We had the rare chance to see some comments from one of Chelsea’s owners this week.
Jose E. Feliciano is one of the founders of Clearlake Capital, who part owns Chelsea Football Club, and he was speaking this week at a business summit.
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Many of his words have been picked up by Private Equity News, and he has been firing back at some questions regarding Chelsea.
First of all, he responded to Chelsea spending big on signing new players in the last three transfer windows, which added up as close to £1billion.
When he was questioned about the transfer spending yesterday, he said: “We also sold half a billion dollars of players and reduced the salaries, and essentially the opex [operating expenses] of the business, by over $100m a year.”
As well as that, the Clearlake boss seemed very surprised at the amount of scrutiny they have come under owning Chelsea, particularly from the British press.
He continued: “We own probably about a dozen businesses at Clearlake that are larger than Chelsea, and many of those are actually undergoing even more significant transformations. They tend to be enterprise software businesses, packaging companies…but you don’t ask me about those because you don’t care about those, and they don’t get reported by the Telegraph and Daily Mail every day.”
Not sure why he’s surprised at this to be honest, as if owning one of the biggest clubs in the world was ever going to come without media pressure and stories!
Yeah the scrutiny shouldn’t surprise him. On the other hand, some of the criticisms, especially from a fanbase who are ridiculously impatient and competitors who are jealous of the spending, are a bit over the top, so I can see why the owners might feel the attacks are unwarranted or off base.
The fact that u had a owner making sweet shop buys at the beginning of the takeover and then had to not only sell the majority of those buys he made plus us a few older players to balance the books speaks volumes about the naivety of Clearlake
I remember when the European league was mentioned,government and media screaming “its the supporters game”these clowns are weapons of a government that went full scale DESTROY Chelsea,and these clowns are “doing exactly that”,its NOT OUR GAME NOW IS IT?