Having said that our match day revenues are very encouraging anyway when compared to our nearest competition; whilst Man Utd reported a 92.5m annual figure and Arsenal 94.6m according to Deloitte, we achieved 74.5m with a significantly less capacity and Liverpool with an equal capacity to ours only made 38.4m. 

The East Stand - First Step in Mears Dream that Cost Us Dearly

Our European rivals did even less well – Real Madrid and Barcelona reported match day incomes of 55.3m and 59.7m respectively whilst Milan sheepishly revealed a 19.3m figure.  

Overall turnover figures are also excellent even with a 42,000 Stamford Bridge – we are fourth highest behind Real Madrid, Manchester United and Barcelona but in front of Arsenal and some way ahead of Liverpool (in fact, we have generated 84m more than Arsenal over the last five seasons and a whopping 156m more than Liverpool) 

“We are increasing our turnover despite price initiatives such as reduced admission for domestic cup games, which we think are important, and if you look at our £190 million turnover compared with £177 million at Arsenal, that is significant when they have moved into a new stadium.” said Kenyon. 

'All the trends are going the right way but you can't invest at the level we have and expect a one or a two-year turnaround. That is why we initially said it is 10 years before we achieve our position as a global football club and five or six years until we break even.

"We want to be successful on the field and we want to be a successful business.' 

'Even with clubs who have built new grounds, capacities are finite and over the years, you have to be looking for growth outside of the capacity of the stadium,'  

It has to be said that Chelsea Football Club are in an enviable position financially with no external debt and an internal investment which Roman Abramovich has gone some way to being recouped in asset value with the club value already skyrocketed above the price of 140m which he originally paid for it.  In fact, the “soft debt” is so called in the media because Roman loaned the company money - Roman owns the company - the company, therefore, owes money to itself.

Kenyon and Buck initially wanted to break even by 2009/10 although later admitted that this was slightly optimistic – although I imagine with 1-2 seasons after that timeline the target would have been achieved. 

Ground expansion would go some way to help this aim

'It is ambitious and it has always been ambitious,” said Kenyon pre-season.  

“But it was no less ambitious than saying by 2014 we want to be recognised as the number one international club. It is no less ambitious than saying we want sustained success on the field.' 'If you look at the trend on reducing our ongoing investment in transfers, we have gone from £129 million to a net £11 million and that is significant. 

'For us to break even, we need to have our payroll costs at 55 per cent of turnover. We are at 71 per cent. Last year our payroll costs went up absolutely whereas as a percentage of turnover, they went down from 76 per cent to 71 per cent. 

'So it is these trends that support our ambition. We are continuing to be successful on the field and our stadium is selling out.”

We have come some way from the early 70´s when Mears, fuelled by domestic and European success embarked on a dream of a shiny new 80,000 capacity stadium (we had standing in those days don’t forget) but the first step with the East Stand crippled us for decades. 

People forget that since those times we now have built an up to date modern stadium whilst other clubs fans look for sympathy at their own failure to have done likewise.  We had to literally put money in buckets on the terraces whilst others laughed at our plight and our inability to buy players – who’s laughing now? 

Mears had a dream, Bates a vision, Harding the will and now finally under Abramovich decades of planning could finally come to reality.

To remain at the Bridge is a dream for Chelsea fans – our original home.  We can preserve tradition whilst others who have mocked ours have already sold or are about to sell theirs.

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