They're not allowed to sell up for many years as part of the agreement when they took over.
Boehly is going to ruin Chelsea (hopefully)
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik and Imran are here to talk about a frustrating 2 points dropped at Crystal Palace. They then discuss the regeneration of Old Trafford. Finally, Nik is joined by special guest Michael Statham from the Football Oranje podcast - who gives us a more in depth look at our EL opposition FC Twente, and then runs through the (many) Dutch connections currently at United.
They're not allowed to sell up for many years as part of the agreement when they took over.
You’re joking, right?
You make it sound like we’re buying drugs
Tell that to Newcastle fans regarding their last owner Mike Ashley
Well that sounds just like american capitalism 101
Is that a binding agreement or is it one of those “yeah sure, we promise” kind of deals? What’s the repercussions should they sell up?
If only football players increased in value like rare Pokémon cards.
Yes! Yes! Blow it up. Administration, please.
Edit - pay for Sancho first though
Edit - pay for Sancho first though
Who knows! The deal was ratified by the Premier League and the UK government. As far as I remember, they can't sell or take dividends for 10 years and are committed to putting in 1.7 billion.
I wonder if Jim Ratcliffe is having another look at things down there.
A London feeder team could be helpful.
A London feeder team could be helpful.
I'd have thought you might want to stop eating what we've been feeding you, not sign up for more.
I’m pretty sure they can probably sell 90% of the club and stay on as a minority shareholder
Not at all, what's wrong with interest free loans with no repayment schedule to an owner that's invested in the club and has the club's success as his or her main aim? It's just a straight forward investment by the owner and very different from the debt that United struggled with under the Glazers or that Barca is struggling with now.
It's how Brighton went from playing at a knackered old athletic track in league one, to an established club in the premier league that's often praised for the way it's run.
It very much depends on the owner and how the loan structure works. Ashley was an appalling chairman and wanted his money back from the club. I don't know much about Abramovich and Chelsea fans here can add more detail, but my understanding was he wanted the club to eventually turn a porfit but was willing to pout his money in to get them there. There was no pressure for Chelsea to pay him back, until of course he was forced to sell up.
Bloom at Brighton is similar he wants the club to be financially sustainable and has invested 400M of his own money as an interest free loan to get to that point, as far as I know, so far we've paid back 37.5M so far.
Each deal/owner will obviously be very different.
Todd only owns 13% of the club so I would imagine if all the other owners sign off, he can probably do one without it being much of an issue.
From a Chelsea fan perspective, what are your thoughts on the direction your new ownership took from a transfers point of view?
Did you think perhaps they struck gold with some loophole of sorts? Or were you concerned?
It seems like it will slowly come to a head, it's a bubble that will burst.
I'm not a fan of the direction of the transfers, at all.
Regarding the bubble bursting, I've been hearing that for more than two decades now.
Can it be sustained without Roman's billions is the question
Again,
You can't argue that a club that accumulated a £1.5billion debt, that they were completely unable to ever pay back without completely ruining the entire club, was well run simply because the debt was interest free and without a repayment schedule. You're still talking about an operation that's unsustainable.
It's perfectly fine that it's not as bad as traditional loans.
Yeah, lets recap that;
He bought Chelsea for 150 mil euros as mid-table club. Club had only one league title in their history and zero champions leagues. Club was in debt and doomed to be middle table club.
In his era (2003-2022) they were THE most successful club in England. They won over 20 major trophies including 2 champions leagues. He put them on the map as one of European top clubs.
When he sold Chelsea, club was worth over 4 billion euros, had excellent squad and revenue was nearly 600 million euros.
Yes, that is what i call absolutely perfect owner. Especially because he made all that from mid-table club. Not from Manchester United or Liverpool.
Edit: i didn't even mention facilities. I don't know about that but i assume that club upgraded that too under him. @duffer?
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In the Champions League when he bought Chelsea.
It wasn't a dig or something. I meant that Chelsea was not part of big trio back then. Ok, lets say; higher mid-table club.
Ah, lets do a recap where we conveniently leave out how the club was run in a non-sustainable way and in those years accumulated a £1,5billion debt to the owner in those years, a debt that should have bankrupted them.
How that debt will bankrupt them when club is sold for 3 times that?
And it is debt to the owner as previously explained.
The club was in no financial position to pay up. You'd either have to start selling off assets or hope to sell the club to someone that would be willing to pay the market value for the club and cover the outstanding debt. Considering the debt was around 36% of the total fee the club was sold for, it's fairly obvious it won't have been easy to sell the club at market rate and at the same time recover the debt owed. It wouldn't have been in the owners interest, as the club value was higher than the debt. Not that it mattered, as the debt was wiped, but it's madness to suggest the club was well run simply because they got away with it. It's like arguing they were well run before Abramovich came in, because how they operated eventually led to them being purchased by someone happy to fund everything out of his pockets lined with money taken from the Russian people.
He bought club for 140 million pounds and sold it for 4.25 billion pounds. He raised value of club in 20 years for 3000%.
So, even with 36% dept he still leaves club in a waaaaaaaay better place than it was. Plus.........that small thing about 24 trophies in a cabinet.
The club wasn’t sold for 4.25bn. The club was sold for 2.75bn. The remaining 1.5bn was in promised investment. The sale value of the club was 2.75bn. I’m not sure how many times this has to be corrected, but I’ll give it another shot anyway.
Abramovich paid £140M for the club, invested around £1.5bn into it over almost two decades and at the time of the sale the club's market value was £2.5bn. Take away the initial purchase price and the "debt" from the new sale price and he still would have walked away with a cool £800-900M profit if it weren't for the sanctions.
Don't know about you but to me that seems like a reasonable ROI% so it can't have been run that badly? Especially when the club also won 20+ trophies along the way.
I'll correct you too.
The sale price was £2.5bn with an "investment promise" of £1.75bn. You were so close, but not quite there.
Chelsea, just as before, was run in a way that's not sustainable in any way, building up a debt the club was never ever going to be able to pay back on it's own. Which is the point. By all means, the club has been very successful in this period, the owner has either way made a profit, but that doesn't really change the fact that the club built up an unsustainable debt they'd never be able to cover. Cherry picking numbers like you and @Andycoleno9 are doing is a bit like pretending Manchester United has been well run since the Glazers were able to sell off less than 1/3rd of the club for the odd £300mill more than they* paid for the entire club, completely ignoring all the other factors. No, Chelsea weren't well run, the only reason it worked is because an oligarch was happy to cover all the losses the operation of the club generated.
Apparently that's the dream owner for some.
*Leveraged buy out
I love it when @duffer is clearly rattled but tries to hide behind snark.
I mean as far as getting a shady oligarch billionaire it's rather at the top end of the scale, he seemed at least genuinely invested in the whole football (or winning) thing.
I want to say he bowed out somewhat gracefully too (not that he did have a choice). But maybe it's because the new ownership excesses makes Roman's vanity project / personal ballerina look almost... quaint is too strong a word, maybe savvy ? A labor of passion and not just a cold exercice in accumulation ?
Of course not a sustainable way to run a club, at the very least one that regulations have tried to curtail.
I want to say he bowed out somewhat gracefully too (not that he did have a choice). But maybe it's because the new ownership excesses makes Roman's vanity project / personal ballerina look almost... quaint is too strong a word, maybe savvy ? A labor of passion and not just a cold exercice in accumulation ?
Of course not a sustainable way to run a club, at the very least one that regulations have tried to curtail.
@duffer - what's your take on this mate? And if you had to pick 'sides', who would you go for?
There really should t even be a debate. Clearlake is a clever financial entity that governs a large amount of resources. But they were only brought into this group to be the “bank”, especially as it related to the stadium. Whether there is a learning curve to Todd’s decision making to football or not, I trust him to make those adjustments and do what’s best for the team winning.
HE is an owner. Raine would not have approved Eghbali or Feliciano on their own for this club. They have been turned down to buy franchises solo several times.
Walter and Wyss are Guggenheim guys and will go the direction Boehly does. So Clearlake would have to go to its individual fund managers and seek their approval to more than doh me their investment and have some ownership and risk in a team, OR take a massive profit on their investment from Boehly and the group that he will bring in to replace them.
I did not mind Clearlake being involved. They ARE clever. But I don’t want any pension and insurance fund having total ownership of my team. They will be buying “assets” at the same or greater rate they are now. They will demand a love from the Bridge because a fund won’t tolerate a group like the Chelsea trust having control of anything they pour money into. Money WILL come before trophies. It will be a nightmare.
HE is an owner. Raine would not have approved Eghbali or Feliciano on their own for this club. They have been turned down to buy franchises solo several times.
Walter and Wyss are Guggenheim guys and will go the direction Boehly does. So Clearlake would have to go to its individual fund managers and seek their approval to more than doh me their investment and have some ownership and risk in a team, OR take a massive profit on their investment from Boehly and the group that he will bring in to replace them.
I did not mind Clearlake being involved. They ARE clever. But I don’t want any pension and insurance fund having total ownership of my team. They will be buying “assets” at the same or greater rate they are now. They will demand a love from the Bridge because a fund won’t tolerate a group like the Chelsea trust having control of anything they pour money into. Money WILL come before trophies. It will be a nightmare.
“I trust Todd”
Is there anything more depressing and indicative of the sorry state of football than modern football fans going in to bat for billionaire owners trying to get rich off the back of the club the fans support?
Is there anything more depressing and indicative of the sorry state of football than modern football fans going in to bat for billionaire owners trying to get rich off the back of the club the fans support?
It's like having to choose between being kicked in the nuts or being punched in the face. No good options there.
If Boehly has accepted he has feck all football knowledge on his own and would leave everything in the hands of the people hired to do the job, I would prefer his group getting the full ownership over Clearlake. The PR briefs from his camp are suggesting that's his plan but then again in reality that is somewhat contradicted by the fact he seemingly threw a tantrum when the sporting directors (as well as Clearlake) disagreed with him over keeping Pochettino so I would take that as an indicator of him still wanting to meddle in the sporting matters when it suits him.
Ultimately Boehly and Clearlake are both in it to make some money, not because they care about football or Chelsea FC.