Chelsea

Hansjörg Wyss and Todd Boehly are increasingly confident their bid to buy Chelsea will be successful and are set to step up negotiations this weekend.

The defenders Antonio Rüdiger, Andreas Christensen and César Azpilicueta are out of contract at the end of the season. Abramovich has confirmed he wants to end his ownership of Chelsea and it is believed the Russian oligarch wants a sale to go through quickly. It is unlikely the chairman, Bruce Buck, and powerful director Marina Granovskaia will stay under new owners. The Swiss is the founder and the former president and chairman of Synthes Holding AG, a medical device manufacturer, and a supporter of liberal and environmental causes in the US, where he lived for a number of years. Provided the information is easily accessible, easily understandable and were given all the right answers it can be done relatively quickly. There have been suggestions that the Egyptian businessman Loutfy Mansour, who has a Chelsea season ticket, has been considering a bid.

Thomas Tuchel was sacked by the French giants before being made manager of Chelsea in February 2021, but PSG chief Leonardo has defended the decision.

This is the choice we made." It was a time (Christmas 2020) where we may not see a future with him. "The question was to know if we were going to the end of the contract without certainty or if we stopped before.

The departing owner transformed the Blues into an indisputable superclub but the game he changed may be about to shift again.

At the very least, football should be contemplating the road that led from Zilina to this absurd situation whereby military decisions taken by foreign governments can have such an impact on an English club, and wondering what it could have done differently. Hemmed in by a cemetery on one side and a railway line on the other, it is very difficult to increase the capacity of Stamford Bridge from 41,800, and various attempts to move over the past 20 years have come to nothing. There’s also the threat of a change to the loan system. But it will be soon and, a couple of months after completing the full set of possible trophies by winning the Club World Cup, the Abramovich era at Chelsea will be over. Around £153m had been spent on players in that first year, £150m would be spent in the second — unprecedented sums at the time — and José Mourinho appointed manager. Their last may come at Norwich in a couple of weeks, or perhaps at home to Brentford a fortnight after that, depending how soon a buyer emerges and how quickly the deal can be finalised.

The Russian-Israeli billionaire announced he was selling the Blues on Wednesday night after almost 20 years at the helm.

“Please know that this has been an incredibly difficult decision to make, and it pains me to part with the club in this manner. “It’s unsustainable in the current environment. And it is understood that means all proceeds barring transaction costs will be ploughed into the new charitable foundation. “It has been a privilege of a lifetime to be part of Chelsea FC and I am proud of all our joint achievements.” Abramovich vowed not to take any money out of the sale of Chelsea in his Wednesday statement. Blues owner Abramovich hopes to have a figure in the region of £2 billion to donate to a new charitable foundation that will be set up specifically to aid victims of Russia’s war in Ukraine.