Chelsea’s business model is doomed to fail. Football is like any other business, where if you give youngsters too much too soon, in most cases they will stop showing up and will not want to learn something new every day.
This Chelsea strategy of giving young players seven and eight year contracts is a write-off exercise. It is not the actions of real football people who understand the market or the game.
This summer they signed 11 players with an average age of 21 for around £200m, all on long-term contracts.
I can tell you now that most of them will not be good enough to get Chelsea where they want to be, which is to compete for the two major trophies: the Premier League and the Champions League.
And once that realization sinks in, they are faced with the dilemma of how to get rid of them. Chelsea are going to spend the next five years pushing players out the door and getting nowhere near as much back as they paid for them.
Chelsea’s business model is doomed to fail – the danger is they create monsters
These are not the actions of real football people who understand the market or the game
These young men will also have had such high salaries that the buying club cannot afford them and therefore hopes that Chelsea will help them.
By giving twenty-somethings financial security for the rest of their lives, their desire will diminish. They will no longer see every day as a school day.
It becomes too much, too fast, and those same people will settle into their lazy chairs. It makes the job of a manager who is almost on a mission impossible.
It has never been harder to motivate a dressing room, let alone one full of young multi-millionaires. And if it doesn’t work, whose fault is it? The manager’s?
Chelsea will argue that they no longer pay such high salaries and that these long contracts protect their investments and increase the value of the player on their balance sheet.
By providing twenty-somethings with financial security for the rest of their lives, their desire will decrease
They have a bloated squad of over 50 players. I can promise you that over half of that squad will never be the players they think they will be. How long can you wait for them? Chelsea need results now.
What lessons have they learned from Callum Hudson-Odoi from six years ago?
A teenager with a lot of potential, who attracted interest from Bayern Munich and wasn’t being picked every week, handed in a transfer request. Chelsea were caught between a rock and a hard place. They gave him a five-year contract worth over £100,000 a week. Before he was even 19. How did that work out for them?
His career went downhill, he was eventually sold for £3m, but thankfully he got a second chance at Nottingham Forest so maybe he can turn it around. But once you start handing out these big deals, the players start thinking they are stars and that’s when the problems start. The money attracts the wrong sort of people to the players, they take the wrong advice and it starts a downward spiral.
I keep coming back to the importance of having good senior professionals in your dressing room. Do Chelsea have a few now? To make matters worse, the manager’s door is a revolving door, which prevents continuity.
This situation is not unique to Chelsea. You could argue that Manchester United rewarded Marcus Rashford too early. There are countless examples.
Half the squad will never be the players they think they will be, but Chelsea need results
But Chelsea will never be successful as long as they continue with this business model of supposedly investing in the future, because the danger is that they create monsters. Putting young talent on such long contracts only feeds hunger and desire.
The power of players has never been greater. You pay them the big money to sign, and what happens if it doesn’t work and you have to fire them, but they’ve got three years left? They pull the pants off the club and get a payout to go.
Chelsea need to sell over £200m worth of players in the next two weeks to balance the books. Good luck with that.
It’s Arsenal’s year, unless there are late transfers
It will be extremely difficult for the three promoted teams to survive this season.
The spectre of profit and sustainability rules means that clubs emerging now are spending money, but not at the level they would like for fear of future reprisals. Leicester already have the threat of points deductions hanging over their heads. It just means that they are always fighting for survival.
My top three? Well, I’m going for Arsenal to win the title, Manchester City to come second and Liverpool to come third. That could change if there are any big transfer extravaganzas between now and August 30th. I hope Liverpool make at least one big signing, because Jurgen Klopp got the most out of this group of players and they managed to finish third last season. Will Arne Slot get the same sound out of them?
I don’t think he would have come without the promise of money to spend. They also brought back Michael Edwards as chief executive of football.
His recruitment record was pretty impressive last time around. No one gets all their signings right, but he did exceptionally well and his ability to find them will be invaluable to the club in the future.
Arsenal are tipped to beat Manchester City to the Premier League title this season
The greatness of Goodison stuck with me
It would be great if Everton could give their loyal fans a great season and say goodbye to Goodison Park in a fitting manner.
It’s a special place, one of two iconic stadiums in the city, and one I’ve always had a soft spot for. Goodison was the first stadium I visited in England. In 1968, when I was 15, I was due to play for Edinburgh Schoolboys against Liverpool Schoolboys, but torrential rain meant the match was called off.
My mate Eric Carruthers and I were given a tour of the stadium though. Goodison had been used in the 1966 World Cup and Everton were known as the ‘Bank of England Club’, or the ‘Millionaires’, because of how expensive it had been to put their team together. We also went to Anfield for a tour but were not allowed on the pitch.
The grandeur of the place stuck with me. Unfortunately, for the blue half of Merseyside, I also have much fonder memories of the games there.
It would be good if Everton could give their supporters a great season as a farewell to Goodison
Fagan is great on and off the field
During the conversations for Everything I Know About Me, the podcast series I recorded with the Mail, I realised how lucky I’ve been.
In last week’s episode I talked about what a great person my former Liverpool manager Joe Fagan was, and it got me thinking about how good a footballer he was too.
Even when he was 60, Joe – then a centre half – was playing six-a-sides at Melwood and you couldn’t get past him. He had a knack for dragging you away from the danger zone. A great man.