Ken Bates

What's his

name? Ken...

Ken something, wasn't it?

Ken Bates.

Ken Bates, yeah.

Yeah.

And then I think Abramovich bought it when Ranieri was...

But then Abramovich came and changed the whole mindset.

I think once Abramovich came and was like, okay, you know what? That was cool under Ken Bates.

This is how it really should be.

And Chelsea should have just maintained the whole thing of like, no, once you've reached that action of like, okay, you're now a serious team, you don't go back to now being a clown-ass team.

Because he's, he's a steady hand on the tiller, you never kind of get, um, that heightened emotion around it like in the same way that we did as, as Bielsa, which was like a proper flush in the pan type relationship, wasn't it? Whereas this has just been slow and steady, and we've made, like, progress throughout.

Think, uh, Ken Bates talking about slow arousal, isn't it?

[laughs] But there is a very real chance this season that he will, uh, at least meet or even surpass what Marcelo did with us.

Um-

Okay.

[laughs]

Anything else you want to say about Ken Bates? [laughs] That's enough for today.

What else did Ken do to that away end?

OASF, because we're stronger together.

Ken Bates famously introduced the tangerine home shirt, but in what year did we first sport this

colour? 1933.

Wrong, it was 1966.

... today.

Um, before his death, Ken Bates insisted always that Chelsea would not have gone out of business if they had lost to Liverpool on the final day of the two th- 2002, 2003 season.

Um, but we have heard other stories from other people.

Um, I remember Graham Lasso telling the story of Trevor Birch, the chief executive at the time, gathering the players around on the morning of the game and saying, "If, if we lose this, uh, the club could go out of business." Um, now Birch also denied that.

Very quickly.

Yeah.

Um, I think Ken Bates tells the story of getting the call, uh, that, that this Russian businessman that he'd never heard of before, and they, they had to look him up, um, and, and his net worth be- before meeting him, um, I believe at the, at the Dorchester.

Um, and the, the deal was essentially done in about 40 minutes, uh, to, to, to sell Chelsea.

It was amazing.

I mean, you know... first of all like the the harbinger of it all really was glenn huddle when glenn huddle came to the club yeah because he was very much the person that um sort of brought chelsea into sort of like the big time if you like um and obviously you know the uh great and recently passed away Ken Bates who had way back before then had actually saved the club from probably extinction managed to sort of like find some backers and put in some money himself and get into a situation where Chelsea could start to afford these bigger players and as you say I mean there's this perception about oh you know before 2003 Chelsea didn't exist but there was like a five six seven year period before that when they were playing some of the best Not necessarily winning so much, but playing some of the best football in the country, you know?

Yeah.

I mean, I'm

Yeah, that was good because he, he didn't do the let's wait till we're two nil down at seventy minutes to throw all the strikers on it was an actual structural change and it worked.

Plenty love for James Trafford as well um which is consistent with all the stuff that we've seen in terms of like the scores and whatnot candidates for Ken Bates villain of the week somebody who's made our last seven days worse.

I quite enjoy Dan Jones platform shoes nomination for the concept of data football used to be about intangibles like grit bottle determination Brentford have just turned it into a spreadsheet anyone can do that you big nerds that's not fair.

That's nothing-

Just the reason for this episode, folks, is we are going to talk about one individual who was remembered well in the game yesterday at Stamford Bridge between Chelsea and Brighton before the match.

And that was the former chairman, Mr. Ken Bates.

So this is an episode where we will go through some of the timelines while Ken was in charge of Chelsea and a few potential rumours that we're looking to sort of clear up.

So, Harry, are you ready?

Well, Keith, this is one of the stories that appears in this book, the Black Book, because the Black Book really is a massive, it's nearly 500 pages long, 200 pictures and nearly 200,000 words.

And everyone I've ever met or done a story about or exposed or whatever I've done, I'm telling the stories behind the stories and what really happened.

So the first time I ever met Ken Bates was turning up at the bridge, having done an interview with him when I broke the story about him taking over at the club and I wanted to see him on his first day so I found out when he would be arriving.

I was the only journalist there at the gates as he pulled up in his roller, parked outside and walked through the gates and I kind of like followed him.