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Chelsea relaxed about halt to stadium plan

There has been some relief at Chelsea that the stadium redevelopment plan has been abandoned. Many of the club are not unhappy that the grand designs for a 'cathedral of football' produced by the architects Herzog & De Meuron have fallen through.

There wasn't really a business case to spend more than £1 billion to add just 18,000 seats to Stamford Bridge. Unlike Liverpool, which had to expand Anfield to create more capacity for the prawn sandwich crowd, Chelsea has always had a lucrative corporate hospitality business. The majority of the new seats would have gone to ordinary fans.

There were also concerns about the limited relocation options available during the four years that would have to be spent away from Stamford Bridge. Egg chasers did not want them lowering the tone at Twickenham and the London Stadium, leaving aside its shortcomings, is well away from the main fan base in West London and Surrey.

That left Wembley which is in the process of being acquired by Fulham's owner Shahid Khan. Striking an agreement would not have been easy because of the additional demands it would place on the fixture list.

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