CHELSEA SPECIAL REPORT: Even those at the club think ‘it’s a f****** mess’!

For those concerned about the mental health of Todd Boehly and Behdad Eghbali, rest assured. There is some humility now that they’ve owned Chelsea for ten months, in the week Graham Potter was sacked and Frank Lampard was reinstalled.

“It’s a mess, of course,” someone close to the executives said this week. “Nobody’s acting like this was the plan.”

The leadership at Chelsea isn’t so insulated from the reality in their respective billionaire dens in Santa Monica and Connecticut that they’re oblivious to the perception of them in the European game, that of big-talking Americans strolling into town and flashing the cash.

The old Bundesliga abbreviation for handling the Premier League – SEM (Stupid English Money) – may have been replaced by SCM (Stupid Chelsea Money), but the owner is unflappable, despite acknowledging this short-term crisis and wishing it turned out well. otherwise.

Their judgment is on the line given that they decided, with the wealth of data at their disposal, that Potter was the man to come in terms of coaching, a generational talent. That he now appears not to be leaves them at the outset when considering the merits of Julian Nagelsmann and Luis Enrique. They will be joined by a plethora of technical and sporting directors in Christopher Vivell, Paul Winstanley and Laurence Stewart. Chelsea should come up with a collective name for football directors.

A loss on the road at Wolves is immediately followed by a tough test in Madrid

The attempt to reinvent the wheel required some adjustments. Boehly and Eghbali entered their new sports franchise believing it was better to get a coach on their way up than a more experienced hand spat out by rivals. Now they recognize it might be better to take a coach who has been there and done that, even if it means the shortlist might look no different to Tottenham’s.

Nagelsmann will appeal as he has experience at big clubs and in the Champions League, and looks like the best coach in European football in his 30s, despite his mixed form at Bayern Munich this season. Enrique has been around a bit longer, oversaw a Liga, Copa del Rey and Champions League treble at Barca and delivered hugely or failed miserably with Spain, depending on your opinion. Any of these still look like the smart choice for summer.

Nevertheless, Lampard is admired and not just for his respected status at the club. It is believed he was sacked earlier, although it would take a Roberto Di Matteo-esque charge to win the Champions League to give him a chance to oversee next season. Against Carlo Ancelotti and Real Madrid buoyed by their 4-0 Copa del Rey semi-final win against Barcelona, ​​that seems unlikely.

There may also be fringe benefits at Lampard. Chelsea want Mason Mount, their academy banner star, to stay but can’t agree terms and he has to be sold with a year left. If anyone can convince Mount, it’s Lampard, who promoted him straight to the first team when he took over at Chelsea in 2019.

Frank Lampard’s reinstallation surprised many, but may still have fringe benefits

Graham Potter ticked a lot of boxes for the club, but in the end there were too many bad results with too little direction

Perhaps the story of how Chelsea invested so much in Potter and ended up selling it at the lower end of the market comes from relying on the advice of others rather than having a team of their own. Although criticized for the firing of Thomas Tuchel, the relationship between coach and owners had become quite toxic.

That was never the case with Potter. He ticked all the boxes when it comes to developing young players. This week’s decision would have been stressful simply because he has been such a good colleague. But in the end Chelsea leaders came to feel that they were the only people at Stamford Bridge who believed the manager should stay. However, the new owners recognize the need to take fans on the journey and clearly, with Potter leading the charge, they seemed to be traveling in diverging directions. The only thing that tied the property right to Potter was that firing him would be a mistake.

They would have ridden that if their faith in him had remained. You can get bad results if the direction is right. Towards the end it felt like they had the former without the latter, although Potter would say when you spend £600m and you’re dealing with a 35 player first team it can take a while to make something great. It is possible that Chelsea banished the artist just as he was grounding the canvas to prepare a masterpiece. But Boehly and Eghbali could no longer see the bigger picture he was painting.

Still, they believe the rest of the takeover revolution is going according to plan. Despite Chelsea losing £121m last season – and having spent £600m since then – Boehly and Eghbali insist the club will adhere to UEFA and PL financial fair play rules.

Chelsea’s expensive and bloated squad – which also includes the likes of Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang – has primed the club’s hierarchy for a necessary summer sell-off

As desired as Mason Mount is by Chelsea and their fans, selling him could be a good thing

And they will have to sell in the summer. Rivals anticipate a sell-out, knowing that Chelsea must balance their books. How well the new sports directors keep their nerve may well determine the success of this venture or not. The easiest players to move on for good money are Mount and Conor Gallagher.

They insist this isn’t a retreat from their commitment to the academy, but if those two leave, along with Callum Hudson-Odoi, it means 19 years of hard work building a youth policy under Roman Abramovich will have paid off. adding to the sale of Fikayo Tomori and Tammy Abraham for £60 million. Hard money trumps romance. And Levi Colwill will be back next season to play alongside Reece James.

The strategy of buying young talent in the hope of future dividends is unchanged. Chelsea believes the market is undervalued and they don’t need all of their young starlets to become superstars to reap a reward. Whether they need 60 or 80 percent to get right is a moot point.

Seasoned scouts suggest that the success rate of talented 19-year-olds becoming world class is over 25 percent. Awarding eight-year contracts is really not a trick to circumvent Financial Fair Play rules. Starting salaries are low, so those who don’t train will be able to move with relative ease. That said, one of football’s oldest sayings is that it’s easier to buy big than to sell big.