Most liked posts in thread: Chelsea could be in trouble?

Chelsea have asked the FA to play their FA Cup tie with Boro behind closed doors because they believe it's the 'fairest way'. How can they play that card? They've been bank rolled by a dodgy Russian for years which has made them one of the best teams in the country and they are talking about 'fairness'?

Hopefully the FA will tell them where to stick their request.

 

Here is why Abramovich is just as guilty as Putin for this war

1. He was a trusted Adviser to Yeltsin (Which is how he was able to benefit from the corrupt Energy rights sales) and was one of the first and strongest advocates for Putin to be his successor
2. When Putin got into power who did he have to interview and advise on all the prospective members of his cabinet? That's right it was good old Roman
3. Russian law limited Presidents to two terms but Putin wanted more. He tasked Roman with finding a puppet to succeed him. And he did, Roman brought Medvedev as the preferred person to run to take over and helped him get elected. While also helping Putin run to be Prime Minister
4. Roman was hence involved in the great power grab by Putin. One of the first things Medvedev did was to transfer almost all the Presidential power to the Prime Minister, making Putin even more powerful than before. He used that power to remove the 2 terms Presidential limit as well as other changes to make him almost untouchable. It was basically straight out of Adolf Hitler's playbook. Medvedev finished his term, just before it ended all the powers were shifted back to the president and Putin then ran and won (In a suspected dodgy election)
5. Roman has personally helped fund a number of Putins vanity projects to try and show how great Russia is. This included putting down lots of the money for the World Cup. Also for a long time picking up the wages of Hiddink, Advocaat and Capello as their wages were far outside the figures that the Russian FA could afford. It was the same with Slutsky as well. I'm not sure about the two since, but I wouldn't be surprised if he was still picking up the wage bill
6. Putin's own Biographier detailed how they had a Father/Son relationship with pet names for each other
7. US Intelligent services in 2019 named him as Putin's 'bag carrier'. What that term means is he is the one who helped move Putins dirty money around to try and help wash it and hide it. Putin doesn't trust you to look after and 'legitimise' the billions of his dirty money unless you are very close to him.
8. He was Denied a new UK visa because of concerns from the UK security services. What these are has never been officially revealed but it seems pretty clear its to do with his ties to Putin and the potential for him to use his position in the UK to help Putin's agenda and his covert operations. It also came AFTER Salisbury poisoning which could be a coincidence but the timing seems suspect. Other EU countries were also considering his access to their countries. This is why he used his Jewish heritage to apply for Israeli citizenship, this is something they throw around like its beads at Mardi Gras and grants him a certain amount of access to Europe. That wasn't enough though, he then applied for Portuguese citizenship on a rule that if you had the bloodline of one of the Jews that were kicked out of Portugal you would get instant citizenship. It's now become fairly clear with the arrest of the Rabbi who handled the process of proving the existence of this bloodline for him and a number of other Russian citizens who have ties to Putin that money was paid out to try and keep Putin's cronies access to Europe where they can do his bidding by getting this Citizenship that they didn't actually qualify for
9. He owns a controlling interest in companies essential to Putin's war effort

And that's most likely just the top level of stuff, there is no doubt a lot more deeper down that we don't know of. Roman is simply as Guilty as Putin. He should be standing beside him at the War Crime tribunal and should face a firing squad for what he has helped do.

 

The thing is while you can argue that the Fit and Proper checks shouldn't have allowed it to happen, after all it's one thing bad owners including for example here at City shouldn't get through but that's much more complex than what we see at Chelsea, Man City, Newcastle and PSG where we see state-supported sports washing to go on but when he bought Chelsea a lot of the red flags either hadn't happened yet or weren't really known. The level of corruption to get his wealth for example didn't really come under as much spotlight until other Russian Oligarchs started following his lead and investing in Football clubs which shone the whole where did they get their money question into the spotlight. Not to mention when Gazprom, the state-owned energy company was somehow able to buy Zenit and throw ridiculous money at it until FFP put a stop to that, how can a state-owned business in the Energy field afford a football club and justify losing vast amounts of money each year?

It was also before Putin's Power steal and the actions that highlighted that the 'agreeable' Putin was a facade to lull the west into a false sense of security while he pulled a Hitler and stole immense power while robbing the country further to fund his lavish lifestyle. While it would no doubt still get through the Fit and Proper test, after all they let Saudi Royalty buy a controlling stake in Newcastle despite them being proven to have murdered a journalist simply for being negative about them and who still execute people every day for fairly minor, often unproven things BUT it would have likely got more of a public outcry like Newcastle did if those things we know about him now were more common knowledge then

 

I can see the issue mind you. It's like the old way Real and Barca used to operate. That year that Real bought Ronaldo, Kaka and Benzema all that money came from an interest-free loan from Santander. A loan which within 5 years was written off largely because a combination of the Spanish Royal family, local gov and national gov were constantly pressuring loans the Spanish banks gave the big 2 to be written off. It's a massive benefit to a club when they can basically get hundreds of millions or even billions for free.

Maybe there needs to be something in place where the Government or the FA own the loan debt and the new owners have to at the very least service it at a fair interest rate just so it's not Chelsea have got 1.5billion worth of players over the years for nothing. With the provision that that servicing of the debt (plus anything they pay on top to reduce the debt) is split between good causes (Initially Ukraine would make sense but you would hope before its paid off the Ukraine situation is sorted and everyone's back on their feet so it needs to be broader than just saying Ukraine) and being invested in development/grassroots of football