Roman Abramovich selling Chelsea could spark the next era for the club

Roman Abramovich is less involved and seemingly less interested in Chelsea FC than any point in the last 16 years. The club could benefit from an injection of new energy and new money from a new owner.

When Roman Abramovich bought Chelsea back in 2003 for £140 million, nobody could have predicted the amount of success he was going to bring to the club. In a short span of time the Russian billionaire’s spending transformed winning trophies from a rare pleasure to a habit for the Blues.

But now that he no longer keeps a corporate box at Stamford Bridge for himself for the first time in a decade, it is hard not to wonder if he is as invested in the club as he was in those early years. And with diplomatic relations between Britain and Russia worsening, there might even be a possibility of him selling the club in the very near future.

But Abramovich leaving might not be the catastrophe many fans believe it would be. In 2003, the Russian oligarch’s financial power might have taken the football world by storm. Since then, much wealthier men have invested in football clubs. Chelsea can no longer compete in the transfer market like they did when they set the financial tone during Abramovich’s early years.

The transformation in the club’s transfer policy over the years is there for all to see. No longer are they linked with the elite players on the market, the ones who invariably end up in Madrid, Barcelona, Manchester or Paris.

Instead, the fans have grown accustomed to the club scouring the market for mid-value players from mid-table outposts in Europe.

Chelsea have gone from buying the Michael Ballack’s of the world to the Danny Drinkwater’s over the last decade. Even the long-awaited £500 million Stamford Bridge revamp plans have been shelved.

While Abramovich’s early reign was marked by the relentless push to lift the Champions League trophy, the club have struggled just to make the competition in the past few seasons. The answer has been always to sack the manager and replace him with a new one, with hopes someone else could somehow magically transform the same players into world beaters.

The recent hiring of Maurizio Sarri is a case in point. After sacking Antonio Conte despite him delivering silverware in successive seasons, Sarri took over a squad assembled by Jose Mourinho and Conte specifically for their pragmatic style of football. The board told Sarri to implement his free-flowing style with it. And while Sarri, in his own right, has shown himself incapable of adapting over the past few months, there is no denying he was not given the best chance to succeed in the first place.

Now the club find themselves in a precarious situation with the Champions League looking unlikely, Eden Hazard considering leaving and a two window transfer ban on the horizon.

At this point, a change in ownership might breathe new life into a club that has grown stagnant over the past half a decade. The titles have continued to come in during the decline, but they have only papered over the cracks that have grown every year.

Chelsea can no longer compete on the pitch with the European giants, not with the aging and mostly incompetent squad they have as a result of not being able top compete with those giants in the transfer market.

With the business of football booming, there will not be a shortage of suitors willing to take the ownership of Chelsea off of Abramovich’s hands.

If the meteoric rise of Manchester City – following Chelsea’s template – since their takeover is anything to go by, a buyout might just be the kick in the pants the Blues have needed for quite a while.