Stamford Bridge Thread

[xPetrCechx 13,565]

  On 15/01/2015 at 17:16, We Hate Scouse said:

supporter, the only issue is that there is very limited space to move in London to accommodate us. Our options are very limited and as football fans are very territorial. If Chelsea were to move to North or East London a lot of fans would be furious and the Chelsea Pitch Owners wouldn't allow such a move. (If we were to move without the CPO's permission we would be forced to change our name from Chelsea FC.)

There are only about 2-3 feasible locations that we could move to, but we'd have to act fast. Many sites in London are quickly being acquired as the development and property market is booming.

There was talk that if we were to move from Stamford Bridge that the stadium itself could sell for up to £1 billion due to the location. That in itself would completely fund a new state of the art 60k stadium and we'd still have profit.

It'll be interesting to see how it develops as something is bound to happen soon.

Your Source?

[We Hate Scouse 10,291]

  On 15/01/2015 at 17:39, xPetrCechx said:

Your Source?

No, it's been in the news over the past few years. The club have constantly made it clear they either want to expand (if possible) or move. The fact they now have architects in means news is pretty imminent. I'd expect to hear something before the start of next season.

[strong centreback 157]

I wouldnt be against chelsea moving to kingston/esher that kind of way as a last resort to be honest, affluent up market and probably the second best place to be if sw6 is ruled out as a complete impossibility to rebuild, I have a feeling we are gonna try and do a complete rebuild of the ground and if the council cant make good on its promise to help the club expand then we are gonna be looking at where to move after that, as the club wont give up on expanding and as far as im concerned I do not want to move from upmarket to anywhere else unless it is upmarket, thats part of our tradition/dna/history what ever you want to call it, its also close to where the club chose to build our state of the art training facility, and there is plenty of easily bought land to build a new ground on.

[We Hate Scouse 10,291]

  On 16/01/2015 at 14:29, strong centreback said:

I wouldnt be against chelsea moving to kingston/esher that kind of way as a last resort to be honest, affluent up market and probably the second best place to be if sw6 is ruled out as a complete impossibility to rebuild, I have a feeling we are gonna try and do a complete rebuild of the ground and if the council cant make good on its promise to help the club expand then we are gonna be looking at where to move after that, as the club wont give up on expanding and as far as im concerned I do not want to move from upmarket to anywhere else unless it is upmarket, thats part of our tradition/dna/history what ever you want to call it, its also close to where the club chose to build our state of the art training facility, and there is plenty of easily bought land to build a new ground on.

Wouldn't be such a bad thing moving into Surrey at all. Majority of people support Chelsea, there's plenty of vacant land, plenty of railway that we could link up to and build a new station specifically for the club and there's no other teams based there.

[OhForAGreavsie 5,916]

  On 16/01/2015 at 14:29, strong centreback said:

I wouldnt be against chelsea moving to kingston/esher that kind of way as a last resort to be honest, affluent up market and probably the second best place to be if sw6 is ruled out as a complete impossibility to rebuild, I have a feeling we are gonna try and do a complete rebuild of the ground and if the council cant make good on its promise to help the club expand then we are gonna be looking at where to move after that, as the club wont give up on expanding and as far as im concerned I do not want to move from upmarket to anywhere else unless it is upmarket, thats part of our tradition/dna/history what ever you want to call it, its also close to where the club chose to build our state of the art training facility, and there is plenty of easily bought land to build a new ground on.

I'd be in favour of that too. I'd love the club to have the room, and the planning permission, to build a prestige stadium which excites fans and players alike. I get the feeling that whatever we do at The Bridge would be no better than a serious compromise.

Out in the Kingston area transport is already good with rail links, many bus routes and the A3 & A24 linking with each other as well as with the M25. There might also be the opportunity for the club to build a dedicated branch extension of the tram service which currently runs between Wimbledon and Croydon. Lot's of political support for the Greens in that area and they'd probably love stuff like that.

One question in my mind though, is there really the room out there for building? I thought the restrictions were quite tight there too.

[LDN Blue 7,903]

  On 16/01/2015 at 14:37, We Hate Scouse said:

Wouldn't be such a bad thing moving into Surrey at all. Majority of people support Chelsea, there's plenty of vacant land, plenty of railway that we could link up to and build a new station specifically for the club and there's no other teams based there.

  On 16/01/2015 at 15:36, OhForAGreavsie said:

I'd be in favour of that too. I'd love the club to have the room, and the planning permission, to build a prestige stadium which excites fans and players alike. I get the feeling that whatever we do at The Bridge would be no better than a serious compromise.

Out in the Kingston area transport is already good with rail links, many bus routes and the A3 & A24 linking with each other as well as with the M25. There might also be the opportunity for the club to build a dedicated branch extension of the tram service which currently runs between Wimbledon and Croydon. Lot's of political support for the Greens in that area and they'd probably love stuff like that.

One question in my mind though, is there really the room out there for building? I thought the restrictions were quite tight there too.

The problem is.. Chelsea Pitch Owners, right?

[We Hate Scouse 10,291]

  On 16/01/2015 at 15:36, OhForAGreavsie said:

I'd be in favour of that too. I'd love the club to have the room, and the planning permission, to build a prestige stadium which excites fans and players alike. I get the feeling that whatever we do at The Bridge would be no better than a serious compromise.

Out in the Kingston area transport is already good with rail links, good bus services, the A3 & A24 linking with each other as well as the M25 plus the opportunity for the club to build a dedicated branch extension of the tram service which currently runs between Wimbledon and Croydon. Lot's of political support for the Greens in that area and they'd probably love stuff like that.

One question in my mind though, is there really the room out there for building? I thought the restrictions were quite tight there too.

Kingston would be difficult, we should buy those horrible tower blocks and knock them down. That'd be nice.

We'd most likely have to move further out to Tolworth/Epsom/Chessington way.

[We Hate Scouse 10,291]

  On 16/01/2015 at 15:41, LDN Blue said:

The problem is.. Chelsea Pitch Owners, right?

Exactly, any move needs to be approved by them. If they don't approve and we still move Chelsea FC will be no longer and we'll have to rename to something like AFC Chelsea or Chelsea Athletic or some pony name like that.

I don't think the CPO would win a vote this time around though. Last time hundreds of shares were bought by club members to vote in favour of the move and the move was rejected by just under 15% IIRC

The club know how many more they need to buy now and I imagine the move this time around would be approved.

[OhForAGreavsie 5,916]

  On 16/01/2015 at 15:41, LDN Blue said:

The problem is.. Chelsea Pitch Owners, right?

Well, let's not forget that 61% voted in favour of selling their shares to the club in 2011 and did so in full expectation that this would eventually lead to the club relocating. Granted we're now talking about moving further away from SB than was imagined at the time, but the size of that vote suggests people could be open to persuasion if a good case is made.

[LDN Blue 7,903]

  On 16/01/2015 at 15:46, We Hate Scouse said:

Exactly, any move needs to be approved by them. If they don't approve and we still move Chelsea FC will be no longer and we'll have to rename to something like AFC Chelsea or Chelsea Athletic or some pony name like that.

I don't think the CPO would win a vote this time around though. Last time hundreds of shares were bought by club members to vote in favour of the move and the move was rejected by just under 15% IIRC

The club know how many more they need to buy now and I imagine the move this time around would be approved.

Probably another black mark on Ron Gourlay too.

I do think you're right though, they'll have to have recognised now that for Chelsea to keep growing it requires larger streams of revenue.

[OhForAGreavsie 5,916]

  On 16/01/2015 at 15:46, We Hate Scouse said:

Exactly, any move needs to be approved by them. If they don't approve and we still move Chelsea FC will be no longer and we'll have to rename to something like AFC Chelsea or Chelsea Athletic or some pony name like that.

I don't think the CPO would win a vote this time around though. Last time hundreds of shares were bought by club members to vote in favour of the move and the move was rejected by just under 15% IIRC

The club know how many more they need to buy now and I imagine the move this time around would be approved.

The move just couldn't happen without CPO agreement, full stop. Without that agreement the land at SB could not be sold/used for redevelopment. Without that income to fund the new development, the whole scheme would be an economic non starter. Mind you this might put The CPO under serious financial pressure. They already can't repay their debt, I don't see who they could reasonably expect to sell many more shares to if the club moved out.

Although Chelsea Holdings wouldn't admit it, I don't doubt that the economics of the whole thing weigh heavy among the reasons the club would probably prefer to relocate rather than rebuild. Since the costs of a new stadium, on a new site, can be offset, or even covered entirely, by the profits from redeveloping The Bridge, moving is actually likely to be much cheaper. Perhaps to the tune of hundreds of millions of pounds. That, plus the possibility of creating a super new home which will serve the club for the next fifty years, at a super new site where we could be based into the distant future, sells me on the move. I know I'm in a minority on this however.

[strong centreback 157]

Well the thing is with the cpo how water tight is it exactly? To us mere mortals we expect it to be just, to Bruce buck an acquisitions lawyer and the rest of Romans legal dept I'm sure a loophole has been found and NOT exploited yet, it would look terrible if the club didn't liase withe cpo bad pr, but crucially I think if it came to it they could do something, I'd imagine it would be to do with the cpo not servicing the debt and forcing them to liquidate the company.

The cpo is a complicated business as they don't own the ground just the land it's on and I'm sure the name change thing won't fly either if challenged enough in court, I don't want to make out that the cpo has less power than it thinks but I'm pretty sure most of not all points will be able to be challenged and won by the club if they really wanted to go down that route.

[OhForAGreavsie 5,916]

  On 16/01/2015 at 17:26, strong centreback said:

Well the thing is with the cpo how water tight is it exactly? To us mere mortals we expect it to be just, to Bruce buck an acquisitions lawyer and the rest of Romans legal dept I'm sure a loophole has been found and NOT exploited yet, it would look terrible if the club didn't liase withe cpo bad pr, but crucially I think if it came to it they could do something, I'd imagine it would be to do with the cpo not servicing the debt and forcing them to liquidate the company.

The cpo is a complicated business as they don't own the ground just the land it's on and I'm sure the name change thing won't fly either if challenged enough in court, I don't want to make out that the cpo has less power than it thinks but I'm pretty sure most of not all points will be able to be challenged and won by the club if they really wanted to go down that route.

What I'm about to say comes from memory and a far, far, less than expert understanding so someone with better knowledge, or better memory, may be able to correct me. In which case please do help me out. So, that said...

As I think I understand it, there is a potential loophole to the CPO's ownership of the lease but it's not quite the one you've speculated about. The CPO borrowed the money from the club to pay the £10m cost of the lease but this was on an open ended and interest free basis. That's to say, there is neither a repayment schedule nor any due date by which the money must be repaid. This means that Chelsea can never go to a court and claim that CPO are behind with their payments so there's no opportunity for Chelsea to ask a court to grant them repossession of the lease.

If this is right then, with the lease having about 185 years remaining, the CPO and the club could be locked in this marriage for a long time.

The loophole I mentioned is, I believe, that the protection which the CPO has from Chelsea does not extend to any creditors of the club. If Chelsea should go bust owing money then its creditors could ask a court to order the club to realise all of its assets in order to meet its debts. Those assets would include the money owed to it by CPO so, in those circumstances, a court could order CPO to repay the money or give up the lease. Of course, barring something extraordinary, there is no way CPO could pay.

You'd have to say however that, as things stand, this scenario is a remote possibility. Meanwhile, if anyone knows enough to contradict or amend what I've said, I'd be glad to read about it.

[strong centreback 157]

  On 16/01/2015 at 15:42, We Hate Scouse said:

Kingston would be difficult, we should buy those horrible tower blocks and knock them down. That'd be nice.

We'd most likely have to move further out to Tolworth/Epsom/Chessington way.

Loads of vacant land off the a3 near esher, not a million miles from cobham so the club can prepare out our facilities home match days, just a matter of the club investing in public transport amongst other community projects and jobsagoodun, a whole lot easier to get a 60k stadium that way then the fulham rd, could build supporter facilities as well, food outlets parking bars etc etc dream come true for the club really.

[We Hate Scouse 10,291]

  On 16/01/2015 at 20:27, strong centreback said:

Loads of vacant land off the a3 near esher, not a million miles from cobham so the club can prepare out our facilities home match days, just a matter of the club investing in public transport amongst other community projects and jobsagoodun, a whole lot easier to get a 60k stadium that way then the fulham rd, could build supporter facilities as well, food outlets parking bars etc etc dream come true for the club really.

Only issue is Esher/Oxshott/Cobham sort of way is very affluent. I very much doubt the local councils would approve 60k drunken football hooligans (as they'd stereotype them) in the area every other weekend.

Epsom Downs would be a fantastic choice. It has good transport links and it would likely improve the transport and potentially attendance for the horse racing.

[strong centreback 157]

  On 16/01/2015 at 22:13, We Hate Scouse said:

Only issue is Esher/Oxshott/Cobham sort of way is very affluent. I very much doubt the local councils would approve 60k drunken football hooligans (as they'd stereotype them) in the area every other weekend.

Epsom Downs would be a fantastic choice. It has good transport links and it would likely improve the transport and potentially attendance for the horse racing.

If the club invested in its own car parks tube stations and bars/food all on site then the drunken football fans Enmass would be self contained, so less likely to cause a nuisance to locals if played that way it could fly.

[Chelsea_ad 0]

Any one have a spare ticket for the city game will pay good money call 07917831430

[thekid9 418]

  On 17/01/2015 at 22:43, Chelsea_ad said:

Any one have a spare ticket for the city game will pay good money call 07917831430

That would be called Touting! no matter how good your intentions!