Report: What rival parties have suggested to stop the Ricketts family from becoming the new Chelsea owners

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Rival parties with an interest in buying Chelsea have offered up a solution to prevent the Ricketts family from becoming the new owners.

GOAL reports that one of the suitors sizing up Roman Abramovich’s kingdom ‘privately floated the idea that the opposing groups to Ricketts should boycott the process.’

Why are the Ricketts facing such a backlash?

The Chicago Cubs’ owners have taken a lot of flack recently and perhaps rightly so.

They are still battling against the #notoRicketts campaign on Twitter, directed at unrepeatable comments made by father of the family Joe Ricketts a few years ago.

Although Joe is apparently not involved in his children’s attempts to buy the Blues, his remarks have left a rotten stain on the bid.

It is not only supporters that seem to have a problem with the Ricketts.

Yesterday, the Times reported that some of the other consortiums involved in the race to take over Chelsea ‘are angry at what they see as preferential treatment’ being shown toward the Ricketts.

They claim there are concerns that rules of the procedure were breached after it emerged that the Raine Group asked Bruce Buck to set up a meeting between Tom Ricketts and Paul Canoville.

Canoville, the former Chelsea player, had been very vocal about not wanting the Ricketts to replace Abramovich because of the statements made by Joe.

Time to join forces

All of this has left an ugly cloud hanging over the American-led bid, with many calling for them to be ejected entirely.

One way this could possibly happen is if the other three candidates refuse to run anymore, as suggested by GOAL’s mystery speaker.

“Only when three groups boycott, there will be no other candidate other than Ricketts left, then Raine will be forced to be reviewed and demonstrate their integrity issue to suggest the procedure guidelines properly fair for all groups.”

Of course, the likelihood of anyone pulling out at this stage is slim.

Along with the Ricketts, Todd Boehly, Sir Martin Broughton and Stephen Pagliuca were shortlisted by the Raine Group as the four potential Chelsea buyers.

Boehly is seemingly viewed as the favourite amongst many circles, so for him to remove his name from the hat would be completely surprising.

Unfortunately, each applicant still has as good a chance as the next for now.

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