Clearlake are ripping the soul out of Chelsea, and fans want it back!

This is our club, not Clearlake's

We’ve been talking a lot about the future of Chelsea and how the club has been run recently. But outside the practicalities, one common developing theme is how Chelsea have lost their soul, their heart.

I’ve seen a lot of comments like that from Chelsea fan, but it was a comment from an Arsenal legend, Martin Keown, which hit me like an arrow through the heart.

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“They (Chelsea ownership) have taken anybody out that was a winner, they have ripped the soul out of that club.”

Martin Keown

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I had to pause for a moment when I read it. I still do. Because it hit right at the heart of all the problems at Chelsea now.

And when an Arsenal legend, who only has an external view of the club, and is a direct rival, is saying this, and almost feeling sorry for real Chelsea fans, you know it's the truth.

Way too many people I respect who are long time fans are saying the same too.

“This isn’t Chelsea anymore”

“The club I love is gone”

“Chelsea is gone”

“The winning culture has disappeared”

“Never felt so disconnected from the club I love”

“We’ve lost our soul”

And the now infamous Didier Drogba quote:

The owners and directors can keep arrogantly trying to dismiss these voices as either reactionary or ridiculous.

The owners should know that when 99% of fans, former players and even ex-players from rivals are saying the same or similar, then they have to listen whether they like it or not.

I get that Chelsea FC needs to be sustainable and profitable as a football club. That’s important. But you don’t do that by ripping out anything and anyone who embodied what Chelsea is all about, and ignoring fans when they’re this concerned about what's happening at the club.

A good owner knows, honours and respects all the history and traditions of the club, the club culture, the heart of the club, and the fans. So does a good head coach and good sporting director.

The fans are the lifeblood of the club. We feel it deeply. Its part of our DNA, it impacts our physical and mental health sometimes even.

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“You play a football match without fans, you’ve got nothing.”

- Jock Stein

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Clearlake and Behdad Eghbali in particular appear on the surface to approach football and Chelsea in the way they look at balance sheets or sheets of data.

Cold, hard numbers. No heart, no soul, no feeling, nothing intuitive or passionate. No sense of community, history, or tradition.

And literally everyone can see it now. They can feel it. They can sense it. Whether its true or not, perception is everything, and this perception has now firmly embedded it in minds of almost the entire fanbase.

The club has lost all personality, and its winning culture seems dead on arrival.

Chelsea is the club of Peter Osgood, Chopper Harris, Peter Bonetti, Kerry Dixon, Dennis Wise, Gianluca Vialli, Gianfranco Zola, John Terry, Frank Lampard, Didier Drogba, Petr Cech, Eden Hazard, and recently, Thiago Silva. All legends, great players, many of them great leaders, who felt the club, embodied the club.

Chelsea is the club who triumphs when everything and everyone is against us, the club people hate because they win so often, who defy football trends and find ways to win trophies, fighters, battlers, with passion and heart, power and pace, and that bit of magic and flair. Against all odds.

Chelsea is, despite appearances at times, a club that’s more a family, a community - players, coach, fans, everyone together against the world.

Chelsea also has a strong history going back to the 1960s of producing our own home grown players. Jimmy Greaves, Ron Harris, Peter Bonetti, Alan Hudson, Peter Osgood, Ray WIlkins, Eddie Newton, Jody Morris, John Terry, Mason Mount, Reece James, Trevoh Chalobah, Conor Gallagher, now up to Levi Colwill and Josh Acheampong. Players who knew what the club means, who have felt and loved and known the club since childhood and brought up in the Chelsea way.

And of course, Chelsea is club with a history of great managers who connected with the fans and became an adopted family, the connection was so deep. Ted Drake, Tommy Docherty, Dave Sexton, John Neal, Gianluca Vialli, Carlo Ancelotti, Antonio Conte, Thomas Tuchel, and of course, the greatest of all, the manager who embodied our club more than anyone else, Jose Mourinho.

And it’s not just about winning. Yes we’re not happy when we don’t win, and Chelsea should always have has a winning culture and mentality as a core component of its make up, but it's more than that. Its family.

One of my most memorable Chelsea moments, is actually when we lost the league against Arsenal in 2007. John Terry, Frank Lampard, go to the fans and clap them and throw their shirts, and Jose salutes the fans with his now infamous ‘chin up’.

Together. Till the end. Win or lose. Never stop fighting, even if it ends in failure, Pride, passion, family, Chelsea Football Club.

That team which made us proud and fought for the badge and the club all season, a team we were proud of even in failure, and even in that moment of failure, we were all together, we were Chelsea. I’m actually getting chills even writing about it.

But Clearlake and our Sporting Directors don’t have a goddam clue what this means, what this is about. Not one single clue. They couldn’t understand it if they tried. They just see us either as a way to make profit for themselves and investors, or in the Sporting Directors cases,to advance their personal career and boost their ego.

I don’t care what you say, you’ll never convince me any of them understand, know or love the club and what it's about. Not right now. There’s literally NO evidence to say they do and a TON to say they don’t know or care.

Especially not when even rivals can see the same thing as fans. Not when Gary Neville, of all people, is siding with Chelsea fans. These things never happen, but they’re happening now.

The owners need to wake up and smell the roses. They’re killing everything this club has been about, who we are, and what we do (win).

If the opposite is true, it's time to goddam prove it with their actions, decisions, words, and the results. And to stop these insulting, patronising press briefings which are so obviously bullshit my 8 year old nephew can see through them.

First, hire a Sporting Director who is respected in the world of football. Who has a track record of building good squads, and LISTEN to him instead of demanding he’s a yes man.

Hire a Chelsea legend like Roberto Di Matteo or Joe Cole as a Sporting Consultant, to help get the Chelsea DNA back into the club and sell the club to potential players. Have them sit down with the entire current squad and show them and talk to them about what Chelsea is.

Hire Petr Cech as your goalkeeping guru, not some overpromoted hack from Brighton whose only claim to fame is being the GK who conceded that goal to Di Matteo in the 1997 cup final.

Then, start signing men. Not toddlers. Not children. MEN. Grown adults.

Leaders, Winners. Strong characters. Fighters. Players who will fight for this shirt. Make sure the young talent you sign has the right character and mentality too. If you care about young players, give them people to learn from. To learn about Chelsea, about winning, about being a top professional, who’ll kick these boys up the backside when they need it.

Appoint a manager with authority and conviction, who’ll immediately command players and fans respect, who understands the club and shows passion, and will connect with the fans. Who won’t say “we can focus on the league” when we go out of the FA Cup, a major trophy ensconced in Chelsea history. Won’t make excuses us or keep telling us its not the same club, but set standards for this club fitting with our history, implement a winning mentality and build a winning culture. Then LISTEN to him about football and BACK him rather than trying to make him a puppet for all the Sporting Director decisions.

The fans are awake now. We know what's going on at our club. Everyone can see it. And we’re not going to stand idly by and let it happen. Clearlake may well not sell the club, but we will still fight to get our club back.

One thing which gives me hope, is that Liverpool fans don’t particularly like FSG even with the success they’ve had. Indeed, the owners of FSG are, like Behdad Eghbali, private equity investors. They’re just more experienced in sport than BlueCo.

But FSG got a few key decisions right, like who they hired as Sporting Director (Michael Edwards) and head coach (Jurgen Klopp, and now Arne Slot), and those appointments created a winning squad, a world class recruitment operation and a winning culture at the club, and led them to success.

Liverpool supporters still dislike transfer policy, still don’t like their wage structure, still get annoyed at the lack of big money signings. But they’re winning.

Even now, with them top of the league, I see tweets from Liverpool fans wanting the owners out of the club. But it's less strong because they made some good appointments and they’ve been winning.

My hope is whatever happens this season, we appoint some top people in the roles of Sporting Director and head coach. Then we need to tweak our strategy a bit in terms of signing more proven players and flexibility in the wage structure, and hopefully those things can change the culture at the club and give us a winning team, a squad we can be proud of again.

All is not lost. But change is absolutely needed.

We Chelsea fans will keep fighting until we get it, until Chelsea gets our soul back, and our status in world football.

And the owners should know from our history, we’ll never give up. Ever.

The Score