Middlesbrough chairman Steve Gibson brands Chelsea ‘pathetic’ over FA Cup request

Middlesbrough chairman Steve Gibson has launched a scathing attack on Chelsea and branded the club ‘pathetic’ after they requested this weekend’s FA Cup quarter-final be played behind closed doors.

The west Londoners have been blocked from selling further tickets for Saturday’s match at the Riverside stadium following a government ban after Russian owner Roman Abramovich was sanctioned and had his assets in the UK frozen.

Chelsea had only sold around 500 tickets of their 4,500 allocation prior to the ban, and on Tuesday they wrote to the FA requesting that the match be played without any fans from either team in the interests of ‘sporting integrity’.

The request has already been condemned by the government – and is set to be rejected by the FA – and now Middlesbrough chairman Gibson has hit out at Chelsea’s conduct and accused their success under Abramovich of being thanks to ‘corrupt money’.

‘I can’t believe it,’ Gibson – who has owned his boyhood club for 30 years – told The Times.

‘Sporting integrity and Chelsea do not belong in the same sentence. For 19 years corrupt money has fuelled Chelsea’s success.

‘If they were to beat us in the FA Cup, with no fans there, what would that do to the integrity of the competition?

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‘Are they going to play all their Premier League games behind closed doors too? This is pathetic by Chelsea.’

Middlesbrough also released a statement which struck much the same tone: ‘We are aware of Chelsea’s request to have Saturday’s Emirates FA Cup sixth round tie played behind closed doors and find