Chelsea have issued a statement offering their categoric condemnation of the death threats towards match referee Terje Hauge their supporters have posted to online messageboards in the wake of Wednesday night’s Champion’s League defeat to Barcelona.

The Chelsea fans have blamed Hauge for the defeat following his controversial decision to send off Asier Del Horno for a challenge on Lionel Messi. The dismissal then helped contribute to a Barcelona fightback as they came from behind to win the tie 2-1 at Stamford Bridge.

The threats have since been posted on Chelsea’s official club message board and on a Norwegian fan’s forum and coming so soon after similar threats from Chelsea fans last season led to the retirement of referee Anders Frisk in the same fixture, the club have made it clear that such actions will not be tolerated and have removed all offending posts from the messageboards.

A club spokesman said: “As with the Anders Frisk situation last year, Chelsea football club totally condemns any threats made to referees, officials, players or supporters of any club or organisation.

“The problem is that most of these messages are posted under false names. Tracking the culprits might not prove to be an easy task.”

This entry was posted on Friday, February 24th, 2006 at 9:51 am and is filed under Chelsea. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.