bless ya royds - to be honest, I can understand the general pisstaking

and Dubs and I get on well too, which helps. We'd be taking the piss if it was anyone else.

As you'd expect, mails flying round all day about it - I've copied a couple in this for you, if you read these, fair play to ya (I've, obviously, removed names)

My CPO is much more recent than yours but I guess I have a vote too J My view is that we should move to a 60k stadium, if we want to play a role in the future of football and taking in account the fair play rules it will be hard for us to keep competing against our rivals and that worries me. With attractive innovative football on the pitch and proper and good marketing we should be able to fill our new ground at least for all the premiership games, I think London will always have more potential in comparison to Turin.

I am wondering if this news has anything to do with RA?s court case which has started this week as well, a PR stunt like this is possibly something that will inevitably have some effect on the case. Perhaps he wants to be seen as the ?good Samaritan? to British society. Two potential massive projects in London, it?s almost like another mini Olympics !

But saying NO at this stage is what my vote is my reason;

? 2020 is that the date RA has set to sell the club ? The clubs increased profitability, is probably essential if RA wants to sell so the new owner can raise more cash and borrowing against the club.
? 3 mile radius should be indefinite.
? Do we want to share our ground ? For Rugby and Cricket maybe ?
? Why is the same ?pitch ownership? not offered in the new location ? That?s only fair ? Better than a list of names that no one reads J
? If RA sells, fans should have first option to buy their own club at market value.
? What kind of stadium is being built ? Will we CPO have a say ?
? What is the worst case scenario plan if 60k proves too big, perhaps an additional ground/area needs to be bought for contingency as part of the move.

If these points can be discussed and agreed in a proper dialogue then I would be persuadable , but indeed the way it is currently handled is aggressive and unprofessional.
Without proper dialogue I don?t think there will be agreement, but perhaps that is the intent here.

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From:
Subject: Re: CPO

I, like Chris, take my responsibility as a Chelsea Pitch Owner seriously as regards being a guardian of the club. In fact, since RA took over, CPO is the last check and balance on behalf of supporters - certainly as far as recent history goes. Also, in spite of my closing paragraph, I am not generally against the idea of a stadium move (within distance limits).

Recent attempts to embrace the fans have in my opinion left the supporters who took part looking like (and probably feeling like) they had been ignored and their participation was largely futile. In any case, those links can be broken by the club just as quickly as they can be made.

I believe a YES vote could potentially de-stabilise the club, maybe not immediately, and I would feel partially responsible for that.
Chris has described how much RA has invested into the infrastructure of the club as well as the team itself and apparently with little hope of profit, or certainly little hope of getting his money back. A YES vote changes that. It instantly substantially increases the asset value of the club to a point where, RA could sell on for a profit (I don't believe for the moment he would) or if he needed to he could liquidise it. Also a worry would be if anything happened to RA, would his heirs want to maintain the club? A valuable club would certainly be more vulnerable to whims and changes of direction, location, committment etc. by the owner(s) in my opinion.

So you now know that I plan to vote NO.

I have other reasons but they are mostly borne out of the good sense that I feel has served me well thus far. I am naturally suspicious and for CFC to not hold any consultation of any sort but to accompany an offer with insignificant inducements; no real promises regarding the future of the club and an attempt at emotional blackmail predicting doom and gloom if this doesn't go ahead rings all the alarm bells with me. It smells of the increasing disregard for the (loyal) fans that the club has shown recently and somehow it seems that has increased at an even greater rate since Ron Gourlay took office (although that could be a coincidence of timing re. world economic affairs etc.)

I think that CFC have many other, more creative ways of approaching this and they have chosen not to embrace them. It is strange to me that their view of the average CPO shareholder is to bully them with threats ratehr than engage in meaningful dialogue. Instead, relying on 30 pieces of silver (analogous not monetary) to persuade us to do something for the hope of something better which might end up with us regretting forever.

Finally, I have recounted to others my visit to Turin during by summer holiday and I visited the new Juventus stadium. Beautifully designed, atmospheric, logistically excellent with regard to access and transport links. They are the only Italian Serie A team to won their own stadium (as far as I am aware) and whilst there are many non-parallels between English and Italian football, I do feel there are some similarities with a 10 year time gap. Not least with regard to unrealistic spending and crowd sizes peaking and increasing costs to traditional fans. Juventus demolished a 68,000 stadium and had the ability to replicate the capacity but chose to build a stadium with a capacity of 41,500 fans. I do not believe that they did this without very serious consideration of the effect such a limit might have on their finances. However, they were also realistic about their crowd sizes. (When the capacity was 68,000 they rarely filled more than half of it. When they were temporarily at the Olympic Stadium with a capacity of

Posted By: Karnivore, Oct 5, 22:14:48