What is stopping Stamford Bridge from being redeveloped?

Chelsea Football Club have been so incredibly successful over the last two decades that it's easy to forget that they play their football in one of the most outdated grounds in the Premier League. Indeed, the backdrop to their trophy-winning haul has been an increasingly dilapidated stadium in west London that can only hold a fraction of the capacity that their greatest rivals can.

Incredibly, this hasn't stopped the Blues from winning virtually every honour available to them over the last two decades. Granted, they may be out of the title race in England after being priced at odds of 189/1 in the latest outright Premiership betting markets, but there is still every chance that they will be able to defend their Champions League title after being given a price of just 13/2 to lift Europe's greatest club trophy in the Stade de France at the end of May.

We've won it all@ChelseaFC pic.twitter.com/0FGl5RpUPj
— John Terry (@JohnTerry26) February 12, 2022

Should Thomas Tuchel's men be able to do so, then they would undoubtedly bring that coveted trophy back to Stamford Bridge in the summer to parade in front of their fans. However, only 41,837 spectators could attend the celebrations, which seems quite absurd when you think about the heights that Chelsea have reached. By comparison, if Manchester United did the same, then a crowd of 74,410 would be allowed in whilst Tottenham Hotspur could accommodate 62,303, according to the stats for the biggest grounds in the Premier League. Astonishingly, you would have to go down as far as ninth place to find Chelsea's name on this list with teams such as Aston Villa, West Ham and Newcastle all above all the Blues with regard to the capacity rankings.

So why do clubs that have experienced nothing close to Chelsea's unprecedented success all have bigger grounds and why hasn't a redevelopment that matches the team's trajectory taken place? The short answer is that Chelsea has left it too long with a redevelopment now expected to cost £2.2 billion.

If you go back to the early 1990s, you would find the last time that Stamford Bridge underwent considerable renovations. At the time, Chelsea was keeping pace with their rivals as far as ground capacity went, as ex-chairman Ken Bates spent his time and money overseeing extensive refurbishments to the ground. However, when Bates eventually agreed to sell Chelsea to Roman Abramovich in 2003, the focus of the club had changed to improve playing personnel and not the stadium.

Stamford Bridge waiting for #CHEWAT...

Three hours to go! pic.twitter.com/qzDkZFWFjC
— Chelsea FC (@ChelseaFC) July 4, 2020

Almost two decades on from that decision and Chelsea fans will be exceptionally grateful that Abramovich took that course of action with the club now ranked the fourth most successful in English football. But it has come at a price now that a long-overdue redevelopment of Stamford Bridge would cost even more than the actual price of the club alone. Revealingly, Abramovich let the planning permission expire in 2020 after deciding that even his pockets weren't deep enough to cover the projected redevelopment expenses of a stadium that was last worked on thirty years ago.

That probably tells you everything you need to know about the likelihood of Stamford Bridge undergoing any changes in the future.

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