Footie Central | Football Blog Blogging the football world
Chelsea have held exploratory talks with three groups about a potential takeover of the club, which could be valued at up to £2.5 billion.
They include US and Asian-based consortiums, as well as Jim Ratciffe, who is already a Chelsea season ticket holder, who is Britain’s richest man thanks to the petro-chemical group that he owns, and who has just taken over Sky Sports professional cycling team.
This is because current owner Roman Abramovich is looking to sell the club this summer, according to The Daily Mirror, having been denied a UK visa, one of the fall-outs of the continued deterioration in relationships between the British and the Russian governments following the Salisbury poisonings last year.
Abramovich, once a regular at Stamford Bridge, has not attended a single game all season. And the man who once spent a million a year on corporate hospitality boxes in the stadium has also given up his director’s box.
Andy is an exiled English football fan living in Cyprus. He loves all sports but football is his abiding passion, and he still has dreams every now and then about scoring the winning goal in a Wembley Cup Final, even though his playing days are long gone. He follows most major leagues, across Europe at least, and has a favoured team in each. When he’s not watching, listening, reading or downloading podcasts about football, he spend his time worrying about his beloved Arsenal.