• March 19, 2022
• Olaoluwa Nwobodo

A document has been released by Simon Phillips showing the Martin Broughton-led consortium’s plan for Chelsea should the mega-club be sold to him. A lot of it mentions things the fans expect to see. In fact, these are things any club’s fans would expect from any owner, especially an owner of a club of Chelsea’s magnitude. The promise to invest in players and facilities should go without saying, as it is impossible to run a club like Chelsea without investing in players and facilities.

This is, however, reassuring as the fans have something to hold them to should his consortium become Chelsea owners. Of course, investing in players also includes keeping the club’s best players, and not just buying new ones. Chelsea has a number of players in the last months of their contract that are in need of renewing and his consortium should probably start with that.

Another promise made by the consortium is that they’d try to get Chelsea “back to normal” as soon as possible. This makes sense as some things have been disrupted in the wake of the sanctions imposed on Roman Abramovich. Chelsea’s accounts were also frozen as well as their store, closed down. This was done in an attempt to stop Abramovich from getting any more financial gains from the club. That also goes without saying and Broughton’s consortium doesn’t get brownie points for this.

The third agenda in this document says that the consortium will make sure all the proceeds from the sale of the club go to the victims of war in Ukraine. This makes sense as that was the original intention of the former owner, Abramovich. This indicates a willingness of the new owners to do things the right way, which would be ensuring continuity in how things were done in the past. There’s a case to be made that this point is one of the most important, as all these are happening in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine by Russian president Vladimir Putin, so it’s imperative that the money promised by Abramovich gets to the intended beneficiaries.

The part about this agenda that should make anyone hesitant is the fact that they want the fans to be at the heart of decision making. This, to be fair, is open to interpretation. It could be that the new owners want to make every decision in the best interests of the fans, in which case, that’s noble, even though it has its cons.

The other interpretation is that the new owners want to actively involve fans in decision-making. This would be a recipe for disaster. Why? Fans have a role in every club, but that role is not in decision-making at the business level. Fans do not nearly have the foresight to make the right business decisions, only trained business professionals can make those. There are several instances where fans have aggressively campaigned against and protested decisions made by the board. These decisions, despite the majority of fans being against them, turned out to be the right ones.

It’s OK to try to involve fans in certain aspects of decision-making at the boardroom level. The problem is that there are only very few things that fans should be involved in at that level. Very few. An example of this is the sacking of former Chelsea manager Frank Lampard. Many fans disagreed with the decision for many reasons. It was easy to see why he was sacked, but many fans could not bring themselves to look at it objectively. Now imagine if the fans were involved with that decision…exactly. Fans want the board to keep certain players, despite these players having no desire to stay whatsoever. These are only a few examples. Also, see every manager sacking and young player sale ever

Could it be player selection? Imagine if fans were involved in deciding whether a manager should be forced to start a certain player. It would be catastrophic. Fans are often short-sighted and highly emotional, two things that have no place in the boardroom. Fans want what they want, and they want it instantly.

Many fans berated the Chelsea board for not paying “what it took” to bring Borussia Dortmund’s Erling Haaland to Stamford Bridge. These fans do not consider that there are things more important than satisfying their desire to see a certain player at Stamford Bridge. The financial health of the club always has to be considered. If fans were prioritized in the pursuit of Haaland, the club would have paid outrageous fees to acquire the services of the Norwegian youngster and had he flopped, the fans would still have complained, and who knows, maybe blame the board as well.

It’s difficult to see a decision at the board level that would require involving fans without catastrophic consequences. The fans are there to be the 12^th man for the team, especially on key occasions. West Ham took on Europa League specialists Sevilla in front of a home crowd packed to a capacity of 60,000. This support played a big role in pushing the team on and coming back from behind to knock Sevilla out on aggregate. Fans have no role to play in making business decisions, and if this is how the Broughton-led consortium wants to run things, then they may want to have a rethink if they want to have a successful tenure.

The last point looks like one that was put there to pander to the media and fans. It mentions trying to make sure the club is not dependent on any one individual. This is false in some parts and dishonest in others. Chelsea has not been dependent on Roman Abramovich for at least the past five years now. Even when they were, Chelsea is not currently where they are because they have a single influential individual as an owner. Chelsea is in the situation they are now because the United Kingdom Government thought it convenient to suddenly insinuate Abramovich’s source of wealth and then vilify him. The UK Government and several pundits thought it ideal to play the morality game and cast aspersions on Chelsea fans.