Abramovich and the myth of takeovers
With Arsenal fans (and Manchester United fans before them - still, actually) going up in arms against the threat of hostile takeovers, the situation at SW6 is going to serve as a live reminder of the dangers of being at the behest of billionaires who don’t understand football. In fact, scratch that - Chelsea’s situation, unfortunate as it is, is the clearest indication we have yet of how someone who isn’t a fan of the club can hurt it, and hurt it badly.
In the long run, Mourinho’s departure will have little impact - he was going to leave sooner or later on his own, once he had won enough and once he wanted a new challenge. In his absence Chelsea will still be fearsome opponents and unless things go considerably worse at Stamford Bridge, Champions League regulars as well. It’s not as if Avram Grant is a bad person or a bad manager - if Harry Redknapp and Arsene Wenger speak highly of him, that’s good enough for me.
The problem is that the move does NOT benefit Chelsea in the short-run in any way. They’ve lost a manager the players would have died for (the rumoured bustup with Terry aside), they’ve lost whatever chances they had of winning the Champions League or the Premier League this season, and if this move was designed to improve Chelsea’s image, it has had the opposite effect. I wish Chelsea well, and I hope they don’t implode or fail this season as a result of this, but whatever Avram Grant can do, Mourinho would have done it, and done it better.
Peter Kenyon, when outlining Roman Abramovich’s plans for Chelsea (can you spot what’s wrong with that sentence?), said:
“It’s building that dynasty. That’s what Roman wants to be part of, Chelsea becoming part of Europe’s dynasty. We had a 10-year vision for the club. It was about building a team that was successful, not once but consistently.
Over a 10-year period, you need two European Cups to be a world club. You have to dominate your domestic league. We have to have an infrastructure to deal with that and people to deal with it.
We will win the Champions League. It’s just when is the question. We’ve got a squad, a structure, a belief and we’ve got quality. And I do believe the Champions League is not that far away.”
It’s a good pep talk but this is not a science. Titles can be bought, but heritage and fan base cannot be bought. However, if this was all there was to it, then Roman’s influence on Chelsea and as a consequence on English football would have been a positive one. So far, it’s been 50-50 - the money has come in and Chelsea are better off for it, but titles and sustained domination win fans, not ‘pretty football’. Chelsea’s brand of football has been aggressive and with flair, but last season there was a step backwards and what has happened now is a direct consequence of Roman’s impatience from last year.
The other day my cousin asked me what I would do if I had enough money to buy Manchester United. Whimsical fantasy, perhaps, but the more I thought about it the more I realised how important it was for fans to be in charge of the club. I would have focused on 3 things: Making everything more affordable for the fans, doing everything in my power to promote the club (a long-term process but one that clubs have historically been poor at, especially since they’re stuck in the 80s style of marketing) and give the manager the time, space and money he needed to win titles.
I don’t think Roman’s moves have anything to do with playing pretty football - he wants to play fantasy football and worse, he wants to be loved for buying titles. The first is a ridiculous prospect if you want to win titles, and the second simply won’t happen. Under Mourinho, at least we had someone we loved to hate. Grant may turn to be a boring manager, a Roeder or a Curbishley. With Mourinho they had that one spark that attracted people to Chelsea and made them respect them, like them even. Without him, Roman will find Chelsea being pitied / loathed / ignored in equal measures this season - not a good sign for a club looking to build a dynasty.
I’m changing my stance on takeovers when it comes to football - whether it’s a billionaire or a sports tycoon, they simply cannot be good for a successful club unless that club needs the investment, and even then the potential problems are such that the club and the fans will hurt even when successful.
Unless fans start minting money, football is slowly going to hell.
Related Items from Soccerlens
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- Abramovich sells Robben; “Real Madrid made Chelsea an offer I couldn’t refuse”
Now you’re coming round my line of thinking, although did you have to sound so pessimistic about it? Football can never ‘go to hell’. As long as we have great managers & great players around it’ll just keep getting better & better. The money will always keep getting bigger & bigger (that’s the nature of market forces coming into play), but its situations like these that give clubs everywhere pause & make them realise that developing & concentrating on the fundamentals are the most important thing to survive. It is situations like these that people can learn from if they have the wits to recognise the lessons. The market will adjust itself & survive.
I don’t know if Man Utd needed the takeover or not (i don’t know much about the situation) but i know clubs like Liverpool, West Ham & Man City have benefited from strong rich owners so far, so you’re right about that point in terms of necessity. In terms of Arsenal needing it, we know for the moment that a takeover is not necessary & hopefully won’t be for anytime at all in the future.
I’m not sure how successful a club would be if fans were to be in firm control of it, especially in England (every situation is unique). I believe you had written about that sometime earlier & there are still many serious concerns with that idea.
Chelsea will bounce back & even though they won’t find another Mourinho, they will find successes with the right manager/s in the future. 5 years from now you’ll probably look back on this & think, ‘this was a time of transition for the club’.
Now where have i heard that one before?
Ahmed, I would not say the Abramovich is NOT a fan of Chelsea. He did waste a ton of money on them, but I think that HE wants to be remebered for what HE did.
After what he has done to Chelsea, it is clear that he has ruined their chances at either the Premier League or the Champions League. After all you know you have done a bad job when Ken Bates accuses you of ruining a club:)
Let’s be fair, Ken Bates obviously has no idea what a ruined club looks like.
[…] If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting! Despite the well-documented tension at Stamford Bridge and the countless speculation, no one actually expected Jose Mourinho to be the first managerial casualty in the Premier League. It just goes on to prove the unpredictable nature of football, although it’s probably just a symptom of rich owners getting itchy. […]
Roman may be a good example of how a rich person can destroy a well run(or at least decently run) football club. Another good example is the Glazers. Buy a profitable club, slowly use it to cover up your massive debts. Hope people realise whats happening. Even another good example is mr. Thakshin. So much for foreign investment I guess………
There’s nothing wrong with these takeovers. Abramovich has given so much to our club that it is fantastic, and to have it be a leading club in the UK and Europe is quite a feat.
The problem is that Roman and his staff are too concerned with now making it a brand. You hear Kenyon’s comments: a brand globally known by 2014. The best way to do this, in his opinion, is to win the Champions League twice. Roman is way too concerned with European glory, and it is now costing the Blues with the sacking of Mourinho. Notice how the Special One was gone a day after a home draw in the Champions League against a side that should have been beat.
That global Chelsea brand of business may be in existence by 2014, but the most important factor is success on the pitch, and my club has taken severe steps backwards the last couple of weeks in reaching that aim.
Isn’t it interesting that none of the unhappy Chelsea fans are chanting “Abramovich out”?
Roman may have brought instant success to a trophy-hungry club, but at what cost? Is the camaraderie still there? Are the players loyal to the club or to the coach? Will any of the current players or the future manager and even future players be at home at Stamford Bridge? Any new coach coming in will bring fresh replacements. And where will the present ones go? All points to ponder about. And all that just because the owner meddled too much into the affairs of the manger and finally threw him out.
I’ve written many times in the past about the (serious) problems I see with this spate of takeovers and why I think it’s bad from both a fan’s and an institutional point of view. To rehash, from a fan’s point of view, your club - something that, most probably, when it was founded, was in the hands of people in your position - is at the whim of someone whose interest in the club’s welfare may be indirect at best, or non-existant at worst. From an institutional perspective, it is perhaps more complicated but the dangers are even greater.
Some possible scenarios:
Chelsea - a) Roman loses interest in the club and decides to stop writing off its debt. Chelsea in theory should be the most indebted club in the world, its turnover is hugely inferior to its expenses in transfers and wages. Roman foots this bill. Should he decide to stop and have the club be self-sustaining, the spending power they posess will shrink substantially and they will go back to the position they were in a few years ago.
b) Roman loses interest and decides to sell. Unless he finds someone who is willing to cover the annual losses, a) will happen first.
c) Something happens which makes access to his money unavailable - untimely death, Putin, horrible investments apart from Chelsea a la Cragnotti - which would immediately cause Chelsea to collapse financially.
Man Utd - Due to the enormous interest payments the Glazers must make annually, because of the way they financed their takeover, any sustained lack of success will be devastating for the club. Interest payments will either eat directly into the funds available for transfers/wages, or worse yet, club assets (read: players) will have to be sold in order to meet said payments.
Liverpool - Same argument as the one made for Man Utd, but because they did not leverage themselves nearly as much (and because Liverpool was simply much cheaper to buy) I see this as less of a problem. It still exists though.
Man City - This one must be more than obvious. See Chelsea c).
And in one way or another these things can be applied to all the clubs that are in the hands of a sole owner, however rich he may be. Why? Because the club’s fate is now tied directly to the fate, or whims - call it what you wish - of one person.
Arsenal is the only truly financially healthy large club in England. They can survive, virtually unscathed, years upon years of relative underperformance.
[…] around the world are not to happy with this move due to various past untoward activities, and with the recent departure of Jose Mourinho from Chelsea due to Roman Abramovich’s constant meddling, a potential takeover by Usmanov does not look good if you are an Arsenal […]