An Open Letter to the Ownership

Some reflections on your first year

Contribution article by The Score!

With the news of the impending agreement with a betting company, who I shall not name, to sponsor Chelsea’s shirt in the 23/24 season - which is an absolute shambles - it feels a good time to write to you and really examine how you’re doing, for your benefit and the benefit of fans. 

I was a supporter of your ownership from the day you announced your bid. In the last year I’ve consistently defended you both on this site and on social media. I think I understand your vision for Chelsea, your ambition for the club and how you want to get there - and I still even now believe your intentions to be genuine. 

However, its clear as day to me and many others there is currently a huge disconnect between the ownership and the fans. This needs to be addressed, and to do so, we need to look at why.

I’ll never be someone who blindly defends any individual at the club. Whether its players, managers, directors, or board members. My loyalty and blind devotion is to the badge, to Chelsea FC, a great and historic institution founded in 1905. 

It’s never as simplistic as “all good”, “all bad”, there’s always nuance involved when objectively analysing something like this. So I’m going to break things down into what I believe you’ve done right (and there’s a fair bit you’ve done right), and where you’ve messed up, and then explain how I think this gets resolved. 

Things you got right: 

• Willingness to invest in the squad. The spend of £600m purely by its size demonstrates clearly the ambition of the ownership. The summer window was messy, but given the circumstances of the timing of the takeover, and Michael Edwards unavailability, there were extenuating circumstances. The January window was overall a positive one for the club, with some smart signings and a top class signing in Enzo Fernandez. 

• Showing a desire to change the toxic culture and end hire and fire culture - the execution of this has been problematic (we’ll get to that), but you have recognised the need for a cultural shift at the club from a short-term, stop-start approach, to one of stability and long termism. 

• Investing in the women's team - this was a promise you made and have absolutely kept to, the women's team is going from strength to strength and you continue to invest in it.

• Promoting Neil Bath and having him more involved - a smart and almost self explanatory move. 

• Stadium rebuild - you’ve fully consulted with the CPO and fans groups around this complex issue and seem to be coming to some solid conclusions and a positive way forward on an issue which has been clouding the club for a while. The feedback has been very positive on this matter, so keep this up, it's good for the club.

• Overhauling the scouting and recruitment structure. There’s no question the quality of our scouting and data analysis has improved. The targets we get linked to now are generally good players, who suit what we want to achieve. This a HUGE improvement on the previous ownership and one of your biggest achievements, full credit to you there. Yes, we still need a football number one, but the structure beneath him is there. 

• Contract renewals - Reece James, Armando Broja, Trevoh Chalobah, Thiago Silva and Ben Chilwell all signed new deals this year, and you refused to sell Broja and Levi Colwill. Very positive for the club and our future, fantastic job. 

• Chelsea Foundation - the foundation has clearly continued its great work and you’ve continued to support and expand this. Great work.

• The Fan Board - we were one of the first clubs to do this, and it's hugely important for the football club going forward. The fans deserve full input on how the club is run, this is a positive step from you, thank you. 

• Attempts at fan engagement - meeting various fans groups, engaging personally with several fans, myself included. This didn’t happen in the same way under the previous ownership and is positive, keep it up, do it more. 

• The apology/statement - it was absolutely needed to communicate with the fans after the season the men's team experienced. I and others were really grateful, so thank you.

• Building infrastructure - behind the scenes a new club infrastructure which will have long term benefits is taking place. This was needed and is positive.

• Appointing Daniel Finklestein and Barbara Charone to the board - they are two true Chelsea fans, two great people, who love the club like we do, both doing great work for the club. If it were up to me, I’d not only keep them, but if possible, give them more responsibility. They’re doing great. Myself and most of the fanbase like and respect them. Hands down, two of your best appointments.

• Mauricio Pochettino - absolutely the best managerial appointment we could make, giving him authority and stepping back also to allow him to work, and taking your time and going through a thorough recruitment process to find him. Great work all round.  

• Learning from mistakes - some of the mistakes listed below, you’ve already corrected and there’s evidence you’ve learned from them. That’s a big positive.

So that’s the positives, here’s the constructive, justified criticism - which I believe is shared by many fans: 

• Hiring Graham Potter. This looked good at the time, and given his reputation at the time was even understandable, but its quite clear not enough diligence was done beforehand, it was rushed and it was catastrophic for the club, causing damage well beyond on the pitch. That said, I understand why this decision was taken at the time, and you’ve acknowledged this and taken action to rectify it.

• The summer window - there were clear mitigating circumstances which I spoke about above, but nevertheless, it wasn’t a success overall. Again, trying to do too much, too quickly. Just a rookie error, and again, it's very clear you’ve learned from it.

• Mason Mount’s contract. This is, with huge respect, a bit of a mess. To offer a contract, then have it withdrawn and a one year deal offered, as has been reported by reliable journalists, and on the face of it potentially do damage the players relationship to the club is unacceptable, and although you deserve a lot of praise for the fact you’ve acknowledged this now, it is likely too late and we’ll lose him. 

• Lack of player sales - in all the busyness of signing new players, we didn’t get enough players out the door, creating this large squad and a need to sell a lot of players quickly, wasn’t ideal. Again, it's being rectified now which is positive.

• Not appointing a football number one - granted your first choice (and a great first choice he was) was not available last year, the current structure is creating a lack of solid hierarchy, lack of accountability, and poor communication, people doing jobs they aren’t qualified for. This must be resolved quickly or the club will suffer. 

• Failing to build trust with the fans - the message to fans was positive, but to me it’s only a start, There needs to be better, more authentic communication with the fans. Trust has sadly been lost by much of the fanbase (not by myself, yet), and you need to do something to begin building that back up. It will take time and action, but it can be done.

• Sponsorship - this is an area I expected you to excel but again, with huge respect the recent decision is awful, tone deaf and absolutely the wrong one. Getting a betting company to sponsor our shirts is a disgrace, and does damage to the name and reputation of the club, as well as undermining the work of the Chelsea Foundation. It’s probably the worst decision you’ve made. Gambling is an addiction which destroys lives, and in my view, and the view of many fans, Chelsea FC should not be actively promoting it on our shirts. It’s unacceptable, and from what I’ve seen, barely any fans will support this, even for one year. I know you are capable of doing better, and in my view, should reverse this decision immediately.

As a supporter of yours, I still feel very positive about the future of the club under your ownership, but I do feel a little let down by this last development. 

As outlined above, there’s been a lot of positives and steps forward, for which you deserve a lot of credit, and do get that from me, but the negatives are bigger, messy and more public, and the actual good work many of us know you’ve done has been pretty much forgotten from a PR perspective. 

The optics of your ownership, purely from a PR perspective, are very poor right now, whatever the truth is (and as I’ve made clear, there’s lots of positives for which you deserve a lot of credit). 

Bottom line, you don’t just need to do better, you need to be SEEN to do better.

I absolutely expected some mistakes in year one. I don’t blame you for most of the mistakes, I actually understand it, you’re new to football, new to the Premier League, it's totally understandable mistakes would be made. As long as you learn from them, and it looks like you are in many areas, it's no problem. You’ve always had leeway from me on that front. 

But the recent sponsorship decision is probably one too many for myself and many fans.

Purely from a PR perspective, I’d gently advise you to keep quiet about the previous ownership (who absolutely did have their major flaws, as you rightly suggested), until you’ve achieved some major success on the pitch, because the optics of it look awful right now and don’t help you.

I love this club, and it hurts a lot seeing things as they are right now. Chelsea need a big lift, a big positive, and things to go right on and off the pitch.

I still believe you’re capable of this, I still support your ownership, I’ll still defend the good things you’ve done and praise you for them. I’m fully on board with your vision, and have got your back.

But at the same time, there’s also a lot you need to do better, because at least some of the respectful criticism you’re getting right now is absolutely deserved. 

My best wishes to you, especially in all you do for Chelsea, and I hope in 12 months, things are a lot brighter. 

Yours faithfully,

The Score