Fall of the Roman Empire is not sad, Amanda... Abramovich just needs to make a sharp SW6 exit!
IF grandstanding helped keep you in the Premier League, Amanda Staveley would be a powerful weapon for Newcastle United.
Speaking at the Financial Times Business of Football Summit – basically, a shindig for those who reckon they are the game’s most important people – Staveley reckoned the consortium she fronts had checked out the possibility of buying Chelsea before settling on Newcastle.
She also said the ownership’s ‘model’ was “to grow the club to become a huge global business and brand”.
Just scrape enough points to stay in the top division, first, Amanda.
But Staveley excelled herself when talking about how “it’s sad today that someone is going to have a football club taken away from them”.
She was referring to Roman Abramovich and Chelsea.
Abramovich is not having a football club taken away from him. He is trying to sell it because he is probably, in the words of Labour MP Chris Bryant, “terrified” of the possibility of sanctions.
He is having a fire sale – and there is absolutely nothing sad about that.