Superblue

Yeah of course. Worst case is we don't even get a buyer. Any buyer at present though who has some competency and resources to run the club, even if not at the level we have had the last 20 years, I don't see us just falling into the abyss as a result with the set-up already at the club that they would be inheriting.

If things can be resolved as soon as possible no matter who our owners are, I don't think we'll see a dramatic drop off. Yes the transfer spending may not be as extravagant but it possibly doesn't need to be. A number of Premier League clubs in recent years have higher net spend than us, and United have about double. Everton have spent fortunes and could get relegated. Throwing money at problems won't always solve it. As a result of Roman, we've been able to rectify and absorb bad signings and poor managerial appointments to operate in a very short term way. What we'll probably need to move towards is longer term planning and just operating in a more shrewd manner in the transfer market. Fortunately if we can come out of this relatively unscathed in terms of the squad, we've already got a strong squad and top manager. We have some more academy players on the verge of being part of our squad next season too. If Broja and Gallagher come back next season as you'd expect, possibly Colwill too depending on the situation regarding our defenders, we'll have over a third of our squad from the academy. If that conveyor belt can continue for the forseeable then I'm not concerned about our status, because we're then in a position where the squad may only need fine tuning and tweaking with one or two moves a summer which we should still be more than capable of doing. We're comfortably in the top 3 teams in the country and have two of the hottest young prospects in the Premier League this season to be added to it. It's far from doom and gloom so long as we can get out of the position we're currently in asap.

Personally I think the morality issue extends far beyond Chelsea Football Club. This has been something building and bubbling for years and has been further scrutinised in recent times with newer Premier League investors, the Super League, etc. The facts are the Premier League need to learn lessons from this with regards to whom it allows to purchase the club. We've already had Newcastle purchased this season so it's clear there's still a blind eye being turned to where money is coming from so long as it flows into the league. Just like in the Government right now, there needs to be a big question mark over morals running right through the football system - from owners, to players, to PL and FA exec's and even journalists who are more than happy to be dined and looked after by clubs (and many more than likely had no problem going to report the world cup in Russia at the time, or to report the next world cup in Qatar). Chelsea are firmly in the crossfires right now, but it'll be another team down the line.

One reason no one has touched on for why today's events may actually work out as a blessing for prospective owners too is I think in a normal situation there would have been objection from the Chelsea support. You only have to see Roman's name still being chanted tonight. Anybody buying the club would find it incredibly difficult to start on anything other than the back foot. I think though today, us fans just want to make sure we still have a club to support at the end of this. Anyone remotely competent and relatively wealthy right now will do and there will be an air of gratitude around the club for someone still willing to get us out of the mire we're currently in. They will start with a much more receptive and supportive fanbase from the beginning I believe.

I try to keep my language as clean as possible on here but I fucking love this man. He gets 'it'.

Hopefully tonight the players can give us 90 minutes of respite from the day's events.

From BBC Website: Chelsea were put up for sale on 2 March and there are understood to be plenty of interested parties, despite Abramovich being sanctioned. The UK government is open to considering a further addition to the special licence to allow a sale to proceed. Those working on the deal on behalf of Abramovich were always told that proceeds from the sale would go to a war fund for victims of the war in Ukraine. This was made clear when Abramovich put the club up for sale last week. It is understood that the £1.5bn loan from Abramovich will not be deducted from the price. Abramovich had instructed American investment firm Raine Group to seek £3bn for the club, but finance experts believe that an already inflated price could drop further given the current uncertainty around Chelsea. How quickly the club can be sold once a buyer has been found depends on the government receiving assurances that the proceeds would not go to Abramovich, but securing those assurances could take time.

That was first thing this morning when the sanctions were announced. Have the players really voiced their concerns amid dressing room 'chaos' within about 15 minutes?! I think the bits which have been drip-fed since would suggest things aren't quite as grim as that because a sale is still going to be possible. It just needs sorting asap for the sake of everyone associated with the club.

I suppose if Roman isn't going to see this money or potentially even choose the means it is invested into charitable causes, the biggest and boldest move that Roman could do is just give the club to the fans debt free. The fans could then seek outside investment to the tune of 49% of the club or 50% but them retaining a golden share and we start to operate like a club in Germany. Complete pipe dream I would expect, but a dream nonetheless.

No from what has been reported, he can find a buyer and then come to an agreement with the Government that the sale can go through so long as he's not pocketing the proceeds himself. The assets have been frozen and not seized so he can still choose a buyer. Given the shitstorm this is causing I would imagine the Government would be more than happy for this to take place, they won't want to keep these sanctions imposed on the club for too long as it would literally kill us off.

I don't think Tuchel will walk unless things get really desperate. There was already talk of him feeling he would be better suited to a team possibly challenging for Europa places like a Leverkusen over one of the big teams after he left PSG and Chelsea was almost last chance saloon for him in a big club environment. He already has legend status with the Champions League win and everything he's done in general and I think he appreciates the love and support he gets from the fans. I think from what I can see on the outside from his character he'd rather ride the storm and see what things are like after it than bolting at the first opportunity.

Most of the prospective buyers will likely be consortium style bids to be honest.

Perhaps Roman has known this all along and is still focused on selling to his preferred bidder. It would make a lot of sense as Roman can pick who he wants as new owners, and the Government don't have an ongoing headache with the future of the club. They get a great bit of PR for sanctioning him which they've been panned for recently. Roman had said the net proceeds would go to charity and not him so the Government would also likely allow for the transaction. Hopefully. Now though at present, I'm not so concerned about who the owner is right now, I just want the club out of this mess.

At worst the CPO would register a new club under Chelsea Football Club to play at Stamford Bridge, probably in line with the Supporters Trust as a fan owned club. What has acted as a bit of a burden in recent years with sorting out the stadium actually holds critical importance to the future now. The CPO wasn't bullied or squeezed by Roman, there is no way developers will get their hands on the site. It's what the CPO was set up originally for anyway. The CPO owes the club I believe circa £8m on a loan for the leasehold. I don't see this being an issue in terms of them being able to raise the finance to pay this in a scenario where the club went into administration or liquidation. We'd have to start in the lower echelons of English football but I don't see a situation where there wouldn't be a Chelsea Football Club in the future and if we were playing 9 or 10 divisions down the pyramid, I will still be supporting the club.

We've been left in a position with no money coming in. How do you expect wages to be paid? The training ground, pitch and stadium to be operated and maintained? Travel to games? Money will dry up very quickly, a club the size of ours. If we can't pay wages, we'll start losing players left, right and centre who I'm sure will find loopholes to get out of contracts. Who's to say we even have the finances in place to keep going until May? Yes hopefully this can be easily resolved by an agreement being made to sell the club but it's not a guarantee. The goalposts have shifted now, nobody knows what Roman is thinking and whether he'd rather dig his heels in. Or maybe he is closer to Putin than we would like to believe - if that is the case, Putin won't care about the club and may order Roman to not do anything. At the moment there are far too many questions and not enough answers but there is a grim possibility that things could get really a lot worse if it isn't resolved asap.

I can understand the reasoning behind it all, but I cannot understand how they've gone about this with Chelsea. They have practically crippled the club. Roman is selling anyway, if he's really as close to Putin as they think he may well be under order to just leave it. We could genuinely be out of business in a couple of months.

The most ridiculous part of this and completely unthought by these sanctions. As mentioned earlier, set up a vehicle independently regulated to collect income from the club for merchandise, tickets, sponsorship, etc and release these funds to the club in a regulated manner to pay for operational costs including wages. A transfer ban, wage renewals, etc - fine, I understand decisions like this can't take place at present but some common sense on the club being able to continue to operate as it is presently. What if Roman was able to go through courts and get these sanctions lifted? Could he then sue the UK government for an absolute fortune for the sanctions damaging the club? As I've said, sanctions fine. But the way they've been implemented is nothing more than a joke and the biggest impact felt will be fans and employees of the club, not Roman or Russia.

I understand that completely. But in all honesty what are these sanctions expected to do except gain some publicity? Is Putin going to suddenly pull out because Chelsea are being affected? The only people this is truly going to harm are people within our own country employed by Chelsea or fans across the world. This isn't even going to affect Roman if he is true to his word that the club would be sold and proceeds to charity. As per usual with this country and particularly this Government, it's a clusterfuck.

If the Government have in their opinion fair grounds to sanction Roman Abramovich then I have absolutely no problem with that. Take hold of his assets such as property, etc. But when it comes to businesses, surely a bit of common sense should prevail and the business should be allowed to continue to trade. It surely wouldn't take much to have independent auditors/regulators step in to help run the financial aspects of the club to ensure no money is being paid out to Abramovich or through any vehicles relating to Russia. Simon Jordan on TalkSport this morning mentioned having a separate vehicle where money could go into for revenues from the club. This would be the best possibility as that could be released to the club to cover expenses such as wages, etc during this time. At the end of the day in a situation like this it goes deeper than the players or us fans. There are huge volumes of employees, indirect businesses around the stadium, etc which rely solely on the club for their livelihood. If whatever money the club has dries up, what then for these people? We're already in a post covid of increased costs, increased taxes, brexit and in general a completely miserable country to currently be associated with. It feels like we are nothing but a pawn in a PR exercise by the UK Government because let's face it for all the talk and bravado, we've offered literally nothing to Ukraine at present in terms of military support, implementing no flight zones, taking in Ukraine refugees, etc.

With only limited information but from what it appears the club can only continue paying wages and fulfilling fixtures through our cash reserves as any incoming revenue will be frozen. No idea what that might be (hopefully Roman has kept them well stocked in case of this possibility). But the longer this drags on, there's a very real chance the club could go into an administration scenario. I guess the hope will be that some sort of agreement can be made to allow the club to still be sold and then the sale proceeds of the club can be frozen for the time being.

If we're being restricted to earn revenues through the club then how exactly are the players supposed to be paid? Taxpayers money?

Tonight is just a great reminder that we've got Super Thomas Tuchel. PSG sorted us out with that one.

Following on from my above point, I hate to give them any form of credit but Spurs are currently finding opportunities to really drive stadium revenues from other ventures away from their football club. I know the London area is saturated when you also have the likes of Wembley, Emirates, London Stadium) but let's all be honest if we can get the stadium right, especially given the location, it should be THE stadium sought out across the UK as a venue for events. I have no issues 'prostituting' the stadium so long as it doesn't (1) impact on the football pitch, and (2) helps pay off any stadium debts quicker and drive revenues for the club.

Because the matchday revenue figure is where we fall behind and without Roman to cover shortfall, we need it to drive revenues. From what I've read in a non-covid situation, our matchday revenue falls between £65-75m depending on number of games, etc. United pretty much double us, and Spurs are expecting to be somewhere around £130-150m a year, particularly as they are looking to partner and push their stadium as a venue for other big events. No big clubs will settle for a 30k seater stadium. You might get a Championship side or very low end Prem side looking at such a capacity because it fits into their profile given their support size and the costs will be much lower to deal with. Our capacity is too small, plain and simple. Long term for us to be able to compete without Roman, the stadium feels an essential requirement.

They're in good form but have greatly benefitted from the run of games they've played. Since January they've played Watford, Leeds, Everton, Villa, West Ham, Brentford and Brighton. Phenomenal effort to pick up all the points they have and they do have some momentum now but we should still be going into the game against them expecting 3 points.