Give Nadine a call if you want to buy Chelsea

There is no doubt that the terms of the Government licence will impact on Chelsea's cash flow.  It is unclear how liquid the club is, but I would think that they can meet their £75m wage bill for now.

As I stated in my interview with Press Association/Globelynx yesterday, if there is no change in the situation by the end of the season it becomes much more serious for the club in all sorts of ways.

The Government is prepared to countenance a sale if the money could be paid into an escrow account.  Indeed, apparently interested purchasers have been asked to give the Government call.  Just ring up the DCMS and ask to speak to Nadine, the password is 'I'm a celebrity, get me out of here.'

I don't find the glee of some rival supporters keen to see Chelsea collapse at all attractive.  If I was a supporter of a Premier League club, I would want to beat them on the pitch not off it.   However, away fans may now not be able to buy tickets.   So Brentford fans get penalised as well as those of Chelsea.

Clearly Chelsea fans chanting 'Roman Abramovich' offends many, but he did more than pour money into the club.  He modernised the management structures and made it more community facing.

A hawkish position on this might be that Abramovich’s millions stopped Arsenal from retaining the league in 2004-05, stopped Manchester United from winning it the following year and stopped United again in 2009-10. 

Every club whose wealth was clean, or at least apparently cleaner than Abramovich’s, and that was overtaken by Chelsea, might have a legitimate grievance against the “pro-Kremlin oligarch” (a description he has always rejected) whose spending gave Chelsea the edge. And if Abramovich’s backing is wrong now, was it right enough in 2003 that we should have allowed it to upend English football?

One view might be that Abramovich is a revolutionary who transformed the game by realising the inherent growth potential in English football’s desperate hunger for foreign money, no matter where it came from. Abramovich sensed that the same logic that applied to Russian investment into the city of London and the London housing market — roll out the red carpet, ask questions later — could also work in the “ownership neutral” Premier League.   

Lots of people did very well out of 'Londongrad' and few doubts were raised at the time.  Indeed, as i recall, buying £100m worth of government bonds would get you a visa in the wake of the global financial crisis.

Alternatively, you might view English football’s gleeful acceptance of Abramovich as its original sin, leading to everything that has happened since: Thaksin Shinawatra and then Sheikh Mansour at Manchester City, Saudi Arabia at Newcastle United, and all of the inflationary spending and sportswashing we have seen since.

There are valid arguments on both sides, but what I am sure of is that the game won't benefit by bringing Chelsea to its knees.  We can do without remarks like 'Chelsea may not exist in a couple of months.'   So over to you, Nadine.