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Chelsea, Roman Abramovich and old-school memories of the Bridge
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1970s > 2020s: IT’S A NO-BRAINER
Winning five Premier League titles, five FA Cups, three League Cups, two Big Cups, two Big Vases, a Super Cup and a Club World Cup is all good and well, but some Chelsea fans of a certain vintage still yearn for how things were before Roman Abramovich pitched his tent in Москва-на-Темзе all those years ago. Life was more innocent back then, what with the electric cattle fence surrounding the pitch, the frequent run-ins with Millwall, betting the farm on a behemoth of a stand in the middle of an economy-jiggering oil crisis and going nine matches without a goal in the old Second Division. Say what you will about Chelsea, but one way or another, they’ve rarely been boring.
Good news, then, for those Blues who secretly preferred the fiscal turbulence of the seventies and eighties. Reports suggest Abramovich has his beady eye on the door marked Выполните одно, an aperture he’s more than willing to sling his hook through of his own volition. According to Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss, Abramovich has put Chelsea up for sale, and is waiting for Wyss to cobble together a consortium willing to meet the valuation. Negotiations are apparently afoot, with Wyss fully aware that events, dear boy, may force Abramovich’s hand.
With the clock ticking apace, it’s a race to the checkouts, rather like the final round of Supermarket Sweep, only without the easy-going charm of Rylan to take the edge off the absurdity. Of course, given Wyss is worth a reported £4.3bn, and anyone else chipping in will also likely have a few quid spare, all of this may ultimately have no effect whatsoever on Chelsea, and the club will continue pootling along as usual, sweeping up every other trophy in its wake. But should Roman take the magic with him when he ups sticks, spiritually sending the club back to the seventies, younger Chelsea fans need not fret, instead looking upon it as an opportunity to experience the very different sort of fun their predecessors enjoyed. The football might not so good, granted, but the strips will be much $exier, and a few lucky punters will be able to grab a parking space right next to the pitch.
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QUOTE OF THE DAY
1 March: “Dowse is kind and generous with his time, serving the community in which he managed. The club and this community will miss his charisma and passion for Woking, as will the local charities he has done so much for. We wish him well in all of his future endeavours and he’ll always be welcome” – Woking chief suit John Katz on sacking manager Alan Dowson, with the team 16th in the National League.
2 March: “I don’t mind if they want to do it a different way and I have no problem with that. But what has hurt me more than anything, and I have no words to describe it, is that I got a 20-second phone call after four years of giving my life to the job. There was no face to face, no nothing. I just got that. I think it’s really bad. I didn’t see it coming” – Dowson may not be so keen to take the club up on their offer.
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FIVER LETTERS
“Over the course of the last week, my Alphabet-related email provider of choice has been ‘clipping’ my daily Fiver at an increasingly early point, such that yesterday’s missive was prematurely kneecapped somewhere between Everton’s relegation woes and the resignation of Markus Gisdol. Have the team in the Bay Area joined the campaign to Stop Football? Or is their AI so advanced now that they know how much happier I’ll be not reading The Fiver? I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords” – Tom Dowler.
“Instead of staying in and watching Spurs last night, I went to the Gate Theatre to watch Endgame, starring Frankie Boyle and Robert Sheehan. It was 90 minutes of watching jabbering wretches scrabbling around a post apocalyptic wasteland with no direction or purpose … given the game went to extra time, I feel I’m 30 minutes up on the deal” – Neil Gorman.
“Can I be one of 1,057 Led-Zeppelin-appreciating pedants to note that by publishing the news of the latest Cameroon manager twice (yesterday’s News, Bits and Bobs), you’re presumably indicating that The Song Remains The Same?” – Tim Clarke (and 1,056 others).
“Don’t worry, everyone gets a Song stuck in their heads sometimes” – Steve Denehan.
“Andy Korman’s two-fingered Roman (yesterday’s Fiver letters) was surely a brother of the other Roman who walked into a bar asking for a Martinus. ‘Surely you mean a Martini?’ queried the barman. ‘If I wanted two I would have asked for them,’ came the reply” – Gerry Rickard (and others).
“Andy’s joke reminded me that there are 10 types of people; those who understand the binary number system and those who don’t” – Nigel Walter.
Send your letters to the.boss@theguardian.com. And you can always tweet The Fiver via @guardian_sport. Today’s winner of our prizeless letter o’ the day is … Neil Gorman.
NEWS, BITS AND BOBS
Everton have suspended all sponsorship deals with Russian companies backed by Alisher Usmanov as they come under increasing pressure to cut ties with the sanctioned oligarch.
West Ham could be prevented from paying CSKA Moscow the next instalment of their transfer fee for Nikola Vlasic, owing to sanctions against Russia.
Daniel Farke has done one from Russian Premier League side Krasnodar without taking charge of a single match.
After an FA Cup exit at Middlesbrough so predictable that even The Fiver couldn’t bring itself to guess correctly, Spurs boss Antonio Conte is feeling the funk again. “We have too many up and downs,” he fumed. “We have to improve. I have to find the best solution; sometimes the coach has to use the stick.”
And Stewart Donald, who reportedly still has a hefty stake in Sunderland, wants back in at Eastleigh. “If I can organise myself in Sunderland in a way that worked for everybody, that frees me up so that I could go back to Eastleigh and finish the job I started,” he tooted. “I think that would be a wonderful way for me to get my football fix.”
STILL WANT MORE?
Jonathan Liew addresses the question of whether Jack Grealish is a £100m bauble and finds that … he’s not.
Chelsea and Sweden’s Zecira Musovic used to find goalkeeping boring, and wanted to play table tennis instead. But then she got good between the sticks. Suzanne Wrack has more.
Video analyst Donna Newberry talks to Paul Williams about working with Saudi Arabia’s first women’s national team.
This week’s Knowledge: has a player been older than both managers in a match? And do retired players still buy pubs?
And if it’s your thing … you can follow Big Website on Big Social FaceSpace. And INSTACHAT, TOO!
