Blues owner in over his head

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 16/08/2024 (387 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

With the Premier League season underway as of this weekend, how about a riddle to kick things off…

What has six goalkeepers, no shirt sponsor and a midfielder stranded in Spain?

Still thinking? Here’s the answer, phrased as a wisecrack: “Wanna hear a quick Premier League joke? Chelsea.”

Ba dum tss!

Yes, it’s a knee-slapper, although it doesn’t go over all that well in parts of West London. That, or they don’t understand the humour — much like the club’s American owners who play at being baseball geniuses who don’t understand football.

It was always going to take a figure of astonishing unlikeability to make disgraced, asset-frozen former owner Roman Abramovich appear almost decent. Well, Todd Boehly is that figure. And the extent to which he’s trashed the club’s reputation, nevermind its long-term competitive viability, only reveals him to be as incompetent as he is reviled.

Nobody’s laughing at Stamford Bridge, least of all those Chelsea fans who used to be Fulham fans. They didn’t sign up for this!

Going into Sunday’s curtain-raiser at home to title holders Manchester City (Sunday, 10:30 a.m., FuboTV), Boehly’s Blues have somehow spent more than £1 billion ($1.76 billion) on player acquisitions — an astronomical (farcical?) sum the reward of which will be a UEFA Conference League play-in match on Thursday.

It’s anyone’s guess what set-up-to-fail manager Enzo Maresca’s team-sheet will look like when Chelsea face Swiss side Servette in the continent’s third-tier club competition. Given that they’re only three years removed from winning the Champions League, one would think they’d at least have a few veterans held over from that triumph.

One would be wrong.

Only Reece James and Ben Chilwell, the pair of wing-backs, remain from a line-up that, quite generously, qualified Chelsea for next summer’s expanded FIFA Club World Cup. Even with substitute goalkeeper Kepa Arrizabalaga included in the tally — and he spent last season on loan at Real Madrid — just three of those 23 players remain on the books.

Turnover is one thing, and three years is not an insignificant amount of time in modern football, but 38 (and counting) signings in Boehly’s two years at the club is a lot more than a mere freshening up. It’s madness, and it’s putting some players in embarrassingly awkward positions.

Literally.

Having passed his medical in advance of a move to Atletico Madrid, Blues midfielder Conor Gallagher spent five days in the Spanish capital awaiting the final paperwork that never came. The 24-year-old’s departure was intended to free up space for another Boehly buy; and as if a forced exit wasn’t discouraging enough, he wound up flying back to London when the deal hit a snag.

Then there’s Romelu Lukaku. Yes, the Belgian is still a Chelsea player, at least officially. But he doesn’t want to be — and the club doesn’t want him to be — so when it looked as though he’d join Napoli in a complicated swap for Victor Osimhen, both sides stood to get what they wanted.

Then Osimhen got cold feet. Sensibly, Paris Saint-Germain appeared a better option for the Nigeria international (and that’s saying something), and as he waited for PSG’s offer, a prominent evangelical pastor from Lagos warned him to “not go to Chelsea” as it would “kill” his career.

Some prophecies are worth listening to. In any event, Napoli grew understandably impatient, gave up on Lukaku and switched their attention to Benfica winger David Neres.

It’s all so ridiculous it boggles the mind. Unfortunately for Chelsea players and staff, and especially their supporters, the lunacy is only likely to end if and when (probably when) the Premier League imposes a points deduction for breach of Profitability & Sustainability regulations.

The club’s administration is clearly aware of what they’re risking, as they recently sold two Chelsea-owned hotels to another of Boehly’s holding companies in a transaction that wasn’t suspicious at all.

The Blues chairman simply can’t help himself.

On Tuesday he handed Cole Palmer a bizarre contract extension that ties the forward to the club for nine years, going six months better than the long-term pact signed by Mykhailo Mudryk in 2013.

Similarly, Benoit Badiashile, Wesley Fofana and Noni Madueke committed to six-and-a-half, seven and seven-and-a-half year agreements when they joined the club.

The thought process (though not a lot of thinking actually went into it) was that locking down players — and a lot of players — to long, baseball-style contracts would allow Chelsea to amortize their transfer fees over their duration.

Only, that doesn’t work in world football, where UEFA cracks down on such schemes; and the transfer market, unlike a North American trade market, often requires a selling team to retain salary when they want to sell a player, typically at a loss.

In other words, Boehly hasn’t merely knee-capped his team for this season and next; he’s also set in motion a decline that effectively rules out contention for major prizes in the long term. Though success in a lower league might be feasible, which is precisely where a points penalty could put them.

“Nonsense” is how former Chelsea and France midfielder Emmanuel Petit has described the goings-on at Stamford Bridge. Ex-Arsenal and England attacker Paul Merson has stated the Blues “don’t know what they’re doing.” Rory Smith, the New York Times chief football correspondent has slammed Boehly-ball as “fundamentally stupid.”

It’s all those things, and more. Which is why prospective shirt sponsors are staying far away — and why humour is needed to deal with the situation.

What has too many players, too little competence and no hope whatsoever?

Laugh it up, Chelsea. The joke’s on you.

jerradpeters@gmail.com

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