I bumped into Fashanu on Fleet Street once. He's a big ****er. Taller than his reported 6'1", I think, while being pretty broad, too. Thought he'd want to avoid central London after his brother killed himself down there, though.
Liverpool and City fans are united in their condemnation of the FA and they're right, for once. Their semi-final game on the weekend of April 16th is at Wembley, which is silly enough on it's own. They're particularly pissed this time though, as there are no trains, again. Old Trafford isn't an option, as the near-Manchester side have a home game against Norwich. I think that they should hold it in Glasgow. There's a Scottish semi-final between the two local teams, but I'm sure that wouldn't be an issue.
Would be the easiest solution, especially as Villa were due to host Liverpool on that day. Goodison or the Etihad are both available too and they're closer. Won't be a lot of tickets for either side if they do move it to any of them, though. Lots of dubious "neutrals" will pick up most of them.
Can't get my head round all this interest to buy Chelsea. Is it really that much of a going concern? If an group had that much money to spend on a PL team, wouldn't there money be better value in a different team that wouldn't be anywhere near as expensive initially, and the extra money could be used for players? Chelsea are limited by the size of their stadium and the existing wage structure surely. Basically the assets are the players already there (and with the assumption that they stay), and the finances surely only work with guaranteed entry to the CL? It's not a problem with Uncle Roman because he could just keep increasing his "loan" (which it turns out wasn't a loan anyway since apparently it doesn't have to be paid back). The figures being bandied about are huge enough anyway, and surely any normal takeover would mean a new owner being liable for the company's debts? This wouldn't happen if the company declared bankruptcy or something similar, but this is not the case is it. Or are they effectively working as if the company is bankrupt without any of the downside? No doubt any savvy investor would only commit if they are satisfied with the viability of the finances (or they don't care about losses and are only interested in 'sportwashing' or similar). So are we being told the full story of the finances? Could Abramovich even "top up" a deal with a payment directly to the buyer? So many questions. Basically help me out as I clearly don't understand what is going on, or why Chelsea are worth so much.
Not sure the loan is a gift after all. Surely the loan asset is now owned by Govt and will be passed to the new owner. It was always going to be factored into the sale price anyway, now Abramovich isn't involved in negotiations.
It appears Newcastle was sold for £305 million. I keep hearing that bids for Chelsea are up in the £2 billion range. And you are suggesting that they would have to cover the loan as well? So back to my original point that I can't understand why Chelsea are worth so much (if you add in the loan that is more than 10x the value of Newcastle). People may have "opinions" about Newcastle, but it isn't worth 1/10th what Chelsea is.
I think that’s pretty much the going rate for a top four/ six Premier League side nowadays. Daniel Ek had bids of around £2bn rejected for Arsenal in the summer whilst ENIC supposedly value us at around £2.5bn. I think if anyone wanted to buy Utd, City or Pool at the moment you’d probably be looking closer to £3bn, possibly even more. Crazy, crazy money and a crazy, crazy world.
Just to compare it directly to Arsenal though, the obvious difference there should be the grounds. The Emptyrates may well be a dead ****hole, but at least they own it. Stamford Bridge is owned by Chelsea Pitch Owners, who also own the naming rights for the club. You'd have thought that would seriously impact the value of Fulham's 2nd side.
Like I said before why buy Chelsea for 2.5 when you could buy a Palace for a fifth of that, spend 2/5’s turning them into the new Chelsea and keep 2/5’s in your pocket The only thing they come with is the squad value, ****e culture, ****e stadium. global fanboys will go where the glamour n trophies go over time.
I can see only 3 reasons to pay anything like the suggested asking price: 1. The prospective owners expect to join a European Super League that will massively increase the club's income; 2. The owners are rich enough not to care about the club's funding gap and will continue to run it as a vanity project; 3. Someone's getting their sums wrong. Chelsea just aren't comparable to United or Liverpool and aren't going to be able to build a stadium like us or Arsenal. If they lost CL football for more than 1 season, their income would be seriously affected and without being bankrolled by another Abramovich, would struggle to meet the wages and transfer policies that have taken them to where they are now.
Realistically there's two good reasons not to spend £2.5bn on Crystal Palace 1.) Croydon 2.) Seriously, Croydon On a less Croydony level, the issue with a lot of Premier League and upper tier Championship teams that makes them less appealing is a combination of location and their stadiums limiting their earning potential. If we use Leeds as an example, the obvious advantage there is they can pull in 36,000 fans every home game which is near to capacity of Elland Road so there's certainly reason to believe that if they had a 50,000 seat stadium they could fill it - but the issue is that Leeds isn't exactly going to be a city where any budding American, Middle Eastern or Chinese billionaire is going to look to invest because they tend to work in easier bets like London, Manchester, Liverpool, or clueless centres of gross unearned entitlement such as Newcastle Sticking with Leeds for a moment, it does have to be said that there's enough space around Elland Road that if they did have new owners with visions of building a new stadium, they could absolutely do it as there's a big slab of wasteland right next to Elland Road - but Selhurst Park is very different, because while Palace can get up to their 25,000 capacity the stadium can't really be renovated as it's hemmed in on all sides by housing (similar to the issues Luton have long had, hence they've been trying to move out of Kenilworth Road for forty years), and there's nowhere around Norwood or Selhurst they can build a new stadium so the new stadium would have to built in either Anerley and Penge, and to underline why that might be an issue I'll just say this: people from Croydon consider Anerley and Penge to be rough areas...
For anyone that isn't familiar with the place, you virtually have to walk through someone's house to get into the ground. This is the away entrance at Luton: please log in to view this image
< chairman deedub > A more forward thinking England football organisation, back in the day, should have funded (where planning allowed) the development of certain existing regional grounds (Anfield, Old Trafford etc) into big stadia ( > 50K attendance) . You would then have a set of high capacity grounds for England matches, FA Cup SFs etc around the realm. And the clubs who would get increased capacity would give the revenues from the new excess to those who paid for the upgrades.
Money! A mark a yen a buck or a pound, that clinking clanking sound, of money money money money.... There are two other big quesitons: (1) Why the semi-finals have to be at Wembley at all? (2) Why does Wembley have to be at Wembley? Playing the semis at Wembley do two things. Firstly make it difficult for almost all fans to get there, which would be less of a problem but it isn't and half of them won't even get to come back for the final. Secondly it spoils the status of a final at Wembley, which should be something more special, but isn't if you played the semi there as well. For a game that is supposed to be about the fans, we of course lost that years and years ago. But to make people pay the extra costs of coming to London is inexcusable before the current financial problems, and is even worse now. Then you have the location of the national stadium. It seems to have been built in Wembley mainly because the previous stadium was in Wembley. Can't think of much other justification. It's not the easiest place to get to. Except probably for those that made the decision. Sitting it in the midlands near the NEC might have made more sense (obviously they've got to sort the road network out a bit around there, but having the stadium there might have given that a kick), but it's still better served by intercity trains and an airport. But it's all money isn't it. Even when they said there was no way to preserve the twin towers for the new stadium, what they were saying is that it would cost too much to preserve the twin towers, since there have been some extraordinary feats of engineering over the years, some of which might even be more complex. Still, they managed to spend about £800 million on the stadium, which is an achievement because they didn't even get a closing roof (the Millennium stadium cost £120 million), or the ability to convert for NFL games.
It's like the time we had an FA Cup semi against Arsenal, which The FA decided would take place at...Old Trafford
The simple reason why the semis take place at Wembley is so The FA get a return on their investment - an investment which went grossly over budget and schedule - which is also why they moved their operations there from Lancaster Gate The biggest problem with having both semis there, however, isn't that it takes the spectacle of a final at Wembley, it's how the team that play second often do so on a cut-up pitch and the potential errors that are caused by that, case in point the turf sending Michael Dawson the wrong way and allowing Portsmouth to score in 2010 This is also why the Championship playoff final is now played first when it used to be the last of the playoff finals, since the optics of playing for a place in the Premier League on The Somme aren't something that The FA want to be responsible for
