Shutting the window...£1 billion later

Picture: Chelsea FC

It still strikes me as absurd that the new Premier League season is almost a month old and yet, even as late as last night, teams were still doing business before the transfer window shut. This summer’s spend has exceeded £2 billion, and it doesn’t fill me with that much pride that my own club has contributed significantly to that outlay.

Since the Boehly-Clearlake consortium took over Chelsea last summer, it has spent around a billion pounds on new players, some of whom haven’t even made it to a second season, drawing question marks over the scattergun strategy of purchases that certainly marked the 2022 summer window, and continued in January this year.

With Mauricio Pochettino taking over as head coach in July (having been closely consulted in the weeks leading up to him starting work), Chelsea’s summer transfer activity has, at first glance, looked more purposeful, with many of the badly needed positions filled. Looked at from a higher level – with 10 players coming in, and 21 senior squad members offloaded, the club has undergone a complete oil change, to the extent that the only players remaining from the pre-takeover Abramovich era are Thiago Silva, Ben Chilwell, newly installed club captain Reece James, Trevoh Chalobah and reserve goalkeeper Marcus Bettinelli. Oh, and Malang Sarr who, embarrassingly, Pochettino didn’t seem to be aware of when asked about by journalists this week.

If it wasn’t clear before, it should be abundantly apparent now that the player transfusion has been deliberate: capitalise on the net-loss sale of homegrown players like Mason Mount, Ruben Loftus-Cheek and, last night, Callum Hudson-Odoi, and focus on rebuilding around youth – on which Pochettino’s reputation has been built – with players signed for six, seven and even eight-year contracts, with the costs amortised over those periods to lower Financial Fair Play exposure as rules currently apply. 

That, though, is the positive spin: the negative is that somehow Boehly’s spending – which in buying Enzo Fernández and Moisés Caicedo has twice broken British transfer records – Chelsea’s seemingly limitless spree on the brightest young talents around has seen little limit.

Moisés Caicedo
Picture: Chelsea FC

Whether it has been to any good remains to be seen: since 12 August, Chelsea have won one, drawn one and lost one in the Premier League with their expensively assembled squad, while at the same time seen their injury list pile up to 11 – effectively a complete team – with the need for further reinforcements as a result. The latest is 21-year-old Cole Palmer from Manchester City, something of a fringe player under Pep Guardiola but seemingly highly regarded by Chelsea’s talent acquisition experts looking to augment Pochettino’s attacking options further.

The logic to most of the acquisitions is not in doubt, nor the decision to part company with academy-developed and therefore marketable players. Getting rid of ineffective and expensive overheads like Kai Havertz, Romelu Lukaku, Hakim Zyech and Christian Pulisic will have lowered the wage bill, allowing the club to bring in players in their late teens and early twenties on smaller salaries, their exorbitant transfer fees spread over the longer period of their extended contracts.

Graphic: Sky Sports

Whether, though, this approach will keep Premier League and UEFA investigators happy is another matter entirely. In the aftermath of Roman Abramovich’s sanctioning there was a very real chance that Chelsea could have folded, especially as negotiations between the Government and the consortium ran into issues at the 11th hour. The Fair Play aspect does mean that the £1 billion spend since is a calculated risk by Todd Boehly and his partners.

Some will say the risk is worth it, given how phase two of the “project” – this summer’s clearout and subsequent refresh – has brought in players like Caicedo and Romeo Lavia, Christopher Nkunku and Nicolas Jackson. Pochettino’s new broom approach has also appeared to restore last summer’s marquee signing Raheem Sterling to his best, with Caicedo’s arrival freeing up Fernández to look more like the £107 million he was bought for.

With no European football this season and expectations around a largely entirely new squad taking time to bed in alleviating some of the pressure on Pochettino, he has a unique platform on which to build. It’s hard to judge which has been the more beneficial development – new blood or the expulsion of those whose number had grown to create a bloated and largely unresponsive squad under Thomas Tuchel, Graham Potter and Frank Lampard last season.

Of course, with the visit today of Nottingham Forest, Poch will only have four competitive games behind him – three in the league and a narrow, blush-sparing win over Wimbledon in the Carabao Cup on Wednesday night – which means judgement must be reserved in the short-term. But if the club line that this is a long-term project is to be believed, questions will be asked on what measure of success will be an acceptable return for the eye-watering outlay. 

Is, even, a cup this season ambitious for a club that has this year spent £222 million on two midfielders alone? Is a European finish to be expected and if so, are we talking about a Top Four place next May, or a Europa League or even a Europa Conference League place? Note, no one is talking about Chelsea challenging for the Premier League title itself this season, but surely the target must be to match or get close to Manchester City amid renewed challenges from Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester United, Newcastle and Tottenham.

Nothing is guaranteed, and as Pochettino’s injury woes have piled up, the rug has, if not been pulled from beneath him, certainly shown signs of slipping. On paper he has a wealth of talent at his disposal, but on paper is never a guarantee, as Mykhailo Mudryk has demonstrated following his £88.5 million transfer from Shakhtar Donetsk and a decidedly unimpressive opening spell in the Premier League, which is now curtailed by injury. As we’ve seen so often in football, the heavier the price tag the heavier the weight of expectation, and that may well have been the cause of the young Ukrainian’s decidedly underwhelming displays so far. He, perhaps more than any other squad player, will be Pochettino’s primary target for improvement.

While the astronomical amount of money Chelsea has spent over the last three windows will always be a lighting rod for critics and rival fans alike, the harsh reality is that if it doesn’t result in sustained success, it will only be seen as one of the most profligate billionaire’s folly in football’s most recent history of inflationary excess.

“We need to be careful with the young guys because they need time to settle,” Pochettino said during his press conference yesterday ahead of today’s home fixture against Forest. “We need to settle all the players who have arrived late, create spaces and build a solid structure to perform after.” 

Cole Palmer
Picture: Chelsea FC

He was addressing questions about the £42.5 million arrival of Palmer, the final purchase of this extraordinary window. “He is from Manchester and is going to move to London. London is different, the club is different, the culture is different. He needs to - first of all, before he starts to perform - settle and feel his space. We are not going to put pressure on him to perform. He needs to be happy and calm and find space in this team.”

“He fits the project and he is a young and talented player. Of course, he also decided to come because he expected to play more and be important here. That’s not the most important thing, the most important thing is that he wanted to come because he sees Chelsea as a project for him to improve his game and to maybe be more involved in every single game. But, yes, I think the quality is there. He has great potential.”

Pochettino appeared to suggest that with Palmer his 13th new player this summer the spree will slow down. “We need to explain the reality in the same way - we sign players, we sell players. It is more about net spending than really the money you spend because that’s the balance the club is now trying to get.” Crucially he addded: “This is a very special situation for the club from the beginning but, for sure, the club won’t keep doing for years what they have done in the past.”

For me, the summer transfer window is usually a time of excitement. At Chelsea in the modern era, it’s been one long Christmas Day, lasting from June to September each year. This time around, following the randomness of the Boehly-Clearlake spree last summer and again this January, it’s easy to feel brittle if, for nothing else, the risk to pride if the influx of new players goes tits up. 

Just once it would be nice for Chelsea to be the club people don’t talk about until they’ve achieved something. Tribality normally prevents that, as the barely-acknowledged successes in the Abramovich era serve testament to (amid the near universal deification of the two Manchesters). But the club doesn’t help itself. I’ve always bridled at the suggestion that Chelsea has, for the last 20 years, bought success, as almost every club at the top of the pyramid is guilty of the very same. I just hope that the price tags we’ve seen this summer can be justified on the pitch, and the new intake give us up in the stands something to be genuinely excited about.

New Year, new thinking, old problem

Picture: Sky Sports

So I start 2023 with a post about football. Sorry if you were expecting something erudite about rock and roll, but there’s plenty of that in the pipeline, I assure you. It’s just that things need to be said about my football club. And being a Monday, home of the occasional ‘Monday Moan’ (see posts passim), it might as well be now, even if today is only the second day of the new year.

There was hope that the World Cup, which ate through most of the final six weeks of the old year, would allow Graham Potter time to figure out what wasn’t happening at Chelsea. Prior to last Tuesday’s restorative 2-0 win over Bournemouth, the club had suffered three straight defeats in its previous Premier League outings, running up to the tournament in Qatar. Potter had said that he would use the international break to get his head around why. In fairness, it was probably the first opportunity he’d had to fully get under the skin of the team he’d been somewhat parachuted into following Thomas Tuchel’s abrupt sacking in September, barely a month into the new season. That meant Potter had a steep curve to attain, even if it was softened by conciliatory noises from Chelsea’s new owners about a “project” that would give him time. 

The Bournemouth result, which saw goals from Kai Havertz and Mason Mount, with Raheem Sterling displaying a contributory form that he’d barely shown since his summer move from Manchester City, gave some hope that Potter’s pledge before the game, that improvement was coming, would ring true. “We’ve had a challenging time, some ups, some downs, in terms of the previous year which is normal at any football club,” the head coach said during his pre-match comments. “But we want to stabilise, try and improve and make our supporters happy, because we know the last few weeks before the break weren’t nice for us. Results suffered, performances weren’t where we wanted them to be, and we have to do better than that.”

Picture: Twitter/Chelsea FC

The one negative in the Bournemouth result was the withdrawal of Reece James having put in a half during which he’d demonstrated, cruelly, what Chelsea had been missing during his absence due to a knee injury. When that injury occurred again, right in front of the dugout, a collective groan extended around Stamford Bridge. That was just how much difference James had made. If, then, you add his left-sided wingback counterpart Ben Chilwell to the injury list, a picture emerges of why Chelsea have looked pedestrian without the pair, marauding forward to cut in, or providing flank protection to a central defensive trio that includes the 38-year-old Thiago Silva. It’s worth noting that since the start of last season Chelsea have won 82% of the games James and Chilwell have started together, and lost just once. Given that both players have been injured for varying periods of that record, you have to wonder what could have been with them fully intact.

So, move on a few days to yesterday’s New Year’s Day visit to second-from-bottom Nottingham Forest, whose manager Steve Cooper knew exactly where to exploit weakness. The resulting 1-1 scoreline flattered Chelsea with, perhaps, the one bright spot being Raheem Sterling’s long overdue sixth goal out of 17 appearances. Full credit, then, to Cooper for inspiring his side into not lying down. But questions must be asked as to why Potter was unable to eek another three points out of a squad in which the club’s new owners invested an additional £270 million last summer. Word is there’s even more expenditure to come. Money, as we all know, doesn’t necessarily solve problems. 

“I think Potter needs time,” was the conclusion of Graeme Souness after the Forest game. “This is not a squad equipped to go and win big games of football. Their goal difference is plus-two.”. Which raises the obvious question: if not, what does £270 million buy you, then? Not a lot, it would seem. None of Chelsea’s summer purchases have exactly set the world alight.

What is emerging are doubts about co-owners Todd Boehly and Behdad Eghbali’s buying strategy, which has appeared more urgent largesse than tactical solution finding. £170 million of that spend went on defenders. By any measure of expectation, Kalidou Koulibaly (a £33 million buy from Napoli), Marc Cucurella (£56 million from Brighton) and Wesley Fofana (almost £70 million from Leicester - and has only made six appearances due to injury), should have made some difference. But, it would seem, no. Koulibaly was meant to resolve the departures of Antonio Rüdiger and Andreas Christensen, both of whose contracts had run down amid dissatisfaction with successive managers, and then exploited the vacuum caused by Roman Abramovich’s forced disposal of the club.

Picture: Twitter/Chelsea FC

Against Forest, Chelsea were exposed at the back. Playing a four, with Koulibaly and Silva flanked by club captain César Azpilicueta and Cucurella, Chelsea looked leaden through the middle, with Jorginho labouring despite loanee Denis Zakaria putting in a decent shift. As wingbacks, Azpiliqueta and Cucurella are no substitutes for James and Chilwell, either in terms of guile or agility. Which means more is expected from the midfield. But here questions must be asked about Jorginho’s viability. In turn, the forward line of Pulisic, Havertz and Sterling look somewhat anaemic, with the American blowing hot and cold (frustratingly, he was outstanding for the USA in Qatar) and the German still unsure of whether he is a false 9 or an actual 9. Hakim Zyech doesn’t seem to have Potter’s confidence as a starting option, despite an outstanding appearance for Morocco at the World Cup. That seemed to merely confirm that he wanted to remain in the shop window, because God knows he hasn’t appeared to be interested in playing for his club when he’s been given the chance.

What this all ladders up to is that Chelsea are, after all that outlay, lacking from front to back. Even if you factor in a lengthening injury list that includes N’Golo Kanté (who surely must be reaching the end of his contract and usefulness, anyway, given that he spends more time on the treatment table these days than a football pitch), the project must surely be about a wholesale blood transfusion rather than more purchases which essentially paper over cracks that have existed in the plasterwork for a long time. 

As one Twitter wag noted yesterday after the draw with Forest, Chelsea have burned through Antonio Conte, Maurizio Sarri, club legend Frank Lampard and Tuchel as managers in the last six years, but some of the same players that engendered their sacking are still on the books. A harsh assessment maybe, but it is perhaps why the appointment of RB Leipzig’s Christopher Vivell as technical director could be the most important signing of the Boehly era (replacing the American chairman himself who’d been fulfilling the role ad-interim). 

Maybe that will stem the apparently naive acquisitions of players like striker Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, bought in an act of transfer deadline day desperation, presumably in the belief that he could reconnect with former Borussia Dortmund manager Tuchel, only for the coach to be fired five days later. In fairness, Chelsea have been staffing up behind the scenes under the new ownership, especially within its much-vaunted academy, but the attention - and expectation - will always fall on the first team.

And so, we enter another January window. Received wisdom is that player signings at this time of year smack of shotgun wedding, and often end in disappointment (case in point: Fernando Torres). So far, the club has brought in 20-year-old Ivorian striker David Datro Fofana to cover for Armando Broca’s long-term injury, and central defender Benoît Badiashile has joined from Monaco for around £32 million. As is now the custom, Chelsea are being linked with just about every other player who performed with distinction at the World Cup in the belief that the Boehly-Clearlake chequebook contains endless blank pages.

This does bring the spotlight back to Graham Potter. Whether he gets time remains to be seen, but compared to his predecessors, the threat of a P45 isn’t as immediate under the new owners as they had been under Abramovich. But even that doesn’t insulate him. Potter’s challenge - which he hitherto hasn’t encountered in his managerial career - is to turn a squad that still contains Champions League-winning players from only May 2021 back into Top Four competitors. Which on yesterday’s evidence and today’s view of the Premier League table, in which Chelsea sit eighth, seems unlikely.

The impending period will, though, pile on the pressure. Potter’s next two games are against Manchester City - the first, at home in the league, the second, three days later, at the Etihad in the FA Cup. There’s little respite beyond that, either, with a trip down the Fulham Road to upbeat neighbours at Craven Cottage, before returning to Stamford Bridge for Crystal Palace, and then back on the road to Anfield, all before the January window shuts. No wonder fans are anxious. Some have become openly hostile to Potter, though these tend to be keyboard gobshites offering little more than Mauricio Pochettino’s name as an alternative, and who patently haven’t read the situation that the Chelsea coach found himself in when he drove up the A23 from Brighton to his new job in September.

Fresh blood might help - sorry, fresh blood should help - but the bottom line is that Chelsea have too many players who are, to varying degrees, underperforming in seemingly untouchable positions. Some might be doing so because of the players around them, while with others it’s because they simply lack the winning mentality required at the club. 

It’s often said that Chelsea have never been as good as the team that won trophies repeatedly under José Mourinho with a spine of serial winners - and leaders - that ran from goal (Petr Čech), through central defence (John Terry), central midfield (Lampard) to the front (Didier Drogba). The club has, of course, won silverware since that quartet’s retirements, but in its current line-up, it’s hard to identify where the strengths are. Capabilities are there, no doubt, and I’m certainly not suggesting that Chelsea are currently a collection of individuals. But there’s something patently missing.

It doesn’t need to be found immediately, though. A period of purdah from open-top buses might allow the club to re-establish the imperiousness of the early Abramovich era, and the success that had eluded it in the preceding 34 years. The trouble is, success is a very demanding mistress. And a lucrative one, too. Which might tip the weight of expectation on Graham Potter’s shoulders against him in the months ahead.