Could Chelsea's strategy deliver in the medium term?

A last minute Liverpool goal saw Chelsea go down 1-0 in the League Cup final to boost Jurgen Klopp’s farewell tour.  Cheap shots have been aimed at the club overnight such as ‘billion dollar bottlers’.   But could they have a strategy that will deliver in the medium term?

Chelsea’s modelling based on underlying performance factors suggests they should be fifth in the Premier League, rather than tenth, a thesis backed up by similar projections at rival clubs and viewed internally as being good progress, given Chelsea finished 12th last season and have the top flight’s second-youngest squad.   Of course, in the meantime, it is the table that matters.

Perceptions of the Americans have been negative since their £4.25 billion takeover of Chelsea in May 2022. First impressions are at the root. Boehly installed himself as interim sporting director and oversaw two hyperactive transfer windows, where a net £470 million was lavished on players as diverse as the veteran striker Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, and Brazil Under-20 captain Andrey Santos.

Some moves appeared to involve little recruitment diligence. Marc Cucurella was bought hastily for £60 million after someone in Brighton & Hove Albion’s football department called a friend in Chelsea’s to say Manchester City were bidding (only £30 million, it turned out) for the Spaniard. Boehly handed his personal phone number to people and invited them to his opulent villa in Mykonos, from where he was Zoom-calling agents.

Over confident owners?

An agent close to deals during that period described it being “like [Farhad] Moshiri’s Everton on speed”. A US lawyer involved in previous American takeovers of English teams told the Sunday Times “every new American owner of a Premier League club has made missteps at first and that usually the problem is outsourcing key decisions through lack of confidence about an alien sport. Whereas Boehly and Eghbali’s issue was the opposite. “They came in like Masters of the Universe, thinking they knew better right off the bat.”

It was never Boehly’s intention to be a sporting director and both he and Eghbali are significantly less hands-on now than in their first season at Chelsea. They have deepened their footballing knowledge and become genuine fans. A Chelsea director jokingly asked Boehly recently if his plan was to finance the club through all his trips to the club shop to buy kit and memorabilia, while Eghbali often brings his entire family to games, watching from a box at Stamford Bridge with his parents, wife, son and daughter.

Thirty players have arrived since the takeover but those with close knowledge of what Boehly/Eghbali inherited say a high volume of transfer activity was necessary because a squad laden with older players needed churn and sanctions on Roman Abramovich compromised the previous regime’s forward planning.

The need for sustainability

The spending spree was also needed to establish a more sustainable model. Throughout his 18 years of ownership, Abramovich spent an average £1 million a week propping up Chelsea, accruing debts of £1.5billion. Under non-sovereign wealth ownership, this could clearly not be sustained and while big fees have been lavished in assembling the new squad of young players, wage costs are down dramatically.

There is now a joined-up approach to playing personnel decisions. For years, Chelsea used the loan system to park unneeded senior players with money-making in mind, collecting loan fees and protecting transfer value. Lucas Piazón went out on seven loans and Baba Rahman spent eight years at Chelsea but didn’t play for them in the last seven.   They want to instead fill Chelsea’s allocation of seven loan-out spots with youngsters — with development prioritised.

Chelsea’s next phase includes significantly building up its data department. In November, they visited LA Dodgers and saw how the franchise has a hub of about 35 number-crunchers working not only in recruitment but areas such as performance analytics, player support, technology and researching developments in the game.

There are plenty of people waiting for them to fail, but they may have the last laugh, although doing something about the stadium is perhaps the biggest challenge.