The devil went down to Chelsea, he was looking for a soul to steal,
He was in a bind, he was way behind
and he was looking to make a deal.
He came across some young men, watching football and getting hot
And the devil jumped up on a hickory stump
and said let me tell you what.
I guess you didn’t know it, but I’m a football fan too
And if you’d care to take a dare,
I’ll make a bet with you
Now your club’s pretty good, but give the devil his due
I’ll bet my bankroll against your souls
That I can make a deal with you.
The Chelsea fans were so excited they didn’t even resist
they quickly signed on the dotted line
and Roman’s entire ass was kissed
25 years later and now the devil wants his toll
And the Blues they cry, “he’s not our guy!”
But they already sold their souls
There are no honorable bargains when it comes to certain things
like selling your soul for a little gold
or a championship ring.
So, Terry rosin up that bow, and play that fiddle well
For the Devil went down to Chelsea and dragged you all to hell.
And now there’s nothing you can do but cry how this is wrong
But other fans, should listen well, and heed the message of this song.
Qq
Brilliant!
Fucking Brilliant!
We dodged an Usmanov-sized bullet a few years ago.
In three or four years Newcastle will displace Chelsea as one of the “Big Six”. Chelsea will be operated like Arsenal, Spurs, West Ham, Man Utd and Liverpool. A big club but without billionaire benefactors and financial doping. And I’d say we have a head start on those other clubs, bar Liverpool, on being able to cope with this new era.
Chelsea can’t even sell tickets to games, never mind buy players or sign new contracts. Brutal.
Sorry, but are the Kroenke’s not billionaires and have they not been pouring money into the club so as to oil the way for Arteta’s ‘process’?
Why does the wishful thinking and rose coloured glasses problem affect so many Gunners?
Dream on.
I believe that every billionaire is a policy failure, that we have a huge problem with taxation, and that they almost always gain their wealth from massive exploitation but the idea that Stan Kroenke and Roman Abramovich are moral equivalents is pretty far off the mark.
You can’t compare Kroenke loaning a few hundred million and covering short term losses to Abramovitch loaning £1.5 billion or the UAE or Qatari sheiks spending billions. All the clubs are owned by billionaires, you know what he meant.
He didn’t even really cover the losses. All he did was swap the loans for the stadium into his name and gave the club a zero percent interest loan to pay for it. That freed up Arsenal to spend that cash Wenger had stockpiled at a time of urgent crisis. Imagine if he hadn’t done that the club would have defaulted on many of its obligations.
Brilliant! They did indeed make a deal with the devil. Thanks for another great post.
Bravo! I loved that. And I’m beyond delighted to see Chelsea get their just deserts. They really did sup with the devil. The merry go round of managers, the stockpiling of young players on loan to other premier league clubs. The scumbag fans who sing Abramovich’s name when the rest of the football crowd shows solidarity with Ukraine. Enough already.
hard to criticise when I heard several chants of ‘Red Army’ from our chaps today 😉
Abramovic’s flooding the premiership with money arguably cost Wenger two titles in the early noughties. It was painful to watch him throw his financial weight around, and distort the market. To tap up and poach Ashley Cole, which would be the equivalent of a cash injected oligarch takeover pinching Saka. We got Gallas in that deal. They got a slap on the wrist for breaking the rules. Cole vindicated his decision by winning all the trophies available, and then Gallas delivered us that sit down in Birmingham. And had the gall to demand get the No 10 shirt. Later, we’d take 2 players, Cech and Willian, who were already past their best years.Luiz I’d exempt from that, because he was a better gunner — on and off the field — than people give him credit for.
All that said, Chelsea seem to have cleaned up their act and have become a well run club financially. I have no ill-will towards the club, which has a history that predated Abramovic. Remember when Dennis Wise was the big cheese? When Vialli arrived? Peter Osgood, to go further back? I cant summon animosity towards the club, even as I have no sympathy for their current position. For Abramovic, I wish the absolute worst, as I do for his patron in Moscow.
‘All that said, Chelsea seem to have cleaned up their act and have become a well run club financially’
When you’re catapulted into becoming a ‘European giant’ by two decades of financial doping, you kinda get to do that.
The reason they look good financially is that they’ve been juiced to the tune of 1.5bn by their benefactor. Money given to the club at no cost and not repaid. That’s financial doping.
But I’m not throwing stones. Kroenke may have done the same recently through buying the stadium debt.
As I’ve alluded to lower in the thread it’s owners taking advantage of the lack or regulations and governance. Look at how the Glazers financed the purchase of ManUre using the club’s own debt. Amanda Stavely buys a stake in Tooncastle using loans from mates and from the guy she was buying from. City’s sponsorship sources are all kinds of opaque.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/amanda-staveley-didnt-have-the-funds-to-buy-newcastle-stake-claims-mike-ashley-37hwvjwfb
Liverpool are arguably the most financially prudent super club in European football.
‘But I’m not throwing stones. Kroenke may have done the same recently through buying the stadium debt.’
Not even close. Arsenal will have to pay back the loan to KSE, but likely at a reduced interest rate.
https://www.arsenaltrust.org/feed/afc-finances/2020/AST-Debt-Redemption-KSE
Where does it say that? There’s a whole heap of assumptions and questions in the AST statement (which I’ve read before).
It’s currently a 0% interest loan to Arsenal which is backed by Kroenke and not Arsenal, that’s a fact which is repeated in multiple places including the Swiss Ramble. He needed to do it this way in order to pay off the bad stadium loan which required a certain amount of cash on hand. If he hadn’t done this, we would have been forced into a fire sale of the players and possibly be looking at relegation.
Right now, he has put money into the club. I know, I never thought I would see the day but it has come. However, if Kroenke starts paying himself out of the club’s money in order to pay back the loan then this is literally what the Glazers are doing and would be “taking money out of the club”.
The way to think of it is this: is Kroenke reducing or increasing Arsenal’s spending ability? It’s the former right now. If he makes Arsenal pay for that loan, then it’s the latter.
Also check out Swiss ramble’s thread on this. The first point of the thread :
‘The first thing to appreciate is what this transaction does not mean. It will not make #AFC debt-free, nor does it mean that Kroenke is finally investing into the club. Instead, it is simply a restructuring of the club’s current debt by changing the lender.’
He also says the loan is not likely at zero interest but a reduced rate.
https://mobile.twitter.com/SwissRamble/status/1282561270173097984
Thanks chaps. Understand all of this. I didn’t make my point so well. What isn’t in the public domain is the terms of repayment of the KSE loan by Arsenal. As Swiss Ramble writes lower in his thread it’s likely KSE extended the lifetime of the loan so the annual repayments are reduced and there may well be a repayment holiday (which is what Abramovich did with Chelsea). A repayment holiday (or very generous terms) would be consistent with recent KSE restructuring of Arsenal liabilities such as reducing the amount the club pay upfront for transfers.
Cheers, Matt
I’m slightly annoyed by the fact that people keep trying to justify what Abramovich did by implying ‘everyone does it’.
No, they do not. A little financial manoeuvring to ensure your business has sufficient liquidity is not in the same league as dumping billions into it. This is ‘sports washing’ at its finest. It makes me think football fans are ready for the sport to become a billionaires’ d**k measuring contest.
No worries.
I’m yet to be convinced the Kroenkes know how to run a football club but props to them for some smart financial decisions recently.
If they continue to give the club headroom to compete I’m 100% onboard.
I think it had to come.
Many Chelsea fans came of age with Abramovich at the helm already. They saw him push a relatively good club beyond anyone’s wildest imagination and into the stratosphere. Into the conversation with European elite. We watched him sing, chant, and go wild in the booth of the Allianz arena with us, when Drogba sealed our win as champions of Europe and that taste of victory, along with with many other league titles was, frankly, purely intoxicating. And that’s what we’ve done all these years, consume Chelsea football with all the success that came with it and force feed the falsehood that our owner cared for the club. Abramovich became synonymous with winning, and that success coupled with love for our dear club made him feel like a fan just like us. He at worst became a flawed person to the Chelsea majority, an individual with skeletons, a person you could defend with an offhand, who do you know without an unfortunate past.
You only have to hear the chants or look into the blog site forums to understand this is no longer a man who has funded, aided, and abetted bloodshed in his own country and abroad( Israeli-Palestinian conflict) but a fellow fan with a heart that bleeds blue.
The only thing I say is, I was never under the illusion that our owner was a good person, but I can understand how one can lose their will to see owners and corporations for what they are. Honestly, I have been sleepwalking through this last decade with a sense of fatalism for corruption in football. My love has waxed and waned, sadly, and I’m trying to hold on to what is left.
We always knew. Officials in a positions of power, fans, the media all knew who this person was and it took a war for football entities/government to question if he should be attached to a club.
I sincerely hope Chelsea can become synonymous with something other that Abramovich. I’m also hoping that UEFA and maybe the Premier league use our as an example to prevent further manipulation of our beloved clubs as tools for regimes, corporations, sponsors or the mega wealthy. It is obvious football needs further checks and a more robust vetting process. I know it’s unlikely that this is retroactive but I hope when deals are renewed, clubs are sold, and sponsors are chosen there is an independent body to assure that football isn’t threatened.
Excellent, fair-minded post (as usual from you, Kante).
Ultimately, all that football fans care about is on-field success. Values come far, far behind. To be honest, if we won the Champions League or the league with huge, sugardaddy non-debt spends on the best players in the world, I fear that eventually I may not care too much that we did. A lot of of gooners have already shown me that they think that the end justifies the means. Hey, I may not be above that either.
I think every billionaire is a criminal is some way (some more sinister than others). You don’t accrue that kind of wealth without screwing over many people.
I don’t think Abramovich’s past is as much of an issue football fans as the financial doping. If he had taken over a club, grown it organically with good football practises and taken it a level Chelsea are, he would have a lot more sympathy from fans.
But, he didn’t do that did he ? He dumped money into a football club with the explicit intention of securing his financial and social standing. As such, I’m sorry to say, Chelsea will ALWAYS be synonymous with Abramovich, because his ill gotten wealth is directly responsible for Chelsea’s success and where they are as a club.
PRVHC from yesterdays comments 3/8/22 at 11:12 PM
Sorry I did not get a chance to respond to your comment.
Form and firepower are very different. Despite the great form we have been in and what most would describe as the best football we have played if several years we still a relatively low scoring team which is on pace to be 6th in the table in goals score with a current projected total of only 62 total goals this season. As a lot of people have pointed out our remaining schedule looks like we will be playing against tougher opponents and better team defenses in the last 13 games so we may struggle to hit 60 total goals. My prediction that we would not have any double digit goal scorers will probably be wrong but not by much and its unlikely we will have anyone scoring in the teens. How many teams do you see who are in the top 4 with a CF who is on pace to score about 5 total goals and not a single player that we expect to score in the teens.
The bottom line is we have been in great form and exceeded my expectations and full credit to the players for what they have done so far. We are playing eye pleasing football but short on firepower and that may still end up costing us our top 4 spot
Hi Bill,
I am always appreciative of your thoughts and how they push and challenge me to question my own assumptions. On the basic level I totally agree – teams need goal scorers.
However City won the league last year without a CF (Aguero scored just 4 goals). One player just scraped to teens (Gundogan – 13) and only one other player in double digits (Sterling – 10).
Yea a 30 goal a season (even 20 goal a season) player usually helps, but surely the above demonstrates it’s by no means a necessity?
Loved this! Tim
Great post Tim.
My favorite sport growing up was Baseball because of my dads love for the sport. I remember how indignant he became when any player crossed the $100,000/season wage level. He was devastated when baseball owners lost the reserve clause and free agency started. He and most everyone I knew at the time predicted that the upward spiral of player wages was unsustainable and baseball would implode. Somehow the players wages and the owners revenues continue to go up and the sport is still with us. Same sort of wage and team value inflation has happened in all sports. I remember in the 2005-2010 years a lot of Arsenal fans predicted that all of the big spending clubs would go bust just like Leeds and Arsene with his project youth and frugal spending habits would save Arsenal and we would be the last team standing and completely change the way football teams were built. Unfortunately that did not happen. Abramovich’s spending which was said to be unsustainable destroyed the duopoly of power held by ManU and Arsenal and his success and free spending style worked for a long time. He built a powerhouse team and despite predictions that he and his team would go bust his on field success brought a huge boost in revenues and world wide recognition for Chelsea and the value of his club skyrocketed
I am not really sure what the point of all of that is other then the romance of all professional sports has been diminished by the huge amounts of money that has become the focus of players and owners alike. Unfortunately it is what it is and its certainly here to stay. If Chelsea’s new owners drag the team down then some other team like Newcastle will replace them. Spending money works. Look how much better we are playing now after spending $150M last summer. Like it or not outspending your opponents and spending the money on the right players are by far the single biggest things which determine success on the pitch and regardless of who our manager is those are the factors which will determine how successful this Arsenal team is in the next few years. .
Nice riff Tim. No sympathy for the devil eh?
Chelsea football club will be just fine (much as it sucks to write that). If anyone thinks this is justice or a course correction it’s just turbulence that will soon settle.
If you take a read of the EPL club ownership test it’s clear these are analog rules for a digital world. Designed to prevent the local ‘wrong un’ from bringing the game into disrepute, they just don’t work in the 21st century. The Premier League is a business in thrall to big owners and wealth creation. It’s not regulated, it answers to no-one and it makes it’s own rules. When one zillionaire leaves, another joins.
From a political perspective we have a populist government and leader who is a former London Mayor. He’s not going to alienate a heap of voters (football fans) on his doorstep.
Then there’s the City of London that doesn’t care about the colour of your money. A recent report showed that Russian investors are the largest foreign asset owners in London (closely followed by middle eastern wealth).
Our political leaders are in thrall to foreign power and influence. Johnson recently gave a peerage to Russian magnate Lebedev. Many of the large Tory party donors are Russian. This recent BBC article captures how Britain has been courting Russian money and simultaneously turning a blind eye to where it came from.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/60348046
Back to Chelsea. The club is for sale at £3bn. It’s too big a prize to be taken off the market. A new owner (probably American) will be found and it will be declared by the EPL and government as a great and safe custodian. Money makes the world go round.
Tim
Fucking
Brilliant
Was what I wanted to say
But some others stole the sun as I was making hay
You are beyond anything Sir. Take a bow
That was brilliant Tim. Blooming made my day
Gabriel and Gabriel call up for senior Brazil. Predicted last year that Martinelli will be in their squad for Qatar. Slightly ahead of schedule, lad. Well done.
Arteta also deserves credit for how he’s handled him. Some criticism for holding him back, but boy did he seize his chance when given it. Im going to say it… rate him more highly than Jesus.
COYG!
Saka and TAA from Liverpool are currently England’s best right side combo, Smith Rowe is the league’s most incisive attacking midfielder, Ramsdale is its best England qualified goalkeeper, White has been in the squad and remains in the mix. With the exception of Laca (who isnt going to get a look in with the likes of Benzema, Griezmann and Mbappe), international quality now runs through this squad. I like what I see.
Brilliant Tim. I had a question. Isn’t it better for Chelsea now that the new owners would have to pay less for the club. Wouldn’t that leave more for them to invest in new players? From my arsenal tinted eyes, I would have preferred the new owners to pay the max amount and take a lien in the name of the club 😀
Well, I mean, sure, but then that money would just go to murder pregnant women and children. So, I’m ok with them getting the club for next to nothing.
Fair point.
The thing Im noticing about the reporting over the past few days of the squeeze on Chelsea and the sanctions on Abramovic is that much of it is wise after the event. Retrospective wisdom about all that was wrong with Roman and his money. It’s almost as if my fellow journos have been asleep for nearly 20 years, and Putin’s overreach is what finally prodded them to do their jobs. Sports journalism has failed us in this. Hopefully it starts asking questions of the other sugardaddies.
‘Ultimately, all that football fans care about is on-field success. Values come far, far behind. To be honest, if we won the Champions League or the league with huge, sugardaddy non-debt spends on the best players in the world, I fear that eventually I may not care too much that we did. A lot of of gooners have already shown me that they think that the end justifies the means. Hey, I may not be above that either.’
err.. what’s the point, the argument here, bud?
top notch cut and paste ability, btw
Oh, I have to spell it out ? Okay here goes
Statement 1 : I, as do most football fans, know perfectly well that Roman Abramovich is a criminal who has put his ill gotten money into a football club in an attempt to buy himself some goodwill and a lucrative asset, but we’re perfectly fine with it as long as our football club wins trophies.
Statement 2 : Those damned journalists have failed in their jobs by not calling out something I don’t find anything wrong with.
In short,
Sportswashing : Not bad
Journalists who did not condemn it : Bad
Thanks for the compliment, btw
Thanks for taking the time to spell it out.
Clearly in the first instance Im an Arsenal fan, with all of the rationality that football fandom entails (sarcasm warning 😊)
and in the second instance, as an (ex) professional journalist, I am pointing out that in the year 2022, Arsenal fans are finding all the wrongs around Roman Abramovic, patron of Putin. That’s something they should have done in 2004.
Clearly it’s a different matter from sugardaddyism in general (although you can make arguments against that too)
I see no contradiction. In fact, you kind of had to strain hard to find one yourself.
CORR IN PARA 2: should read “…in the year 2022, football and sports reporters are…”
Nor “Arsenal fans”
If you hold polar opposite views as a football fan and a journalist, maybe there’s some reconciliation to be done there.
‘in the year 2022, Arsenal fans are finding all the wrongs around Roman Abramovic, patron of Putin. That’s something they should have done in 2004.’
– They did, and so did many journalists, in case you missed it. But by 2022, it got so normalised that many people (including the man in the mirror) think it’s perfectly okay now.
‘Clearly it’s a different matter from sugardaddyism in general’
Not really. As far as I know, there are two types of ‘sugar daddies’
1) Fans of the club, who only want their team to succeed at any cost.
2) Criminals who want to purchase a vehicle for their money laundering and get some cheaply available goodwill.
While the affect on football is more or less the same in both scenarios, I have a bit more sympathy for the former. But Abramovich and most of the ‘sugar daddies’ at major clubs clearly are of the latter variety.
‘I see no contradiction. In fact, you kind of had to strain hard to find one yourself’
– If you say so 🤷
Also, the argument that because some wrong was not called out in 2004, makes it okay in 2022 is bizarre, tbh.
They are not polar opposite views.
Read this again… “I fear that eventually I may not care too much that we did.” There’s nuance in there that youre missing.
But even if I had not qualified that comment (“I fear that eventually I may” is not “I wouldnt) and said I would care, it does not contradict the central point of noting that journalists are being wise after the event about the shadiness of Roman’s dealings.
Your beating of this horse is puzzling. You seem bizarrely intent on some kind of own.
Stop straining so hard to find a non-existent nexus, man 😊
“the argument that because some wrong was not called out in 2004, makes it okay in 2022 is bizarre, tbh.”
Who said that it makes it OK in 2022? How did you deduce that? What a strange takeaway.
At this point, Im going to echo the old lady at the table next to Harry and Sally 😏
I’m sorry if you feel I’m pressing this too much, but I think ‘ I fear that eventually I may not’ is more of word play than nuance. It doesn’t say what you’re position on the matter is. Why not just say sportwashing is bad if that’s what you think ?
The only clue to your current position is your admission above that you have no problem with Chelsea because they’re self sustaining now after two decades of financial doping.
And you keep repeating that no one called out Roman in 2004, which they absolutely did. Even if we assume for the sake of argument they didn’t, why keep bringing up that as though that invalidates any criticism in the present ?
Your reluctance to outright criticise Roman, along with the bizarre caveat that you ‘may eventually agree with what he did’ at Chelsea is what’s puzzling me.
My “reluctance to outright criticise Roman?” How do you keep arriving at such wild conclusions, in a vain attempt to conflate two completely different things that I said?
Your lack of comprehension of a simple, qualified statement is not “word play.” It is your own lack of comprehension of a simple, qualified statement. Sometimes a spade is just spade. Speaking of which, carry on digging.
Your takeaway — it’s OK in 2022 — speaks volumes about the quality of your argument. This is not the own that you think it is.
Anyway, I’ll repeat. Journalists had nearly 20 years to ask the hard questions about Abramovic, and even the really good ones on the investigative side are behaving like Captain Obvious now that he has been sanctioned. His relationship with Putin was, as they say, hiding in plain sight. It’s a journalistic fail. Even die-hard blues like Kante’s Inferno can see that the issues were longstanding ones.
Once again, you’ve written a lot without really saying anything, except perhaps attacking my level of comprehension.
How could it be a journalistic fail if everyone and their grandmother knew Abramovich was an oligarch close to Putin from the get go ? A hundred articles could have been written about it and I doubt anything would’ve changed.
You know what perhaps could have made a difference ? Outright rejection by fans a la what happened with the Super league. But unfortunately we’ve got fans who ‘eventually may not care’ who owns the club and where the money to win trophies come from.
You want a reason why sportwashing is becoming increasingly prevalent in football ? May be look in the mirror
“How could it be a journalistic fail if everyone and their grandmother knew Abramovich was an oligarch close to Putin from the get go?”
Your question answers itself. Think about it for a second.
And bredda, Im not the one doing the attacking here.
Carry on.
“You want a reason why sportwashing is becoming increasingly prevalent in football ? May be look in the mirror”
Now you’re getting personal and nasty. I operate under a pseudonym, as do you. You dont know me at all.
Nothing I said was personal. I merely pointed out the consequences of your stated position.
But if you feel that way, let’s end it here. No reason for two Arsenal fans to beat each other up over Abramovich.
Having tried a gotcha and watched increasingly contorted arguments and conclusions unravel, you then say that fans like me are responsible for sportswashing by people with blood and stolen treasure on their hands.
But hey, it’s not personal. Right.
On statement 1, you seemed to want to willfully, bad-faith misrepresent what I said, and you flat out dont make sense pushing back on statement 2… what I said about journos suddenly getting religion.
I dunno, mate. I found this exchange to be surreal. And that is putting it mildly. Be well.
It looks like we definitely made a good decision to sell Joe Willock when his value was at its highest. His goal scoring last year looks like it was one of those unexplainable and unrepeatable run of form anomalies
Five on the bounce and 1 point shy of 2.0 PPG. Stunning turnaround this season. Really looking forward to Wednesday’s test. And Vardy didn’t get to score against us. It’s nearly like Christmas.
Yesss!! Three points. This team is really rolling, and Arteta has’ em playing some really good football. If the Magpies had held Chelsea, we’d be right on their backs for the three spot. But hey, let’s just enjoy the win.
Delighted for Thomas Partey. Now he needs to score on with his feet to bury all the jokes. Happy for Laca too, getting on the scoresheet.
Excellent, just excellent!