Plains Of Almería

This piece is written in response to Chelsea Chairman Bruce Buck’s extremely interesting interview in The London Evening Standard last Tuesday,13^th November.

Chelsea Chairman Bruce Buck seems to be gaining a higher media profile recently, and it can only be a good move by the club for him and Chief Executive Ron Gourlay to do more press/broadcast interviews – it helps dispel the surely erroneous impression that Chelsea don’t care what the media think, or what they say. It may also be an attempt to continue to build bridges after the difficulties experienced before and at the Chelsea Pitch Owners EGM 13 months ago.

My reading of feedback on the recent Talksport interview the pair did was that Mr. Buck was seen to have come over well so it may well be that more interviews of this type with the chairman will take place at appropriate times.

I have never personally understood why there is pressure on Roman Abramovich from some quarters to talk to the media. He owns the club but employs a highly paid management team to run it. It is clear to me, given the money he has invested since 2003, that Mr. Abramovich has the best intentions of the club at heart, and doesn’t need to justify himself in public. Of course there is a ‘what happens post-RA’ issue, but the same applies in any major business to be honest.

What is a fan? I ask because of the comments by Mr. Buck regarding a new stadium. He says “Most fans — 99 per cent — accept we might have to leave but they don’t want to move to Wormwood Scrubs or to Croydon. If we proposed something specific that made sense, the Chelsea Pitch Owners would support us.” I certainly don’t think 99% (or anything approaching that figure) of match going fans accept that Chelsea might have to leave Stamford Bridge, certainly not unless it can be definitively proved that redevelopment is totally impractical. I’m not sure of the latest estimate of Chelsea’s ‘global support’ (80 million? 120 million? it’s hard to keep up), but even if the vast majority of overseas fans want us to move (which isn’t clear), it’s difficult to see how the opinion of those realistically never attending a game matters as much, on this particular issue, as those who do.

I agree that if the club made a concrete proposal regarding a new ground they would be likely to get a better response from some CPO shareholders than that at the October 2011 EGM, but surely it depends what that proposal is. He states that we “don’t have” Earls Court or Battersea, but then says “Battersea or Earls Court is likely to satisfy most fans”. It may of course be that the Standard have applied their often variable standard of editing in terms of what Mr. Buck said, as these two statements appear contradictory. Unless, of course, the club plan to get involved in one of those two schemes in some way, which I would have thought far from straightforward. He states there are 3-4 possible sites close to Stamford Bridge, ‘maximum’. It would be nice to know which are the other 1-2 in addition to Earls Court and Battersea. Looking at a map it is hard to identify them, though I guess that may depend on your definition of ‘close’.

The fact that ground-sharing with Fulham or QPR was even contemplated is clearly concerning to many fans, though at least the club realised the likely reaction if that avenue was pursued and closed it down as an option.

Most fans I know (regular and occasional match-attending types of all ages) would rather stay at Stamford Bridge and many will take some convincing that appropriate ground redevelopment cannot take place. Liverpool directors made great play recently of Anfield being their historic home and how keen they were to stay there. Stamford Bridge is Chelsea’s historic home (107 years and counting) and, without wishing to sound like a luddite, surely in an ideal world we would want to stay there too? Mr. Buck states that staying at Stamford Bridge “would be very expensive, wouldn’t be very nice to look at and is not likely to be financially viable” but, especially given that there appear to be no other realistic options on the table, surely it needs to be pursued beyond the purely conceptual stage. I know ‘Campaign 55’ (a group I am not involved with but I know are targeting redeveloping Stamford Bridge with a 55,000 capacity) would happily discuss their ideas on this option with the club.

Although I don’t agree with all Mr. Buck said about the stadium, and I think it raises other questions, I think the interview itself is a positive move, especially as it reaches such a wide audience of Londoners. The club profile has not always been positive in the media (and certainly not in The Standard, which I personally think is an embarrassment to London but is read by a lot of people) and this type of exercise can only improve it. As an aside, I don’t hold with the view that the press are out to ‘get’ Chelsea in some sort of pan-paper conspiracy. Surely they will follow any interesting story regarding a big club, as Arsenal found out recently and Liverpool and Manchester United have discovered in recent years.

A final point regarding CPO. At some point the club will come back to CPO shareholders with a revised proposal. I personally doubt it will be at this January’s AGM, but it presumably will happen eventually. Owning a CPO share gives you a say in the future of the club. Information on how to buy a CPO share can be found at http://www.chelseafc.com/chelsea-pitch-owners-article/article/2501940

In terms of other ‘hot’ issues covered in the interview, I think Mr. Buck talks a lot of sense. At the time of writing, the Clattenburg issue meanders on, with the police not taking any action and the FA still to reach a verdict, but he is spot on when he says the club would have been slaughtered if they’d ignored the issue and it had come out anyway. Pursuing the matter was not the easy option (and as a lawyer he would probably understand this better than most), and may possibly come back to haunt the club hierarchy, but if senior management genuinely believed the players it was surely the right one. To say it was a vindictive action by the club because of either the Terry case or Clattenburg’s performance in the match itself is surely absurd. Frankly this case is the last thing the club need at present, but they are doing what they think is right.

I also think he is right in what he says about the recent, and extremely fraught, John Terry case. The club were in a very difficult position once the court found him innocent but the FA, with a different but clearly related charge, found otherwise. Terry is clearly no angel and he himself has admitted what he said to Anton Ferdinand was wrong. As Mr. Buck says, though, the club do have a duty of care to their employees and as he also says, what Terry has been through would surely deter any sane individual from wanting to invite the same opprobrium. Anyone who seriously advocates the view that Terry ‘runs the club’ clearly does not understand the complexities in running a multi-million pound business.

Tim Rolls

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You can follow Tim on Twitter @tim_rolls.