Youtube creators thrive on hyperbole, but when Rory Jennings says he is “terrified” of Todd Boehly and the rest of Chelsea’s new ownership we believe him. Why? Because we’re just as scared ourselves.
Are their intentions to make Chelsea a successful team? To keep it embedded in the community it’s grown from, while keeping it a global brand? Or is it to gradually lever them out of their roots and turn them into a floating mega-franchise? We think we know the answer.
Do you agree? Watch Rory make his argument in the video here and decide for yourself.
You can see them explain their thoughts in the clip embedded here:
Would you listen to yourself, lol? You sound like spoiled children who want their cake and eat it too. It’d be laughable if it wasn’t so pathetic! The owners have only invested a BILLION pounds in the club yet supporters just moan and whine.
You guys really need to educate yourselves. For example, Boehly owns the Los Angeles Dodgers who and they currently have the second best record in Major League Baseball and are in the midst of making yet another strong run at a championship. I don’t think there are any Dodger fans complaining the way Chelsea supporters are—indeed, they’d scratch their heads right after laughing their asses off at all of the Chelsea hand-wringers. Their team, the Dodgers, is well-funded (with the sixth highest payroll in the league) and competes EVERY YEAR for a World Series title. Don’t believe me. Go back and read what The Guardian had to say when Boehly & Co. bought the Chelsea. It paints a very different picture than the one this YouTuber is peddling: https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/apr/30/todd-boehly-chelsea-takeover-la-dodgers-lakers
As I view all of this whining and hand-wringing as Chelsea supporter in America it’s at once amusing and annoying—amusing because it seems so misplaced, and annoying because it’s so ill-founded. Given the reputation of London as one of the great metropolises of the world it paints a certain group of Londoners (Chelsea supporters) as incredibly provincial. I get that you love your club and want to hold it close and dear, but you can’t have it both ways. You can’t have the funds to keep it one of the biggest clubs in the world without sharing it with a larger world (including Americans like me). That is what Boehly represents here, and when you attack him you attack me. That’s your right of course, but then you shouldn’t be gladly accepting the riches that come with the deal. You have to choose or you just look (and sound) like clueless, spoiled children.
I submitted a comment and it didn’t post (maybe because it included a link to a Guardian article on the Boehly and the Dodgers), so my apologies if this becomes duplicative, but my points boiled down to this:
The hysteria reflected in the video and the article (since SuperFrank seems to agree) strikes me as silly and more than a little adolescent from the perspective of an American Chelsea supporter. You guys don’t seem to be well educated on what and who Boehly is and what he has achieved with the other major sports franchise he owns (the Los Angeles Dodgers) and your neuroses (about “losing†your club) suggest you don’t understand that sharing your club with others (particularly foreign fans who have helped make the EPL a financial juggernaut) is directly linked to remaining a top club—i.e., one that has the resources to compete with Europe’s elite. In this day and age you simply can’t have one without the other, and you come off as adolescent, not to mention provincial, when you act like you should get to have your cake (the best talent money can buy) and eat it too (Chelsea belongs only to West Londoners). Either you want your club to be a global brand capable of financing 100m player acquisitions, or you can be…West Ham, but losing your minds over £10 subsidies and whining about the new owners’ strategy to take Chelsea to an entirely next level (atop a pyramid of feeder clubs) all the while complaining when the club isn’t being aggressive enough in the transfer market (as SuperFrank did when he thought they weren’t going to snag Caicedo) reeks of the worst hypocrisy. So, confront the trade-offs already. Be a local club with the resource constraints that imposes, or be a global superpower (and accept that you will have to “share†your beloved Blues in some way shape or form with a broader constituency), but stop acting like spoiled children who think they can have both!