Superblue

James been ruled out, hopefully nothing serious although Tuchel didn't really give too much out. Said a muscular issue but not on same leg. The silver lining I guess is we have Norwich and Newcastle in the league, the second leg with Lille and the cup game away to Boro before an international break so if he needs a couple of weeks he'll get proper time to recover. We are good enough to deal with the above list of fixtures if we play to what we know we should.

The dream of course is to get the second coming of Roman and keep the last 20 years going as normal. In reality though with a lot of the 'leaks' of people interested it does look more likely it'll be a consortium situation. The Nick Candy one is interesting. As he's a huge Chelsea fan, there would be potential question marks over rational thinking compared to an emotional decision when you're that passionate and invested into something but he has a track record of being a hugely successful businessman so I wouldn't be too worried about this. His net worth isn't too high so not sure what his position of influence would be within a consortium, but if he was going to be given the reigns as the chief decision maker for the club then I would be intrigued how this would work and would be more inclined to prefer this to one of the American bidders, purely based on their track record with other Premier League clubs. Without Roman, the long term future of the club keeping revenues at a level to match other top teams means the stadium has to be a priority and a decision has to be made on it sooner rather than later. The fact that this bid seems to suggest that it includes a longer term plan in place for the stadium, etc also intrigues me as whilst I'm sure all suitors will have considerations and plans for the stadium, this is the first one suggested where there might actually already be some strategy planned for it.

I haven't put enough research into it myself but do you know if a site move will be completely shot down immediately by the CPO? I can remember the Battersea Power Station rumours, etc but were the club ever given the CPO's blessing to explore this? I would expect the CPO, in order to forfeit their position would still probably be able to negotiate some forms of guarantees which would help add security to the club. Another point because again, I've never taken it upon myself to look into the exact arrangement but if Chelsea moved to a different site, who would benefit from the Stamford Bridge land being sold and/or developed on - the club (I would expect helping to offsite a good chunk of the stadium build costs) or the CPO? I guess the biggest issue will be how far are you prepared to go to find an ideal location? Unfortunately in the area we're currently based it's not like many opportunities arise.

Me and a few mates do a bet every year for a few quid, bit of a sweepstake in a draft style picking teams out to win the Superbowl. The last pick is ALWAYS the Jets.

Which should be a good thing, hopefully there's a number of professional people dealing discreetly and confidentially with Roman rather than a circus.

It's come out that Roman would prefer to sell to the best proposal for the club as opposed to necessarily the most money on offer and if this is the case (and I wouldn't see any reason why it wouldn't be, Roman writing the club's loans off is evidence enough of just how much he loves the club and has it's best interests at heart) I'm not too concerned. If we couldn't do much transfer activity in the summer, I don't see it being a complete disaster. It's not going to get us closer to City but I still think we're comfortably better than everyone below us and they all need a lot of work to bridge those gaps. We've been a complete train wreck off the pitch this season and had an incredibly terrible run of form and still no team could take proper advantage of that below us. The biggest problem will be if all our out of contract defenders leave but if we can retain at least Rudiger and one other, we'll be stronger next season just bringing back Gallagher and Broja from their loans and Chilwell coming back to fitness.

Or if somebody gets the club at a lower price they may be in a better financial position to move plans on with sorting out the stadium.

Easy to say this in hindsight, but you need the right manager. Should any of those we've had during his tenure have stayed long term? I'd argue of all of them, Tuchel is the one I could see in a longer tenure and I suppose we'd never know how long he may have lasted under Roman.

That's true. Were United women's team disbanded pre Glazer? I would be very surprised to see anyone tamper with either of the academy or women's team as they are staple parts of the club but I guess anything is possible at present.

Anyone know much about this man? Apparently he's worth in the region of $11bn.

I have no issue with becoming more sustainable. One of the biggest things we've benefitted from under Roman is the ability to quickly and efficiently cover up a mistake whether it's a managerial appointment or transfer. Aiming to be more sustainable should focus the minds for longer term strategy particularly in the scouting of players, and although we may ultimately spend less we should be aiming to be far more efficient in the transfer market. Take last summer as an example - would we be really in any worse position now if we'd not bought in Lukaku and Saul and instead retained Broja and Gallagher? Hindsight is a beautiful thing and I suppose both the latter have progressed and developed as a result of regular football and their loan spells but even then could we have found an alternative to Lukaku which would have been cheaper but maybe needed time and patience as opposed to what was seen as a 'ready made' transfer. The same goes for the links in the summer to Tchouameni. Then there was talk of £25-30m. Now it's looking 2 or 3 times that figure. Under Roman, that is less of an issue if it has meant we're now more sure about a player even if the price has increased. Under a different structure we might have taken him last summer if the scouting had identified he was likely to become a potential future superstar.

That is one of the things you'd expect to be given full respect at least by American owners given the success and popularity over their own women's football team.

This Swiss/American bid has been leaked so heavily through the media I already don't like it. Whilst it was at times frustrating that the club act as a closed shop, there always felt so much more dignity and control over things and I also found it amusing that most journalists had no clue regarding the club and resorted to complete guesswork. There seems to be a couple of reports tonight to suggest Roman has had quite a bit of interest and serious enquiries made around the 3bn figure. This could quite easily be a means to hurry through serious candidates but if it is indeed true and there are other offers that are being made in a much more discreet manner that immediately to me feels more comfortable than this media circus from these two.

This doesn't sound promising.

Out of curiosity does anyone have a track of how these loans from Roman have built up over the years? Have they been fairly consistent or have the loans slowed in recent times?

Imagine the scenes if he walks through the door and brings Mbappe with him 😂

A little before my time and not something I have any real knowledge of but wasn't there a small number of people in the UK who got very rich and benefitted from Thatcher's Government privatising a number of nationalised industries throughout the 80's? Very often when it comes to politics and ethical principles I find a lot of people are quick to be critical of someone, when if they stop and take a step back they might actually find they might as well be looking in a mirror.

Don't let Jose know they're doing that!

As present, I struggle to see how Roman is going to sell the club unless he comes down significantly on his asking price. I believe I read somewhere that shares for Man Utd on the NY stock exchange value the club at around 2bn (not sure if this is £ or $) and there is absolutely no way we can justify being more valuable than United. The stadium is a big issue and whilst the club has become closer to being self sufficient from an accounting perspective, it still hemorrhages cash, hence why Roman has still continued to pump money into the club each year. I can't see how we're that attractive of a buy to people viewing us as an investment, unless someone can get us for closer to £1 - 1.5bn. Maybe it's cynical or maybe I'm completely wide of the mark with my assessment above, but a part of me does wonder whether Roman's asking price is a means to show willingness to sell but knows he is almost certainly not going to get offered that sort of money, and just buys a bit of time for now.

Any ideas his net worth?

According to Matt Law, some prospective buyers of the club plan to try and persuade Marina to stay at the club. If this is indeed true, even if it wasn't to come to fruition, it does fill me with a little more confidence over who might come in and buy the club that they're at least aware of the current surroundings within the club and areas that help make it successful.

I've seen a number of people on forums and social media, especially in recent years, be critical of Marina and believe we'd be better off if Roman sold the club. We're going to now see if this rings true. I have my doubts, but I will stay open minded for now and whoever does end up buying the club and the management structure put in place will be given my full support initially.

Apparently Marina has confirmed via her LinkedIn today that she'll leave the club when it's sold.

I saw a small interview with Todd Boehly discussing football and the Premier League and to be fair to him he actually talked very passionately about football and made a lot of sense about the reasons why it's appealing to an American investor and the American market as a whole. It did seem a significant step up to what I've ever heard from the likes of the Glazers and the Kroenkes. However until one proves otherwise, there will be that stigma around them that they are poor owners in this sport, mainly because the model is so different for their national sports that they are used to and I, myself, struggle with that same train of thought and hold major reservations.

The short term is just as critical as the long term in my opinion. Tuchel needs to be retained and backed. We have key players who's contracts are running down (in particular Rudiger) who need re-signing. And then what if this drags on for an extended period. It isn't beyond the realms of possibility that this situation goes into the summer still not fully resolved. What happens then with regards to transfer activity. I don't think we're a million miles away and if we could get Rudiger resigned, bring back a couple of the loan players like Broja and Gallagher and make a couple of big, key signings in the summer we could be armed with an incredibly strong squad with a number of important players at an age where they could be playing for the club for years to come. If this impacts on that and leaves us in limbo this summer it will most likely push us backwards yet again.