Billion Dollar Chelsea
WHAT WOULD YOU BUY WITH A BILLION DOLLARS?
In those quiet, reflective moments that many of us have on occasion, do you ever wonder what you would do with a billion pounds? Buy a jumbo jet maybe. An ocean-going yacht or two. Your own Caribbean Island. A fleet of Ferrari’s. A face lift for Donald Trump! The opportunities are seemingly endless. You might even buy an English Premier League football club? I ask you, who wouldn’t want to navigate the labyrinth of opulence where every corner reveals yet more treasures untold, and every step echoes with your own symphony of abundance. But there is apparently one thing that a billion pounds cannot buy and that is the Premier League title, unless your name is Roman of course who really did show us all how it could be done. Which brings us nicely to the Chelsea FC. Yep. Good ole’ Chelsea where another manager has just made his way through to the departure lounge which is larger than then one at Heathrow Airport! Mauricio Pochettino is carrying the can for taking the club with a cheque book larger than a bedspread to the lofty heights of being the sixth best team in the Premier League, and whose reckless dance of wealth without achievement must rank as the very essence of profligacy.
MONEY PLUS VISION.
Everywhere, the club has players affixed with the kind of price tags that would embarrass a personal shopper at Harrods! Todd Boley is the human credit-card who replaced Roman Abramovich after Vladimir Putin decided to go for an unscheduled away win in the Ukraine. However, Since Todd took control of the Bridge, he has simultaneously lost control of his wallet and his mind. From the get-go Boley embraced his role with all the vigour of a child for whom every Christmas arrived every day. It was Roman Abramovich who took the levels of transfer spending at Chelsea to a stratospheric level that only the wealthiest clubs in Spain and Italy had ever previously met. Boley however brought his very own version of financial shock and awe to this department. Todd arrived with all the fanfare that usually greets a rich sugar-daddy messiah. Plus, he had a vision, never a good idea, of how he saw football developing. He promised the faithful all-star games, Basketball-style time outs, majorettes, and rock concerts at half-time. and elaborate money-spinning play-offs. His regular ventures into the team’s dressing room were about as welcome as a cigarette in a fireworks factory!
WHERE IS TODD?
And yet here’s the thing. Have you noticed how rarely you see him these days. Has he bought a billion-pound allotment? If so, Chelsea fans might be forgiven for asking him to grow a striker or two, a proper defensive midfielder, and about five acres worth of replaceable managers. In the first few weeks after he fronted the Clearlake takeover of Chelsea, he was like a newly qualified consultant offering his sagacity to all the lever pullers throughout European football, and what they might learn from the encyclopaedia of US Sport. If I had been the owner of any professional football league club, I would certainly have invited Todd and Mrs Boehly to dinner to ascertain just how to devise a masterplan that entailed spending over one billion pounds to transform one of English Premier League’s most accomplished football clubs into a in also-ran that is set to take part in Europe’s second tier tournament.
MONEY FOR MEDIOCRITY.
Unfortunately, of all the limited skills that Chelsa possess, their ability to turn a foreign legion of hundred-million-pound players into a hundred-thousand-pound team is surely a model of profligacy unrivalled by any other club in Europe. A team which has danced with more formations than you would find on any series of ‘Strictly-Come-Dancing!’ And with more cash to fritter away than a drunken oil baron. It remains a pity that the club, or more specifically the director of football, doesn’t appear to appreciate that the man who puts the ball into the back of the net on twenty-plus occasions might be a good idea during a transfer window. Just saying.
The money is there for all to see but much of it utterly wasted on mediocrity, Cole Palmer notwithstanding, who has been the one outstanding player on view.
Mykhailo Mudryk can do almost anything on a football pitch provided it has nothing whatsoever to do with the ball. In fact, he is so bad that he makes Robert Sanchez and Romeo Lavia look like ballon d’or contenders. Conor Gallagher is lauded by Chelsea fans for his ability to run almost five marathons before half-time in almost every match. Luka Modric, by contrast, is fourteen years Gallagher’s senior and yet his footballing brain can cover more distance in a nano-second than Gallagher’s legs can carry him over ninety-minutes. It truly is amazing what footballing intelligence can do for the legs! However, come July it is doubtful that Todd’s habitual spending will let up. And yet the constant opening of his wallet doesn’t seem to be opening the trophy cabinet. All money thus far is literally under the bridge! And on top of this UEFA is set to alter its Financial Fair Play, FFP, model to a cost control ratio, by which player wages, transfers and agent fees will by 2025 be limited to 70% of revenue and profit on player sales. At the moment, Chelsea’s is around 90%.
CYPRUS CONFIDENTIAL.
And yet just when you thought a poor league finish, another managerial casualty and the new FFP regulations bring their own set of challenges, there lurks on the horizon the yet to be published results of a particular investigation that has been ongoing since late 2023 that could find Todd and his beloved Chelsea in the kind of hot water usually reserved for boiling lobsters! And before you ask, Cyprus Confidential isn’t a film starring Russell Crowe and Kim Basinger. Inter alia it stars Chelsea football club in what could potentially leave the club with less points than a Great Britain Eurovision song entry! And before you cry ‘well what about Manchester City?’ Do not fret because that particular chicken is well on his way back to roost. Anyway, the investigation is part of a huge international investigation into some 3.6m offshore company records which were uncovered an International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, and several dozen different news outlets across the world have had access to parts of it. Apparently, dodgy dealings abound, with lots of undeclared payments to holding companies and offshore accounts etc with various links to a certain Mr Roman Abramovic. Of course it might all be baloney, and it might not. But as I say, the results of the investigation are yet to be announced, but if there is any tangible proof that Chelsea Football Club used third-party transactions to circumvent the profitability and sustainability rules then the club might need to brace itself for major sanctions. Chelsea fans might bemoan a session of profligacy both on and off the pitch but that could turn out to be the least of their problems.
