I get Roman Abramovich’s decision to put Chelsea into the stewardship and care of the trustees of the club’s foundation.
He is distancing himself in order to let the club function without other people in it being tarred with the very real sanctions he may face from around the world in the coming weeks and months.
But the optics showed that even in a statement which basically said, ‘I'll be back when all this dies down’, a football club — one at the pointy end of the world’s biggest sport as European and world champions — can’t even muster the cojones internally to use the words ‘war’ or ‘conflict’.
