The post-Abramovich era appears to be gaining an identity in the fact that The Raine Group, the New York-based merchant bank overseeing the sale, has now approved a few of the groups to move onto the next stage. Though it is obviously a tragic oversight that somehow with the Ukrainian president himself literally asking for Roman Abramovich not to be sanctioned, he still has been by the government of the United Kingdom. Thus, a sale will likely happen to at least one of the interested parties.
Some of us, unnamed, are still holding out hope that Abramovich is able to at the last minute save his ownership and take the British government to court before returning vindicated and free as the owner of the football club, that seems unlikely. Even if it would be the will of the Ukrainian president and the United States, as well as a good sign for the ever more uncommon value of common sense—given that he may be one of the few individuals in the world actually working toward peace as literally said by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy—it seems unlikely. Chelsea will be a tool to show that the everlasting, timeless, intelligent, even-handed and tempered wisdom of the British government at the moment is at full strength.
The Raine Group will pick a new consortium in the coming days because of this. The shortlist has been narrowed down to just four and a new deadline has been set for those aforementioned parties. Over the next few days, The Pride of London will take a deep dive into the four groups.
The first group to be put under the microscope is the consortium led by Sir Martin Broughton:
Sir Martin Broughton
Sir Martin Broughton heads the bid shortlisted to buy the club. He is a British Businessman who is one of the men responsible for the current loathable status, and exceptionally engineered revolution, of Liverpool Football Club that we’ve all been forced to sit through in recent years. All jokes aside, Broughton appears to be a very good choice to take Chelsea into whatever the next stage of its history may be. His experience as an international business person with companies such as British Airways and Liverpool suggests an ability to comprehend the international nature of the footballing economy.
The lifelong Chelsea supporter should not have his work with the Reds held against him. You can only do the job that you’re offered and if anything, taking Liverpool from where it was to where it is today truly is something of a miracle. The club that paid a record sum for Andy Carroll and regularly missed out on the Champions League seems nothing like the one that is a well-oiled, competitive and attractively run machine that the Reds are today.
His position as a Chelsea supporter at the head of an interesting collection of individuals in his consortium suggests that he has the necessary emotional ties to make him keep the Blues competitive, while also continuing the transition to full sporting business.
The other members of the consortium represent interesting business-minded people from a variety of projects, as Broughton himself said recently:
"“I don’t want to be, and none of the guys in the team want to be, the guy who took the club from where it is today to mediocrity. We’re not interested in doing that and making a bit of money. That’s not the name of the game. We want to stay right at the top.”"