Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich rejected buying shares in Tottenham after chairman Daniel Levy tried to convince him to take a minority stake.

Mark Taylor, the former Chelsea director, claimed on the Straight Outta Cobham podcast that the Russian businessman was in talks to buy the Blues’ rivals, Spurs, before he took control at Stamford Bridge.

Abramovich went to see Levy the day before he met with Chelsea’s then-chairman Ken Bates with his colleague Eugene Tenenbaum, but Taylor said the Tottenham chief tried to sell him a chunk of the club after he asked about a majority stake.

“The key point was that when Ken met Roman and Eugene Tenenbaum they made it very clear that they wanted to buy control,” Taylor explained to The Athletic.

“I think the story is they had seen Daniel Levy the previous day and he’d tried to sell them 29.9 per cent of Tottenham but they didn’t want a minority stake, they wanted control.”

The decision ended up working wonders for Chelsea, with Abramovich taking charge in June 2003 and immediately improving the club on and off the pitch, report the Sportsmail.

Since the 53-year-old’s reign began at Stamford Bridge, the club have won 16 major trophies including five Premier League titles, the UEFA Champions League and five FA Cups.

“Chelsea had been looking for investors for about 18 months and we’d had a lot of time-wasters and Roman seemed viable,” Taylor added.

“Nobody really knew who he was – and so on the Friday morning his lawyers brought in Forbes magazine from America and I think he was No 15 on the list with X billion dollars, which seemed to be quite a good starting point.”