca. The Sassuolo striker signed a new deal on Wednesday but Inter’s interest is clear. He would cost less and earn less than Lukaku, whose book value at Chelsea will still be an eye-watering €92 million in July. Even were that to happen next season, come the end of it Lukaku would be 30 and still worth €69 million, a figure close to the club-record fee Inter paid for him before the pandemic impacted Suning’s business in China and the Nerazzurri were forced to go on a strict diet. Despite being buttressed by a loan from Oaktree Capital, this summer more sales are expected and while they are unlikely to be on the scale of nine months ago, the club is moving to a more sustainable model. The ultras also snapped the olive branch Lukaku extended to them in the Sky Italia interview, the purpose of which was to give his version of events and show his love and appreciation for the club and its fanbase. A banner left outside San Siro scoffed: “Who runs away when it rains doesn’t matter to us, who stays in a storm does.” Lukaku was lumped together with other players who famously abandoned them like Zlatan Ibrahimovic, who departed for Barcelona the summer before Inter won the treble only to end up on the margins of “Philosopher” Pep Guardiola’s era-defining team. Ibrahimovic was the same age as Lukaku at the time and, as nice as it was to sit in the stands with Thierry Henry in Barcelona tracksuits, he had no desire to spend another year “contemplating the weather” at the Camp Nou and other stadiums up and down Spain. “What else could I do?” he wrote in his book. “For the first time, football didn’t seem important.” Ibrahimovic was gone after a year as Barcelona swallowed the cost, taking a huge hit when they sold the Swede to AC Milan. When Sky Italia asked Lukaku if he would ever consider moving to one of Inter’s rivals he was unequivocal. “Mai,” he repeated. Never. Milan are far too disciplined to even consider Lukaku as an option while Juventus, who reached an agreement to swap him for Paulo Dybala with Manchester United in 2019, signed Dusan Vlahovic for €75 million in January. As for the clubs Lukaku considered in the past, Real Madrid’s priority is to partner Benzema with Kylian Mbappe, Barcelona are €1.35 billion in debt and Bayern are determined to tie down Robert Lewandowski to a new deal. PSG have the resources but haven’t yet given up hope on keeping Mbappe, plus sources indicate AC Milan’s Rafael Leao would figure high on their list of contingencies should their star striker move to the Bernabeu in a market set to be defined by the comings and goings of other strikers like Erling Haaland and Darwin Nunez, who Chelsea are monitoring too. The dominos are about to fall. Whether one tumbles into Lukaku and causes him and another sidelined Belgian star, Eden Hazard, to move in a World Cup year remains to be seen. He isn’t the only headline signing from last summer to struggle as the cases of Grealish, Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo — who scored a hat-trick against Norwich City this weekend but is goalless in 13 of 16 appearances for club and country in 2022 — amply demonstrate. To paraphrase the Inter ultras, the measure of Lukaku will be whether he rides out the storm engulfing his Chelsea career until the sun finally comes out. In a week when Werner hit the woodwork three times, got a brace against Southampton and scored in Madrid, no one needs reminding how quickly things change in football. “It was set out for (Timo) to deliver and make a statement that he has not given up, that he is still an important player for this club and this group,” Tuchel said. The time has come for Lukaku to make a similar statement too.

lol, what a fucking clowncar

How a view loved by Henry VIII could thwart new Chelsea owners’ plans to redevelop Stamford Bridge https://theathletic.com/3240195/2022/04/16/how-a-view-loved-by-henry-viii-could-thwart-new-Chelsea-owners-plans-to-redevelop-stamford-bridge/ The first thing that strikes you is the panorama gaping wide and westward, out over Richmond Park and the Thames to Ham House, Eel Pie Island, Pope’s Grotto, Kneller Hall and, faintly crowning the horizon, Windsor Castle. That the telescope set in the middle of the clearing points east seems incongruous. The view that way must surely be obscured by the holly trees which enclose the summit of King Henry’s Mound and, beyond, by Sidmouth Wood, as dense a copse as any in this corner of the royal park. The arbour set in that section of the foliage, similarly, feels like an oddity, but all the compass-style arrows carved into the floor of the viewpoint demand you point the glass in that direction. So you comply and, once the eye has adjusted, the cutting does leap out at you. A thin avenue has been pruned from the branches of the thicket, extending from The Way gates across Queen’s Road. And there, nestled in a keyhole of light with its dome resplendent in the sunshine, lies St Paul’s Cathedral. The landmark stands on Ludgate Hill a distant 10 miles away, slap bang in the heart of the bustling City, a world apart from the birdsong and tranquillity of the gardens. But, from here, the view out to Sir Christopher Wren’s masterpiece is uninterrupted. Improbably clear. Beautifully precise. Immaculately framed. It takes a while to tear the gaze from the familiar drum colonnade and rotunda, a vision of shimmering white. There is the inevitable muttered curse that the backdrop has been infiltrated by the hulk of a high-rise, recently constructed in Stratford even further to the east having exploited a loophole, since closed, in governmental planning permissions. But, for this observer, it is the foreground that is of particular interest. There, visible just above the tree line, is the triangular truss jutting out from the roof of the west stand of Stamford Bridge. At 49.19 metres, the angle of the pylon marks the highest point of the current stadium and does not impede, in any way, the view across to St Paul’s. From King Henry’s Mound in Richmond Park, the view 10 miles to St Paul’s cathedral is uninterrupted Yet, in their sales pitches to Raine Group in New York, each of Chelsea’s prospective new owners has pledged to redevelop the stadium. They have been enticed by the prospect of increasing annual match-day revenues from £70 million to closer to £200 million by finding another 20,000 seats on a desperately tight site. It has also been made clear that they must demonstrate a will to succeed in one of the few areas where Roman Abramovich came up short, by enlarging and modernising the club’s home of 117 years. Instigating that revamp will constitute a demonstration of long-term ambition. Chelsea’s home ground is hemmed in by a railway line and a cemetery, the Fulham Road and private residences. Instinct might suggest the obvious architectural solution would be to “build up”, but that would not be simple given the restrictions on the plot, not least rights to their neighbours. Besides, in what some might consider a quirk of local law and others cherish as a key safeguard to preserve something utterly unique, development is also limited by that sightline from that knoll in Richmond Park a little over five miles away. This is the story of why the glorious view from a Bronze Age barrow, a small mound bearing a name that is shrouded in romantic myth, is so cherished and will effectively thwart any of Chelsea’s suitors from looking to the heavens when they seek to increase the capacity of Stamford Bridge. First, a history lesson. Actually, let’s begin with what is probably the stuff of legend. It was the English historical writer and poet Agnes Strickland, in her 12-volume tome Lives of the Queens of England, scripted between 1840 and 1848, who expressed in print an account handed down orally from father to son by the various parkkeepers in Richmond, south-west London, over the previous three centuries. Strickland’s wonderfully vivid inside story, complete with first-hand quotes apparently direct from the scene, went that, on the morning of May 19, 1536, Henry VIII “clad for the chase with his huntsmen and hounds around him, was standing breathless on a mound in Richmond Park, awaiting the signal gun from the Tower (of London) which was to announce that the sword had fallen on the neck of his once entirely loved Anne Boleyn”. Anne had given birth to the future Queen Elizabeth I but, having failed to provide the King with a male heir and with Henry now seeking to marry Lady Jane Seymour, had been arrested and sent to the Tower. The trumped-up charges against her included adultery, incest and plotting to kill the king. She was convicted of high treason on 15 May. The executioner’s sword fell four days later. Henry VIII – as many wives as Chelsea have league titles (Image: Getty) “At last, when the bright sun rose high towards the meridian, the sullen sound of the death gun boomed along the winding of the Thames,” continued Strickland. “Henry started with ferocious joy. ‘Ha! Ha!’, he cried with satisfaction. ‘The deed is done! Uncouple the hounds and away!’.” Seymour was apparently waiting in the Richmond house of Sir George and Lady Carew for news of her predecessor’s grim fate to free the king to marry her, which he duly did eight days later. The mound from which Henry descended in such delight has borne his name ever since. It is a wonderfully sinister and evocative Tudor tale. The rumble of the canon has been replaced by a black flag, which must have been quite some size given it is 11 miles to the Tower, and even a firework in some accounts. The only slight problem is that it is probably apocryphal. Rather, there is strong historical evidence that the king spent the evening of his wife’s execution at a knees-up at Wolfe Hall in Wiltshire, some 60 miles from Richmond — a day’s ride at best by horse. But why let an inconvenient truth interfere with a fine story? Now for reality. The steep-sided mound, situated on the highest part of Richmond Hill among the north-western reaches of the largest of the royal parks, is thought to be a barrow dating from between 2400 and 1500 BC, a rarity in Greater London today. The naturalist Edward Jesse, writing in 1835, described how “it has been opened and a considerable deposit of ashes found in the centre of it”, although the remains were not necessarily of human origin. The Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England carried out more recent archaeological survey work on the site in 1995 and suggested there was evidence of prehistoric origin. There is another probable burial mound, dating further back to the early and middle Neolithic periods, some 600 metres to the east on lower ground, an area once known as Oliver’s Mound, that was destroyed by gravel digging in 1834. It has been suggested by archaeologists that the vantage point, at 57.4 metres above ordnance datum, could once have been a castle mound, albeit, at around 36 metres in diameter across its flattened top, it is rather small for a motte. It certainly had other uses in the centuries which followed. The area has a long tradition of hunting, dating back to the 14th century, when it formed part of the Manor of Sheen. A royal palace was built nearby and became popular with Henry VII, who named the estate “Richmond” after his earldom in Yorkshire, with both Henry VIII and Elizabeth I known to have hunted there. The new park was only enclosed during the reign of Charles I (1625-49) and, on Elias Allen’s map drawn in 1637, the mound is marked as the “Kings Standinge”. It was effectively a convenient perch from which a monarch partaking in a spot of deer hunting could enjoy clear views over the surrounding land, with game driven up the hill into his path to be shot. Evidence of the celebration of the view east, with its implications for modern-day planning permissions, emerges in maps and illustrations from the early 18th century. St Paul’s Cathedral, gutted in the Great Fire of 1666, was rebuilt to a modern design schemed by Sir Christopher Wren and declared officially complete by parliament on Christmas Day, 1711. At a height of 111.6 metres, it dominated the London skyline and was clearly surveyed from the distant hill that was, for a while, referred to as King Henry VII’s Mount and, later, Henry VIII’s Mount. Some confusion existed as to which Henry had claimed the standing as his own. The view from King Henry’s Mound – with St Paul’s in the distance – as seen in 1952 (Photo: Getty) An engraving of nearby Petersham Lodge by Kip from 1710 — the summit is topped by four trees — and John Rocque’s map of London, 1741-5, both show an avenue leading north east on the vista line to St Paul’s, the latter in the direction of Oliver’s Mound. That view might have been threatened in the early 19th century when Sidmouth Wood was laid out. Yet a landscaped “ride”, or gap, “was cut through it, which opens a fine view of London and St Paul’s” according to Jesse. The mound, having already been transformed from barrow to hunting vantage point, was now a garden feature within the grounds of Pembroke Lodge. “This is very much a manufactured view,” says Max Lankester, a former secretary of the Friends of Richmond Park and now a vice-president of the charity. “That keyhole has been cut through the shrubbery around the perimeter of the mound. The avenue through Sidmouth Wood has been specifically enabled and created to highlight this vista.” For more than 100 years, that unlikely corridor to St Paul’s was maintained and enjoyed, either from the summerhouse up on the mound or the landscaped route up to its brow. And then, probably during the Second World War with so many of the grounds’ gardeners having been called up to fight, it was forgotten. The holly choked the arbour up on the mound. The avenue across the parkland became overgrown. The ride through Sidmouth Wood was thickened by overhanging branches. The thoroughfare was cluttered with rhododendrons and neglected. By the time Chelsea set about rebuilding the East Stand as a three-tiered cantilever to 37.82 metres at Stamford Bridge in the mid-1970s, a move that would near bankrupt the club, there was no vista to threaten. The viewing corridor passes through Sidmouth Wood, over lower ground within Richmond Park and across the wall close to Adam’s Pond. It skims the top of Stamford Bridge and clears Sloane Square, Belgravia, the Wellington Barracks, part of St James’ Park, Downing Street and the Ministry of Defence building on Whitehall beyond, then cuts over Hungerford and Waterloo bridges to St Paul’s. At its full extension, it affects 11 London boroughs, from Richmond-upon-Thames at source to Newham, lost in the cathedral’s backdrop. In such a sprawl of a city, it is vaguely remarkable that it has remained unobscured given legally protected status was only achieved relatively recently. It took a local resident called James Batten, studying Rocque’s 18th-century map in early 1976, to piece together that the lost avenue marked veering north east must once have had a purpose. In his student days, Batten had peered through the keyhole in Piranesi’s doorway into the Gardens of the Knights of Malta on Rome’s Aventine Hill and spied the framed silhouette of St Peter’s three miles away across the Tiber. Here, buried beneath the foliage and stretching out much further to 10 miles, was London’s equivalent. He worked with the superintendent of the park at the time, Mike Fitt, to hack through the shrubbery and uncover the trellis on the summit of the hillock. The trees in Sidmouth Wood were cut back to open up the corridor and restore the sightline to the City. The vista’s existence, presented to Greater London Council, played a part in thwarting British Rail’s plans to redevelop Liverpool Street station, which would have blighted the backdrop to the drum and dome of the cathedral when considered from King Henry’s Mound. A period of intense campaigning ensued, aimed at having the linear view safeguarded in law. For context, the capital’s various boroughs were already crisscrossed with similar corridors — albeit none quite as long — aimed at guarding iconic views. Those gazing directly at St Paul’s include the views extending from Primrose Hill and Alexandra Palace, from Greenwich Park and the centre of the bridge over the Serpentine, or from Parliament Hill and the gazebo at Kenwood House. “There is an architectural significance to St Paul’s, clearly, but the existence of these corridors extends beyond that to the building’s meaning for London and, indeed, the nation,” says Mike Dunn of Historic England, formerly English Heritage, the UK’s statutory adviser on heritage since its foundation in 1983. “It is a symbol. What it represents is important. These corridors are designed to ensure it can be seen from various vantage points across the capital, and that nothing should encroach on the silhouette of the dome.” As far back as 1938, the Dean and Chapter of St Paul’s Cathedral, together with the Corporation of London, had struck a gentleman’s agreement with developers that restrictions to building elevations would be applied to maintain those sight-lines of the dome. There had been concern that the relaxation of height restrictions — new buildings had been limited to four storeys since 1667, a year after the Great Fire, but extended in 1930 to 30.48 metres, the maximum length of the London Fire Brigade’s ladders at the time — might threaten views of the cathedral. That agreement, known as St Paul’s Heights, only became legal statute in building guidance plans from the 1980s onwards to reflect that, although no longer the tallest building in London, St Paul’s Cathedral’s symbolic status should still dictate the height, location and even design of other buildings through the City and central London. But it was only in 1991 that Regional Planning Guidance for London and the Secretary of State for the Environment listed “the strategic view of St Paul’s from King Henry’s Mound in Richmond Park and its viewing corridor” among 34 strategic views of London and one of 10 benefiting from protected status as they were directed upon St Paul’s, the Tower or the Palace of Westminster. The scope of development to the fore of the cathedral, as well as to either side and immediately behind, was duly limited. “That it is visible from 10 miles away, a focal point even from Richmond dominating the townscape with nothing encroaching on the silhouette of the dome, even from that distance, is remarkable,” adds Dunn. “The mound has been a special place for thousands of years. The specific view out across London has been cherished for at least 300 years. That is why that particular corridor merits the protection that is still placed on it today.” Successive mayors have tweaked the modern-day London Plan, which pinpoints the viewing corridors to be protected by the Greater London Authority (GLA). The number of strategic views incorporated into the London View Management Framework (LVMF), the GLA’s guidance document on protected vistas, was reduced by the then-mayor, Ken Livingstone, from 34 to 26 in 2007 with the viewing corridors also narrowed. The width of the protected view from Richmond Park was effectively halved, allowing developers to secure planning permission to build around Victoria station. The resultant construction would not have been permitted under previous restrictions. It is now very visible in the bottom right of the keyhole view from King Henry’s Mound. Boris Johnson, elected mayor in May 2008 and in office at City Hall for eight years, flip-flopped the other way and restored the width of the channels while increasing their number to 27, 13 of which to be deemed protected. “For centuries, London has been home to some of the world’s greatest buildings and urban spaces,” wrote the mayor in the foreword to his revised LVMF guidance. “We are privileged to enjoy this architectural history as we go about our daily lives. When we cross one of London’s bridges, walk along the South Bank, or visit one of the viewpoints above the city, such as Parliament Hill, Primrose Hill or Greenwich, we are reminded of London’s history and beauty, and why we love living here.” Not that the LVMF has entirely safeguarded the vistas it aims to protect. The guidelines extended by Johnson stated that any development in the background of St Paul’s should be “subordinate to the cathedral and that the clear sky background profile of the upper part of the dome remains”. Even so, that was not enough to prevent the construction of the 42-storey Manhattan Loft Gardens skyscraper in Newham, an outlying borough that had been considered too far away to warrant being listed in the original LVMF plan. Maps of the protected view indicated the background area to be preserved beyond St Paul’s was only 1.86 miles. The tower was 4.35 miles beyond. The development received planning permission in 2011 after the application was referred to the GLA by the Olympic Delivery Authority. By the time the block was springing up next to Stratford station to dwarf the cathedral when viewed from Richmond Park 15 miles away to the west, the legal window to challenge the permission had gone. The current mayor, Sadiq Khan, did extend the background areas of the 13 protected vistas in November 2018 to the edge of Greater London, closing that loophole. But, by then, the Manhattan Loft development was up. Peer through the telescope on King Henry’s Mound now and it hangs ominously on the shoulder of St Paul’s. The silhouette of the dome is not quite as pristine as it once was. That is a reminder that the aspect, viewed through such a small channel from so far away, is fragile. “When a view like this has gone, cut out by high-rise buildings or developments, it has basically gone forever,” says Lankester. “Once you’ve lost it, you’ll never get it back.” The mayor and Historic England have to be consulted whenever new buildings are proposed that affect any of London’s designated corridors. Stamford Bridge would presumably fall into that category. The lavish scheme drawn up by the Swiss architectural firm Herzog and De Meuron to redevelop the ground, granted planning by Hammersmith and Fulham Council in early 2017 and City Hall two months later, had considered various options and ultimately determined to lower the pitch. The stadium would only have risen to 46.12 metres, less than the current arena’s tallest point, but it was generally accepted that digging down would add significantly to the cost of the project. All three of the consortia now waiting on Raine Group’s call will be aware of the intricacies of those plans, which were put on ice back in 2018. They will be familiar with the particular quirks of the site they would inherit. Those leading the Ricketts bid, who withdrew their interest on Friday, had indicated Eric Nordness, who had led the family’s $1 billion redevelopment of Wrigley Field, home of the Chicago Cubs, would have overseen work on Stamford Bridge. He told The Athletic earlier this month that he had already been working on “multiple ideas” with the architecture firm, Populous. Stamford Bridge’s capacity of 41,837 is well below many of Chelsea’s rivals (Photo: Getty) The three remaining bidders have not been quite so open with their plans, but they will have commenced their own enquiries as to what can be achieved on such an awkward plot. Some might have raised an eyebrow at the reality that those restrictions hampering a rebuild include the view from a hill in leafy Richmond, a world away from the hustle and bustle of the Fulham Road. “But Richmond Park and St Paul’s Cathedral are national landmarks — they are iconic,” adds Lankester. “The park is a National Nature Reserve, one of its many environmental tags. At the last count, undertaken a few years ago pre-COVID 19, it was attracting more than five million people each year on top of those driving through the park. It’s a national attribute. “Not all of those visitors will make the walk up to King Henry’s Mound to take in the view, but plenty do. And you invariably hear those that do exclaim in surprise that, from a vantage point which feels more enveloped in open countryside, full of plantations and open grassland, they find themselves looking across to the heart of the City of London. That contrast adds to the mystique of the view. “It just feels so improbable. It will always be precious.”

Walker just isn't a moron, he has decades of ultra violent mental illness (Russian roulette, rape, threatening multiple people with weapons, admitting he drove around deciding if he was going to shoot multiple people or not, etc), plus has lied (and still is) dozens, hundreds maybe, of times about his business career, grades, wealth, ownership of forms that do not even exist, etc. He is a younger, even less intelligent, ultra athletic black Trump with a Heisman Yet he is leading in the polls versus a truly gifted orator, a vastly more intelligent and moral human being in Warnock.

the 'radical left' is, on balance, a right wing fantasy and bogeymen in the US its the stuff of Fox and Newsmax, and OANN fever dreams designed to keep the white wing/right wing rubes, hicks, marks, and dupes all wound up and ready for nose-ring leading about oh noes! those far left commies are letting trannie furries take a shit in litter boxes in muh little Tommy and Mary's school! gmafb it (no radical left) is especially true if we are (as I was) talking about elected office now, as for private citizens sure there are a few ragtag localised groups that go out at times looking for a ruck with the local (or imported) nazis, but they PALE in comparison to ever-rising numbers of white nationalist and christofascists, who can be organised (both openly or in sleeper cells), unorganised except via social media, and then the lone wolf sleepers

if Ederson would have played, Citeh would have won I wager

game on 3 2

ahh, yes

Arse have no easy games left, unless you count Everton at home in the last day or that Leeds game

no, they also did not win (this season, as we did them) the Super Cup and the FWCC

what a miss by salah

we got him the last 2 trophies he lacked (and the one we as a club also lacked)

you know me sis, I am always future forward looking at big historical possibilities it is why I ha a FIT when we lost the FA Cup to Leicester, as it autoblocked us from the CS and thus a real shot at a SAME YEAR septuple (obviously almost impossible, but just to get INTO that position is crazy hard as you have to win the CL AND also the EPL or the FA Cup (most likely)

well, we are talking next season (so a sorted Citeh likely), and who else (other than us and we are SHIT in the CS, insanely poor) would be a harder game for Pool to play?

Dias is a MASSIVE miss

oki, good as Citeh will be the hardest it is only that quirk of the FWCC not benig played that may stop them from making history of a linear septuple

but who would they play if they win the FA, league and EPL trophies?

reason I ask is that the cunts have a true shot at doing the first ever linear septuple if they win the quad this year the CS (if Citeh are the opponents) would be the hardest game remaining (surely they win the Super Cup) but there is another issue the FWCC (which they would very likely win) is not likely to be held in 2023 during the coming season

question if Pool win the quad who plays them in the Community shield? they would be EPL, League Cup, FA Cup and CL Champs (and UEFA Super Cup likely too) Citeh (for finishing 2nd in the EPL?)