Chelsea Fighting The Good Fight

By: chris | October 10th, 2008

In times of financial crisis like these, who do you feel most sorry for? Roman Abramovich and Chelsea FC, undoubtedly. If anyone needs money, it’s clearly them. First forcing Adrian Mutu into a McDonald’s drive-thru window once his playing days are over to do penance for his sins, now going after little Norwegian club Lyn Oslo for all they’re worth.

But on principle, it looks like they’re in the right here, even if Chelsea taking more and more money back from people does seem to be getting a bit ridiculous. (Maybe this is how Roman’s affording to put missile defense systems on his goddamn cabin cruisers.)

If you thought the John Obi Mikel story was confusing at the time of his transfer – having signed for three teams at once, it seemed – it gets even worse now. Morgan Andersen, the former chief exec at Lyn Oslo, got into a heap of trouble recently for forging the contract which tied JOM to Lyn Oslo (boy was a hassle for all inolved, wasn’t he?).

Mikel claimed to have signed a youth contract with Lyn in 2005 but, within a week, United announced they had agreed to sign him on professional terms at the end of the Norwegian season in January 2006…only for Chelsea also to claim to have reached an agreement to sign the player…and it was not until June 2006, some 14 months after the saga first flared up, that Chelsea agreed a compromise deal to pay both Lyn and United for the player’s services.

That decision was made on the basis that Mikel was under contract in Oslo, the reality of which was dispelled when Andersen — the chief executive at the Norwegian club at the time — was convicted of making false accusations and fraud over the agreement that apparently existed between his club and the midfielder. He was given a one-year suspended sentence after a court decided the professional contract Mikel subsequently denied ever signing and which committed him to the club actually carried a signature cut out from the amateur agreement to which he had previously been tied.

But Chelsea won’t get the £16m – £12m of which was paid to ManU for their role in the shenanigans – they’re looking for because Lyn Oslo doesn’t have the vault like the one that Scrooge McAbramovich has hidden in the frozen soil of Siberia. So like anyone that wants money the other person doesn’t have, they’re going to attempt to find an out-of-court settlement so Chelsea can regain at least some cash and go back to stealing more youth players (via helicopter, hopefully).

Perhaps it’s time to set up a charitable foundation which uses legal avenues to help Chelsea recoup all the pazzo transfer fees they’ve paid over the last half-dozen years. You know, so they can outfit Stamford Bridge with a surface-to-air missile defense system. Times are tough indeed.