AMA Announcement: We’re excited to share that we’ve arranged an AMA with Simon Johnson, Chelsea Correspondent for The Athletic. The question thread will go live today at 5pm GMT, giving you 24 hours to submit your questions ahead of Simon joining us tomorrow at 5pm GMT to answer them.

Are you the real life Trent Crimm, The Independent?

Can you punch egghead for me ?

Hi Simon thanks for doing this.

You’ve written before about tension between the Boehly-Clearlake consortium. Does that tension still exist and has it gotten any worse after another subpar season?

Can you give us any insight into what the actual strategy is for the club? Is it more than just investing in young player and selling them for a profit later on?

Do you know what the criteria are for hiring new managers? Is there a certain style of play the SDs are looking for or just someone who can develop the young players?

Not the time for this

Someone jeedsbto ask him to give us the scoop on that Pochettino-Maresca trade off period when the players were mad that Poch left and Maresca was talking shit about him in press conferences. 

This has been an open dialogue for almost 2 years and we never got a resolution to the story, it can tell us a lot about the characters in the squad and the board of directors too 

What horrible thing did I do in my past life to deserve this club?

What is the feeling inside the club about how the ownership have performed over the last 4 years? Are there any directors/executives that believe things are going well or according to plan? Do the coach and players believe in the overall strategy?

Can you be our set piece coach

Hello Simon,

Appreciate the fact you’re doing this for fans online.

Does the club management realise that we will need a few marquee signings to solidify our position for top 4 after this season and build from there or we continuing to believe the current process is the way to go forward ? And will there be changes with manager in the summer in accordance to it. If so, does club have any tier1 manager or we going to stick with process of developing them at club ?

And how ironclad is the agreeemnt done by Raine Group that Clearlake capital and consortium can’t sell club within 10 years ?

It would be really helpful for us fans to figure out the direction of club. It will give us clarity on what to expect for foreseeable future and what sort of success club will achieve

Thank you

It’s been stated time and time again that there is total confidence in the leadership of the club, but given the stagnation of performances this season (and arguably over the past 18 months), obvious holes in the squad due to poor recruitment and toxic atmosphere among the fan base towards the owners what would it take for there to be a review of the strategy and sporting leadership (Winstanley, Stewart and Shields)?

My second question is about recruitment specifically– how does the ownership view the profitability of their transfer strategy if you take into account that much of the club’s transfer profits come from selling youth products? Their own success rate of buying and selling players is quite poor and the only players who could be sold for profit, would significantly weaken the squad. There have been retorts through the media that this young squad will develop together and become one of the best in the world, but there is currently no evidence to suggest that this strategy will work.