Chris Casswell
Nobody knows what’s going to happen next because the situation is changing almost by the minute. I don’t think Abramovich supports the war but he’s a target isn’t he. They had to do something but it seems to me that Abramovich couldn’t come out and say anything against Putin because that effectively puts a target on his chest too. To be honest, there’s a lot of hypocrisy in all this. Look at who we’re playing on Sunday [Newcastle] – a club owned by a regime that hardly has a spotless record when it comes to human rights.
A lot of people would like to see us go out of business because we are the most hated club in England but show me a football supporter who wouldn’t like to have an owner who would sink that amount of money into a club. At the end of the end of the day, I’ve supported Chelsea for 59 years when they were in the Second Division, and I’ll continue to support them if they go back there. I sincerely hope that doesn’t happen, though.
Adrian Smith
The club’s income streams have been decimated and if you do that, when the club has a wage bill of this size, then it’s inevitable that the club will be in financial trouble very, very quickly. I’ll be going to the Newcastle game on Sunday and at the moment we don’t even know if we can get a pie and a pint at half-time.
We were 117 years old on Thursday – what a way to celebrate your birthday.
The biggest fear is that we cease to exist. If that happened that would switch me off football, there’s no way I would follow another team. I followed Chelsea through the 80s when we were bottom of the old Second Division. I can remember going up to Burnley in 1984, the football was awful, the weather was terrible and we lost 3-0. But I went up there because I love the club. And I still do. We’re Chelsea – we’ll survive if players leave. We’ve got some great kids in our academy and, ultimately, we might have to fall back on that for a while.
John Paine
I’ve been watching Chelsea since the late 1940s and I was an advisor to the Football League in 1981-82. One of the reasons we were called in because the game was in a complete mess – attendances were falling, grounds were an absolute disgrace and there was a real fear that football could be dying on its feet. The era of Abramovich and everything that has happened since wasn’t even a twinkling in people’s eye.
Now look. The Premier League is probably the most watched league and clubs like Chelsea are absolutely central to English football’s reputation for excellence at home and overseas. That’s why something has to be done to ensure that it survives. There’s no way the government and DCMS (Department for Culture Media and Sport) can sit on their hands, they have to make sure that this doesn’t happen and that the club gets sold.
Personally, I wouldn’t have been shouting Abramovich’s name myself but I understand why those whose life is even more focused on the club still laud him. My fervent hope is that I’ll be heading through the gates at Stamford Bridge in August to watch them play again next season, even if I can’t buy a sausage roll when I get to the ground.
Richard McCormack
I can still remember get a text telling me he had bought the club. I was on a pedalo at the time! Now it’s us struggling to keep our heads above water. I think a lot of fans will be confused, it was always Abramovich’s ambition to make the club financially stable and not reliant on his contributions but that definitely doesn’t seem to be the case. After 20 years it seems like we’re still in the same financial mess we were in when he arrived.
The fans singing his name aren’t helping, they’re making us look like idiots if I’m perfectly honest. I think we’ll always look back on this era as being one where the club achieved a lot more than anyone could ever have hoped – I never thought I would see Chelsea win a league title, let alone the Champions League. But there’s no doubt those achievements are now tainted. And, as fans, there’s nothing we can do about that.
Brett Chowns
I’m possibly not as depressed as some Chelsea fans. I’m 60 this year and started following them in 1969 – I’ve seen them nearly get relegated to Division Three. I can remember getting excited when Chelsea knocked Liverpool out of the FA Cup in the fourth round. If you’re realistic then I’m surprised Abramovich has stayed for as long as he has.
Abramovich has done a lot of good for the local community and probably the country as a whole but you can get a message out with sport. If he was the owner of 100 hairdressers then it wouldn’t get the same publicity. If we’re honest, we’ve all had discussions about how this Jewish orphan has got to where he is. He probably hasn’t got there by being a saint, has he?
I think we need to look at these things as being cyclic. It took Chelsea 50 years to win another league title, look at Manchester United too. Manchester City’s bubble will burst in 15 or 20 years as well. I was brought up in an era when you had an English and a Scottish team – and so if Chelsea have to re-invent themselves as a Rangers and almost go back to the start in order to survive then so be it. There will still be huge numbers of supporters willing to follow them every week.
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