“Is Chelsea really a fire sale? I’m not sure” – UK’s richest man reveals why he can’t pay £3 billion to buy Chelsea
Recent reports last week claims that British billionaire Jim Ratcliffe is interested in buying Chelsea Football Club from Roman Abramovich after the Russian confirmed Chelsea is up for sale.
However, Roman Abramovich bought Chelsea from Ken Bates for £140m in 2003 and is hoping to sell the club for £3billion.
Now, Jim Ratcliffe, has however suggested that it would be ‘dumb money’ to buy Chelsea at Roman Abramovich’s current asking price of £3billion.
Bob Ratcliffe told The Mail on Sunday: “Is Chelsea really a fire sale? I’m not sure.”
“That’s a good story but I’m sure it’s still a very big number. When we looked at the bigger Premier League clubs, the total of the Premier League made £500million pre-tax operating profits for all the clubs.
“So these valuations [of £3billion], people have never paid these valuations. The current owners didn’t pay that much for the clubs. They’re still very difficult for us to reconcile. You’re talking about numbers which, in a normal business sense, you wouldn’t go near.
“When we looked at Chelsea, we didn’t have a club then, now we have a club in European competition. You have seen what my brother said in the past. We don’t want to be dumb money. We look at what we paid for Nice for European competition, it’s nothing like what you pay in the UK.”