Soccer (Closing)

Can't support a financial group mate

"People get inordinately angry. Sure, I grew up in a time of hooliganism, which was a manifestation of tribalism. What football is now is a 24/7 angry tirade. Now everyone has an opinion about everything, but it’s a destructive relationship. Spending your whole life getting worked up about Harry Maguire? Come on, that is not healthy.”

Dead right.

This is true. What my point was no loan has ever been taken to pay wages. As far as I am aware. I would be open to stand corrected with valid sources though.

Brits invent football and have been whining about it ever since.

They may be owned by a bloodless, money-obsessed US billionaire but at least they aren't just another state-backed sportswashing operation.

E: sigh... /s ... yes it's a joke about Kroenke ffs

Blackburn's benefactor was a guy born in Blackburn, who made his money with a business based 5 miles from Ewood Park.

There's a huge difference between this and what Man City, PSG, et al are doing.

I fail to understand your point. How is getting a loan "ruining the sport"?

Also where do you get that they get loans with hardly any interest, if any? What kind of bank or financial institution is gifting money away?

How is Barcelona being in debt "where football has gone wrong", or how does it affect other clubs?

You seem to imply that cash injections from shady owners is better than the levers which are just the club selling it's own assets

Or maybe Saudi Arabia owning a club, Qatar owning a club, or clubs like Bury that have gone out of busiensss due to shitty owners should be in & around no 1

The hate for Saudis and American's is 100% warranted

Juxtaposing those two together is completely unreasonable. Whataboutism and sports washing in action.

Boehly and Chelsea's transfers have been absurd, the Glazers are leeching money out of ManU, but the rest have been more or less the same as any other group of owners?

Arsenal is at a high point they haven't been at for a while, and Liverpool had an incredible run of success under FSG. I also think ownership at Villa, Palace, Fulham, Leeds, and West Ham has been fine? As a whole I don't think those owners are any better or worse than those at Spurs, Wolves, or Brighton.

Roman got a weird free pass in the press for his role in helping a dictator take power.

Chelsea were the most recent large club before the oil state clubs to use owner wealth to successfully break football apart

Other clubs have done it before (Blackburn rovers for example), Chelsea are just the most notable recent ones who took it further than it had gone before, until the oil clubs overtook them.

The oil clubs are doing the financial doping but also it’s much darker with them since they’re sportswashing as well - abramovich might have been a bastard but he’s leagues behind Saudi Arabia and the like in terms of crimes against humanity - hence those clubs are the new poster boys

Cherry on the cake has thousands of people now like him.

And? What does that do for him? Sports-washing accusations work for Saudi clubs who are clearly trying to raise the image of their country on the world stage so that they're in the conversation for larger tourism and global events etc.

It doesn't fit with Roman's ownership of Chelsea because he didn't do anything during his time to obviously try to boost his own image, or even that of Russia, and I'd argue that the public perception of both Russia and of Abramovic is lower now than it was in 2003.

Maybe he just wanted a foreign asset, but he made a huge financial loss owning Chelsea. Maybe he was genuinely just a fan.

for players its fantastic, their future is secured for a long time and they are in a (hopefully) stable environment. For the club its a massive risk to make such long commitments

Chelsea was the first to bring it to a ludicrous scale

The 10 year before Roman

After 3 years with Roman

As a Chelsea fan, it’s been depressing watching other Chelsea fans justifying what we have been doing.

No one who gets to the point where they can buy a club is a good person

Do you know how they're involved?

Saudi PIF are using Clearlake Investment's investment services, because Clearlake are good at what they do which is why they can afford to buy Chelsea. Shocking.

Brighton are sponsored by American Express, so of course they have ties with every criminal that uses American Express, right?

Exactly the equivalent of saying Man U have ties with Russia, because some russian officials use TeamViewer and they sponsor Man U.

Besides, Arsenal are sponsored by Emirates and had the whole "Visit Rwanda" travesty. How TF are you on a high horse?

Link to free version of the article

You're not allowed to mention that, Milan fans will get pissy and defensive

are you assuming that Roman kickstarted it despite Blackburn doing the same ‘overspending’ a decade prior.

Ties as in Saudi have money handled by Clearlake? i’m sure every team has someone tied to them that’s dodgy if that’s the thread you want to pull at.

Suppose Arsenal have one of those good billionaires that exist despite there being not a whole lot of difference between him and Todd

That logic just makes no sense. The reason chelsea are the poster boys, is because they went from a stable club owned by a dirty oil Oligarch, who then due to geo politics was forced to sell, and he did so to American finance men who are just oligarchs and middle eastern billionaires with more governmental restrictions. And those men took transfer spending to a level no one ever could’ve imagined ball in 1 year. Not only that, but they have been utter shit. Spending a billion and still being so bad is horrific.

Scenes when Chelsea recruit Thomas Crimp and Scumspawn as their new COOs

Basically: "My team isn't hoovering trophies up anymore, I don't want to watch it".

I disagree with this, there is something wrong with whole vibe of club. It’s nothing to do with winning trophies. These fans were there before Roman arrived.

This shit is just lazy journalism at this point. There are many things wrong with football. Spending idiotically for no trophies doesn’t even make the top ten

You don't even need 5 years. They're salary cap is now set at £270M while they are currently spending £400M with the smallest squad in the league

There's like a million football teams in England that don't make any money and play purely for pleasure man. If you say that "football" has gone wrong because one club is making money, then it says something mostly about what you see as football, not the actual whole football lol.

Overpay FC.

Yep wev won it all and got our owner taken away by the government becuase of a war.... keep hating we dont care.

We will be back and you can hate us soke more Hamilton you prick