EPL: Ex-Crystal Palace owner Jordan confident Chelsea will survive the crisis
Former Crystal Palace owner, Simon Jordan, is confident Chelsea can find a buyer before going bust after the UK Government seized the club from Roman Abramovich.
Jordan has moved to reassure fans that a sale is still indeed possible and has outlined how the club can come under new ownership despite the sanctions against Abramovich.
“Let’s be clear, all of these things are solvable,” Jordan told talkSPORT. “Even season ticket sales are solvable. As long as one single penny doesn’t go near Abramovich. If you set up a vehicle with an entity that takes money on behalf of Chelsea Football Club, but doesn’t allow it anywhere near Chelsea Football Club and it sits in a fund.
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“You could in essence sell season tickets for next year, you could in essence sell club shirts, you could in essence sell hot dogs – but the money couldn’t go into Chelsea Football Club, it would have to go into a vehicle that sits there accruing money and when the transfer of the football club is achieved, all that money flows back into the new entity, the ownership model.
“So all of these things could be overcome and [Nigel] Huddleston, as much as he was invisible during the pandemic, will now be visible because he’s got to find a solution to a big asset.
“I don’t want politicians anywhere near football but this is a different set of scenarios because the Government have involved themselves in sanctioning oligarchs – rightly so – and one of those assets that has been sanctioned is a blue-chip asset in terms of a plaque above the door which is one of our country’s biggest football clubs.
“All of these circles will be squared but what they’ve got to do now is they’ve got to hold Abramovich to his word. Abramovich is running for cover. He’s running away. He wants to get away from the profile he’s got as far as Chelsea’s concerned. I don’t anticipate that he’s going to be an obstacle in ensuring the disposal goes forward.
“Because he has no benefit, no upside in it. Okay, you can say ‘there’s three billion quid of upside’ but Abramovich has got plenty of money that’s been frozen around the world but he knows he’s not going to get his hands on Chelsea’s money.
“So the only leverage is to makes sure that Abramovich is acquiescent and agrees to anything that the Government doesn’t have to enforce some form of administrative ownership over the club because you don’t want to do that really.
“What you want Abramovich to do is voluntarily say ‘I will standoff, I will mandate the Government and my selling agent to sell this football club, receive the proceeds, I don’t want any of those proceeds, I give you the undertaking and assurance legally and literally and away you go’.
“And if Abramovich is a liar and had no intention of doing what he said he was going to do, then he’s going to find himself in even more pain than he’s already in.”