Just SayNo.

It is hard to work out just where our old friends at SayNoCPO fit in these days. Reduced to a rump of about two and a half people (the rest have decamped to establish the Chelsea Supporters Trust for a bit of mainstream politicking) their cheerleader in chief drones on in his typically inflammatory, pub-lawyer style on CFCNet this month. This time it is in relation to the letters that were sent to multiple shareholders and no doubt they are beginning to realise it might not produce the results they want. Here is a selection of phrases pressed into action;

"Weeding out the fraudsters"

"Obvious deception in progress" 

"CFC's web team has been trying to meddle with the facts again"

...and so on. It's like a wet weekend in a Pyongyang press office.

Whilst everybody else appears to be trying to move forward, SayNo want to keep us all mired in the share issue. They even want to have access to Electoral Reform records to see how people voted! We find all this deeply sinister; reveal an individual - any individual- to have voted in favour of something SayNo don't like and use it to smear them in some perverse way. 

Almost everybody else has realised that selling more shares to fans is the way ahead.

Surprisingly, SayNo don't seem to support the efforts to raise much needed funds either;

"We must also seriously doubt if anyone will be willing to help a Chairman raise funds for CPO as he now pleads, when he has done so little during his 17 months at the helm to cleanse the company of fraudsters and profiteers?"

This strikes us as a little spiteful and counter-productive. Frankham has said he would try to get things going on the fundraising front and as far as we know, three meetings have been called but not all have been well attended. Either people want to support the idea or they don't. The fact is that the cub require CPO to pay back the loan - it is that simple - and if they don't, the club could fold CPO.

And here is a thing; a very significant number of people are beginning to think that this may well be the best thing to happen. We ourselves frequently receive emails to this effect. 

With EC in all sorts of trouble (the latest being a serious doubt over TfL's readiness to release their land to CapCo) and with all eyes on the bullish, tries-so-very-hard UK boss of the BPS development company, to see if he can deliver his bold claims for his wary Malaysian bosses,  it is essential that CFC is not hamstrung. If CPO continues to be used as a device for those wishing to attack and denigrate, we can only imagine that the club will see benefits in CPO failing to pay off the debt. As such, we would suggest everybody does what they can to help the fundraising effort.

Chelsea Football Club is trying to get a billion pound project off the ground and we can hardly expect them to be too tolerant. We suspect for PR's sake that the club will be reluctant to crush CPO but they won't take much persuading should all of this nonsense continue and the board fail to meet financial obligations. That is undoubtedly the reality we face as shareholders.