Roman holiday over

Chelsea Football Club’s affair with Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich began in 2003 when he bought a controlling interest in the club. After years of mid-table finishes, the club had finished near the top for seven seasons, including three top-four results.

With the advent of Mr Romanovich and his largesse, Chelsea quickly climbed to the top, replacing Arsenal as the main rival for Alex Ferguson’s rampant Manchester United. In 2003-04, Chelsea finished second and won the title the next year. Since then, it has won the title four times, but has now slipped down the pecking order making way for Liverpool, managed by Jürgen Klopp, and Manchester City, funded by Abu Dhabi money and managed by Pep Guardiola.

After 19 fat years, however, the lean years may be upon the club, given that its owner has been sanctioned over Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine. As things stand, Chelsea is in a kind of limbo, until it is sold. The process is underway but has not concluded as expeditiously as Chelsea fans must have hoped it would.

Until the sale happens, and there does not seem to be any dearth of bidders from around the world, the club cannot sell new tickets to its stands or merchandise, restrictions are in place on expenditures incurred on travelling to away games and under other heads, but under a special licence, it can continue to play and pay salaries to players and other staff.

Chelsea’s off-field difficulties do not seem to have adversely affected its on-field performance, for which much credit is due to the club’s manager, Thomas Tuchel; the players, too, must be complimented for not allowing the ambient noise to distract them.
 

They’ve beaten Norwich 3-1 away in the Premier League, Lille 2-1 away in the Champions League, Middlesbrough (who beat Manchester United in the previous round) 2-0 away in the FA Cup, and, which gets us into a totally different area of investigation, Newcastle United 1-0 at home. That’s four wins on the bounce.

Now, Newcastle United has also changed hands. It was sold in October 2021 to a conglomerate, with the Public Investment Fund (PIF), a Saudi Arabian entity, providing 80 per cent of the funds. In fact, a deal between then owner Mike Ashley and the conglomerate had fallen through because of the PIF’s links to the Saudi state through the country’s de facto ruler Mohammed bin Salman in April 2020; the new owners had failed an owners’ and directors’ test imposed by the Premiership management.

Yet, here we are. Chelsea is in limbo because Russia has invaded Ukraine, while Newcastle has become the richest club in the premiership, with a war chest of £250 billion, despite the fact that Saudi Arabia has been bombing Yemen to smithereens with weaponry bought from the US and UK for seven years this March, creating a humanitarian crisis of catastrophic proportions.

As an ally, the United Arab Emirates has been actively complicit in the carnage, but Manchester City’s owners, the ruling family of the country’s most salient emirate, Abu Dhabi, have not even been slapped on the wrist. The Saudis and City’s owners continue to pass the fitness test and it now sits atop the Premier League table, fending off a serious challenge from Liverpool. Obviously, the Premier League management and the Football Association possess in abundance a keen sense of irony.

Unlike Chelsea, which has been prospering in adversity, Newcastle is yet to get its act together, though it seems to be getting there. The summer transfer window will tell us whether the new owners are serious about their club barnstorming its way into the elite. As of now, however, results have been mixed, though some intent has been shown in hiring Eddie Howe, former boss at Bournemouth, to the manager’s job.

Since October, Newcastle has lost 10 games in the Premier League, drawn seven and won six. At present, it is nine points clear off the relegation zone in 14th place, though it has lost its last two matches, one to a stuttering Everton side. In early January, Newcastle was dumped out of the FA Cup by Cambridge United, a third-tier League One side, at that time notionally 41 places behind, at St James’s Park, its home ground.

Be that as it may, the Chelsea predicament shines a light on the double standards, followed by football establishments in the West, following the policies of their governments. No transparent reason has been shown about how the Saudis suddenly became “fit and proper” owners of an English football club without having changed anything in the space of roughly a year and a half.

All this is not to say Mr Abramovich should not have been sanctioned or booted out of English football. The questions are about how the Premiership found him fit and proper in the first place.