Media Stories, Rumours and Gossip

[chara]

18 minutes ago, east lower said:

Should have done it afterwards, then - in the spirit of complete transparency 🤣

Webb could do with one of them thar' time machine gizmo's to correct his own world cup faux-pas. Took the Yankee dollar, now back to take some more of ours. Might be better than the previous incumbent, but needs to find better officials with a proper non-biased backbone.

Never mind VAR, do something about the biggest blight on the modern game - Time Wasting. They (the referees') already have the tools to deal with it and they bottle it. After the initial manager/media outrage at a few ending up being sent-off for it, the coaches will ensure that their players comply - otherwise they'll lose games. It's simple, but takes some leadership and backbone to put things into place. Tell the clubs pre-season it's happening and then it's up to them.

 

Time wasting...agree up to a point....getting a bit too blatant and "lazy"....at any halfway d decent level of the game it is not difficult to "waste time" without making a show of it.......

[east lower]

50 minutes ago, chara said:

Time wasting...agree up to a point....getting a bit too blatant and "lazy"....at any halfway d decent level of the game it is not difficult to "waste time" without making a show of it.......

I agree there are some ‘cute/clever’ ways to waste time, however where there is a will to do something about it, there’s a way. It’s got to the point where even a dramatic rule change such as physios on the pitch during live play, might be needed.

Forgive me for saying this, but goalkeepers doing it are easy to deal with. Use the existing rule when the ball is in their hands and give them 10 seconds when the ball is given to them for a goal kick to get the ball back in play. 

[chara]

4 minutes ago, east lower said:

I agree there are some ‘cute/clever’ ways to waste time, however where there is a will to do something about it, there’s a way. It’s got to the point where even a dramatic rule change such as physios on the pitch during live play, might be needed.

Forgive me for saying this, but goalkeepers doing it are easy to deal with. Use the existing rule when the ball is in their hands and give them 10 seconds when the ball is given to them for a goal kick to get the ball back in play. 

No..absolutely right....even back in my day keepers had it "easy" and timewasting was a doddle..... a great wind up against opposition who were desperate to get on with chasing a game and the innocent expression helped even more with the wind up!

"Oh sorry ref it's the other side of the goal?"..misplaced goal kick...move the ball back to the right spot.."Sorry ref".."Sorry ref..thought it was a goal kick (not a corner or the other way round.)..easy peasy and I haven't even given it any thought !

But you are right about the issue.

 

 

[east lower]

10 minutes ago, chara said:

No..absolutely right....even back in my day keepers had it "easy" and timewasting was a doddle..... a great wind up against opposition who were desperate to get on with chasing a game and the innocent expression helped even more with the wind up!

"Oh sorry ref it's the other side of the goal?"..misplaced goal kick...move the ball back to the right spot.."Sorry ref".."Sorry ref..thought it was a goal kick (not a corner or the other way round.)..easy peasy and I haven't even given it any thought !

But you are right about the issue.

 

 

Another goalkeepers trick was to put the ball outside the 6 yard box for the goal-kick. Us stupid fans would create and the Lino would wave his flag, ref would then insist on the keeper placing the ball inside the 6 yard box. 

Another 20-30 seconds gone. 
 

Stopping goalkeepers taking free-kicks outside the box, would stop another trick. Free-kicks taken within a certain number of seconds and free-kicks where a wall is required get a bit longer, then the ref starts play and whether the defence is ready or not, take the kick or lose it. Encroaching gets a straight yellow.

[xceleryx]

6 hours ago, east lower said:

I agree there are some ‘cute/clever’ ways to waste time, however where there is a will to do something about it, there’s a way. It’s got to the point where even a dramatic rule change such as physios on the pitch during live play, might be needed.

Forgive me for saying this, but goalkeepers doing it are easy to deal with. Use the existing rule when the ball is in their hands and give them 10 seconds when the ball is given to them for a goal kick to get the ball back in play. 

Just use the WC time keeping method and it removes all time wasting. 

[xceleryx]

 

[east lower]

2 hours ago, xceleryx said:

Clearly RL had some ‘stuff’ going on, doesn’t excuse some of his behaviours whilst with us though.

One other thing I took from the interview was that Micah Richards is definitely the biggest box ticker of a pundit there is. 
His mantra must be, make the most noise it’s got me this far. Talentless

Edited May 17, 2023 by east lower

[ROTG]

1 hour ago, east lower said:

Clearly RL had some ‘stuff’ going on, doesn’t excuse some of his behaviours whilst with us though.

One other thing I took from the interview was that Micah Richards is definitely the biggest box ticker of a pundit there is. 
His mantra must be, make the most noise it’s got me this far. Talentless

Make one laugh, Charragher & Co give it large on sky sports from the comfort of the studio, however presenting on the pitch and interviewing players they go to jelly. Why didi't the ask Lukaku, his thoughts on having to return to Chelsea in the summer

[Sciatika]

The real mystery here is why the BBC decided to ask Steven Gerrard what he thought about the possible final matchups.

[Mark Kelly]

Just now, Sciatika said:

The real mystery here is why the BBC decided to ask Steven Gerrard what he thought about the possible final matchups.

He's one of the greatest football minds of the last century.

Sorry , I mis read that , it should have been because he played for Liverpool.

[Bob Singleton]

From The Athletic (paywalled for many)

 

Richard Branson’s billions and a name change – Matthew Harding’s eye-catching Chelsea blueprint

Simon Johnson

13–17 minutes

---

Picture this scenario at Chelsea: Richard Branson is the club’s owner watching on from the directors’ box, the branding of his company, Virgin, plastered across the shirt and all around Stamford Bridge. Oh, and there is a slight tweak to the club name.

Welcome to London Chelsea.

It sounds far-fetched, a figment of someone’s wild imagination. And yet it can be revealed that this ambitious project, hatched long before Roman Abramovich or the Todd Boehly-Clearlake consortium bought the club, was once genuinely close to being realised.

The Athletic has been granted exclusive first access to The Blueprint: How Chelsea FC Changed Football, a history of the modern-day club. The latest episodes focus on Matthew Harding and include an interview with Mark Killick, a close friend of the former Chelsea vice-chairman. Such was the strength of the bond between the pair that Killick acted as executor of Harding’s will following his death in a helicopter crash in October 1996.

Harding was infamously involved in a battle for control of Chelsea with former chairman Ken Bates in the mid-1990s. A wealthy businessman and huge Chelsea fan, it was his loan which funded the building of a new North Stand that was opened in 1994. It was renamed the Matthew Harding stand following his passing as a tribute.

Yet helping to rebuild Chelsea’s home since 1905 was just the start of Harding’s ambitions.

But for the tragic helicopter accident, which occurred on a flight home after he had watched Chelsea lose a League Cup tie at Bolton, his connection with Branson could have led to the pair working in tandem to turn Chelsea, a club who had not won the title since 1955, into a renowned force known the world over — long before Abramovich’s money achieved that aim.

Had the Branson-Harding partnership prospered, then there might never have been an Abramovich buy-out in 2003 and, perhaps, no Boehly-Clearlake takeover 19 years later. Chelsea’s modern history would have looked very different.

Killick’s remarkable revelations have been supported by multiple sources with knowledge of the situation, figures who have asked to remain anonymous to protect relationships.

Theirs is quite the tale of what might have been.

---

It is probably worth briefly recapping Harding’s story.

He was a multi-millionaire working for reinsurance firm Benfield Group and a season ticket holder at Stamford Bridge. In 1993, he responded to an appeal from Bates for more investors at the club and, upon issuing a £5million ($6.25m) loan to pay for the North Stand development, became a Chelsea director.

Harding would go on to provide funds to sign players and bought the freehold at Stamford Bridge for £16.5million. (The freehold was sold by the estate after his death for around £10million when Chelsea Pitch Owners Organisation was formed in 1997.) He enjoyed a good rapport with then coach Glenn Hoddle. The pair spoke about ambitious potential signings such as Matthew Le Tissier, an England international who was starring for Southampton at the time, in a bid to establish Chelsea as serious contenders to win the Premier League.

In May 1995, a board meeting held between Bates, Harding, Hoddle and managing director Colin Hutchinson discussed their aims to sign top players. They missed out on Paul Gascoigne and Dennis Bergkamp to Glasgow Rangers and Arsenal respectively. Significantly, they did succeed in adding former European Footballer of the Year Ruud Gullit, as well as Manchester United striker Mark Hughes, to the squad.

Yet within six months Harding had been banned from the directors’ box by Bates, with the pair at odds over their respective visions of how to take Chelsea forward.

It was to this backdrop that Harding’s affinity with Branson grew.

“Matthew was the visionary,” Killick explains. “He was clever in what he wanted to do, and he certainly was able to charm people into sharing the same vision. I think he would have attracted investment, there is no doubt about that.

“You know, at one time he was working on sort of sponsorship investment from Virgin. It was at a time where obviously Richard (Branson) was very well established as a businessman. People were starting to become aware of Matthew and a lot of that was via his involvement in Chelsea. Richard was going to fly a balloon around the world (Branson made more than one attempt during the 1990s — all unsuccessful) and was looking for a sponsor for the event.

“And also, he wanted someone to be the spokesman of the event as well. So, Richard and Matthew hooked up and Matthew agreed to be the person in the studio that would actually give updates on where Richard was in the world when he was going on his balloon trip.

“There was a lot more than that going on because there was a discussion about some advertising at Stamford Bridge as well. At the time it was an idea whereby we had the West Stand and it had a huge roof. Matthew’s idea was that the roof could be used for advertising because it was on the flight path to Heathrow. So, he thought it was a valuable advertising site.

“I know that Virgin were interested in it as an advertising site. I think eventually, because obviously the idea was then discussed at Chelsea, other parties were then brought in and British Airways were the ones that eventually took out that advertising space on top of the West Stand. But I think it was just the start. I really do.

“Matthew and Richard would meet up and, sort of, just cultivate their relationship going forward. It was relatively early days, but I know they always enjoyed one another’s company.”

Killick suggests Harding saw Branson as a potential owner of Chelsea — someone who could provide the capital while he acted as the ownership’s figurehead — the public face for the club just like Bates had been.

Sources, who have asked to remain anonymous to protect relationships, say that Branson’s interest was genuine, so much so he was prepared to change Virgin’s renowned red branding to blue to match the colour of Chelsea’s strip.

“I think there could have been involvement,” Killick adds. “Matthew wanted to still be primarily involved. I think he enjoyed the role that he had. We had Ken as chairman and Matthew obviously became vice-chairman, so there was no position for someone else within the club at that sort of board level as such. But maybe going forward, who knows where the investment might have come in.”

The current set-up at Chelsea — albeit there are multiple co-owners — sees Boehly as the Harding figure and main face of the hierarchy, but it is Clearlake who has the biggest stake. Branson would have played their role back in the mid-1990s.

Pressed on whether Harding and Branson would have gone on to operate in a similar way, Killick replies: “Possibly. Possibly. I think they were fond of one another and I could have only seen it becoming a relationship that was rich going forward.

“I think Matthew just wanted Chelsea to have the investment that it needed to break that monopoly at the top of our premier division at the time. And equally, you know, break that monopoly that the European clubs had on the European (Cup) competition.

“With Richard, he had an interest in what Matthew was doing, so I think he probably thought that there was some way in which he could push his own brand. So, if there was a way in which he could push his brand, Virgin, this puts him in a different category to Matthew. It would have been a very different reason for coming on board with some kind of ownership.

“Matthew came on board because of his love for Chelsea and no real reason apart from that.”

Harding was full of ideas on how to make Chelsea a much bigger name not just domestically but globally, too. With England’s capital having so many clubs — there were 13 London teams, like now, playing in the top four professional divisions between 1993 and 1996 — he felt Chelsea were at a disadvantage compared to other sporting teams.

As someone accustomed to travelling the world and seeing clubs synonymous with the cities in which they played — like the New York Giants (NFL), Boston Red Sox (baseball), or English football clubs like Manchester United and Liverpool — he considered ways in which Chelsea’s name could be tinkered in order to increase their global brand appeal.

“There was some kind of vision with Matthew to try and make Chelsea synonymous with London itself,” Killick explains. “It would be London’s team. We see other major cities such as Manchester having two teams with the name Manchester in it (Manchester United and Manchester City); Newcastle, as a city, having Newcastle United as a team; Leeds having Leeds United as their team. There is no London side per se.

“Whether that would have come to any sort of fruition in a way where the name could have been shared in some way, I do not know. But I know that it was definitely putting Chelsea forward as London’s premier team, which could have had some commercial legs abroad as well.”

Obviously there was an awareness that changing the name from Chelsea to something along the lines of ‘London Chelsea’ would have been met with fierce resistance from the fans, and Killick doubts whether Harding would have gone through with the plan.

“I knew it was in his mind and I feel that it would have been difficult for him to actually push that name change,” he says. “There had to be another way of doing it (growing Chelsea) without the name change. But then he was the visionary who probably would have found the other way. It is just that none of us had thought about it.

“I am sure we would have been synonymous with being the capital city’s club and still kept the name that we have loved forever, I think.”

One source, who asked to remain anonymous to protect relationships, says that one of Harding’s alternative ideas was to seek a sponsorship with the beer London Pride, which has been manufactured at the Griffin Brewery in Chiswick, London since 1959.

Harding’s death did not put an end to the possibility of Branson’s involvement in Chelsea.

The club was listed on the stock exchange and Harding owned around 23 per cent of the shares. Killick was in charge of managing his estate after the 42-year-old’s death in 1996 and was under obligation to sell them so that the funds would go to the listed beneficiaries in the will.

Killick held talks with Branson about purchasing the stake.

“You know there are only certain people that will be able to sort of afford those shares,” he says. “Richard was someone that we did speak to and he was interested to a point. I think the sticking point at the time was the share price.

“The share price was quite buoyant then. It was sort of up, it was down, and we had an obligation to get the best price that we possibly could. It would have needed an investor with some money to be able to purchase them as a whole because they were valuable as a whole. We could not start splitting them up into little bits and pieces because they would lose their value.

“We had a meeting with Richard and that took place at his house, and we discussed the idea of it. After that initial meeting, I think it was left very much with Richard himself, with his advisors, and also with my advisors as well. So that was left for more due diligence and then I had a final phone call with Richard where we did just speak about an informed price.

“And I remember him saying, ‘No, I think that is a little bit too much for me’. And that was end of the conversation.

“I do not think Richard would have wanted to have been that sort of figurehead chairman, like Ken was, and like Matthew possibly could have been. He never said that he wanted to be that figurehead chairman to me. I think, because Richard has so many other interests elsewhere and he is not a football man… you never heard him speak about football. You never heard him talk about a favourite team. So, whether he would have wanted that full scale ownership, I cannot speak for him either.”

Virgin were Crystal Palace’s shirt sponsors from 1988-1991, so Branson did have a relationship with football despite the Chelsea adventure never quite coming to fruition. Taking Harding’s stake was one thing, but working with Bates or trying to negotiate a takeover with him would have been quite another.

The Athletic approached Branson for comment on all of Killick’s recollections, none of which were denied.

A spokesperson said: “Richard spent time with Matthew, particularly in the lead-up to his ballooning adventures. Matthew achieved a lot in his life and left an incredible legacy. It was a tragedy when Matthew died and a great loss to his family, friends, and the business and football community.”

In the end Harding’s shares were sold as part of Abramovich’s successful bid to buy the club 20 years ago. He bought them at 35 pence per share, which Killick recalls was a lower price than that quoted to Branson years earlier.

[Mark Kelly]

@Bob Singleton Thanks for posting that it was a real treat to read.

[Ham]

 

 

[Bob Singleton]

☝️  Strasbourg was one of the clubs mentioned quite early on when the multi-club ownership was first mooted.

[Bones]

Respect for Man City for playing so well.

I opened up news this morning and all the media are so high praise of them. Which is nice.

But I never felt the same when we beat Madrid or Barca or whatever in our CL run-ups or even wins. Just feels a bit unfair.

Maybe it's just us being first through the brick wall and we got bloodiest with this financial doping concept and other clubs are now getting away with it reputation wise.

[Mark Kelly]

37 minutes ago, Bones said:

Respect for Man City for playing so well.

I opened up news this morning and all the media are so high praise of them. Which is nice.

But I never felt the same when we beat Madrid or Barca or whatever in our CL run-ups or even wins. Just feels a bit unfair.

Maybe it's just us being first through the brick wall and we got bloodiest with this financial doping concept and other clubs are now getting away with it reputation wise.

BT in the clips I've seen were orgasmic whenever City scored , I cancelled my BT contract because it honestly felt whenever we played anyone on their channel the commentators were willing the other side to win . 

[ROTG]

30 minutes ago, Mark Kelly said:

BT in the clips I've seen were orgasmic whenever City scored , I cancelled my BT contract because it honestly felt whenever we played anyone on their channel the commentators were willing the other side to win . 

I watched the full game and Chitty were good and Madrid were poor and looked an old team. 
Hopefully they will now win it allowing Pep to ride off into the sunset after another season. 
 

One can guess poor old Carlo will pay the price and be gone in the next couple of days. Neglesmann, Alonso, even Poch as candidates to him. 

[Mark Kelly]

13 minutes ago, ROTG said:

I watched the full game and Chitty were good and Madrid were poor and looked an old team. 
Hopefully they will now win it allowing Pep to ride off into the sunset after another season. 
 

One can guess poor old Carlo will pay the price and be gone in the next couple of days. Neglesmann, Alonso, even Poch as candidates to him. 

can you imagine if Poch got the job ...

[Chelsea_Matt]

29 minutes ago, Mark Kelly said:

can you imagine if Poch got the job ...

I hate to say it but….

[Miguelito07]

9 minutes ago, Chelsea_Matt said:

I hate to say it but….

I am starting to think he is holding out for the Madrid job

[ROTG]

1 hour ago, Mark Kelly said:

can you imagine if Poch got the job ...

Mr  Vivell, Winstanley and Stewart receiving their P45’s 😳

[My Blood Is Blue]

If Poch goes to Madrid, then we can order us some 'Welcome home Carlo!' banners.

[Mark Kelly]

16 minutes ago, ROTG said:

Mr  Vivell, Winstanley and Stewart receiving their P45’s 😳

Sharpo I imagine.

[Ham]

The deal is said to be complete. Confirmed by the most reliable sources. 

CFC are responsible for when they choose to announce it. 

[JaneB]

John Terry gifts his twins Georgie and Summer matching Mercedes for their 17th birthday | Daily Mail Online

I mean, I love JT as much as any other Chelsea supporter, who doesn't?  And it can't have been easy growing up as his kids.

But REALLY????  I find this story quite unpalatable for a number of reasons. 

Vulgar extravagance 😞