Chelsea Consider Selling Stadium Naming Rights

Chelsea fans who chuckled at the risible new name for Newcastle's St James Park stadium will be choking on their match-day pies at the news that the league-leading Londoners are thinking of selling the naming rights to Stamford Bridge.

The club's new chief executive, Ron Gourlay, won't have endeared himself to the Blues faithful with this strange explanation:

We are not prepared to... allow our rival clubs to gain a competitive advantage over us in terms of the revenue they can generate through either expanding the capacity of their existing stadia or moving to a new stadium. Those possibilities are not open to Chelsea for the foreseeable future...so that means we have to be creative and look at our sponsorship architecture

"Sponsorship architecture" -- the new euphemism for selling your club's good name down the river in the worship of dear Mammon. As seen at the Emirates, the new Spurs stadium and at aforementioned Newcastle, whose newly-named home of sportsdirect.com@St James Park has confirmed them as the country's joke club.

Said Gourlay: "Retaining the heritage of the stadium is paramount to considering such a move". Well, that's great news for Chelsea fans who'll soon be trudging meekly along to watch their heroes at Stam Ford Mondeo Bridge.