Roman Abramovich: The Chelsea owner who changed English football forever - The Warm-Up

THURSDAY'S BIG STORIES For Sale: One Superclub, Slightly Used Ad/> Five league titles. Five FA Cups. Three League Cups.

A couple of Charity Shields. Two Champions League. Two Europa Leagues.

A Super Cup. And, most recently, the Club World Cup. And all it cost was something like £1.5 billion of debt, which will now be written off and vanish into the ether: the price of being a very rich man with a very expensive hobby.

TransfersWerner eyed as Haaland replacement with Bayern lurking — Paper Round7 HOURS AGO Whatever Roman Abramovich wanted out of his nearly two decades at Chelsea, he certainly got a big pile of silverware. He also got not too many questions asked. And now, as he hunts for a seller, he leaves behind him a sport utterly transformed by all that cold, hard cash that he's decided he doesn't want back.

There will be books written about the Abramovich years, and about the overheated intersection of sport, money, politics and power that appeared overnight in west London. But taking just the sport for the moment, a quick overview of what Abramovich's money did to English football might run something like this… First, the reconfiguration of the Premier League. When he took over, the domestic title belonged to either Manchester United or Arsenal, with occasional interested swipes from elsewhere.

Chelsea spent big immediately and finished second, behind Arsenal, under Claudio Ranieri. Then they spent bigger and won the league with Jose Mourinho. United had to adjust to a new and expensive world of 90-point hauls and season-long consistency; Arsenal have never recovered.