Chelsea distorting the market for young players even under a transfer ban

Chelsea are having an in-house transfer window since they are prohibited from having a traditional, extramural one. As often happens, they are bending the market to their current needs and everyone will deal with the fallout later.

Latching on to Travis’ article yesterday, part of Chelsea’s rush to extend many of their top youth involves offers they can not turn down. Ruben Loftus-Cheek’s contract is worth £120,000 per week and Callum Hudson-Odoi’s is worth £100,000. Mason Mount’s is presumably in the same range. The Blues’ accountants will be relieved the club no longer has to negotiate with Eden Hazard or anyone like him at his level.

Chelsea will have a hard time pushing back on an established player’s contract demands after this spate of optimistic extensions. Ruben Loftus-Cheek is the only player of the three over age 20, and the only one with a full season of Premier League appearances to his name. If we could somehow convert these wages into a corresponding transfer value – that is, based on what Chelsea are paying to them, what would they pay for them? (anyone have a formula? CIES Football Observatory?) – we would have a better picture of how the club are irrevocably moving the window of football finances.

This is certainly nothing new for Chelsea. Plenty of fans around the league still blame Roman Abramovich for inflating Premier League transfer fees. Did he? Of course, he did. But they’ve been re-inflated so much since his first few years (Manchester City, for crying out loud) that his influence makes for a weird hobbyhorse throughout England.

Like transfer fees, the salary horse is not going back in the barn. After paying £57 million for Jorginho and agreeing to low six-figures per week for Mason Mount, Chelsea will not have much standing to say “Whoa, slow down, buddy” when negotiating for their next midfielder, whether on a transfer or an extension.

If players with such thin profiles are making this much money based purely on potential with a side of sentimentality, players who need a separate moving truck for their trophies are going to make their demands accordingly.

It’s fun to laugh at Manchester United being caught up in a £70-80 million battle for Harry Maguire after seeing how things worked out with Romelu Lukaku, Alexis Sanchez and Paul Pogba. But Chelsea are playing the same game the same way.

The club’s decision to offer such generous terms and lengthy extensions is as much about trust, messaging and absolution as it is about straight-forward football business. To whatever extent one can objectively value a footballer, or simply by polling other clubs to see what they would pay for a player in a given situation, the Blues are paying their in-house talents over and above. The premium on homegrown players is a real thing as teams have to hit their quotas and, as Travis said, the Blues are paying to make amends.

If this is all we have to complain about, it’s still a very good and very positive summer. And you know what? I’m not complaining. I’m as excited to see these three in Blue as I am to see Frank Lampard on the touchline, for many of the same reasons.

But it’s worth keeping in mind that not only is this horse is out of the barn, the genie is out of the bottle. Whatever becomes of these players in their Chelsea career, one of their legacies will be raising the floor on wage packets. Players rising out of the academy, players in their prime entering the last 18 months of their contracts and players in transfer negotiations with Chelsea will all benchmark themselves against this, and no agent worth his extortionate fee is going to go in for much less.

The rest of the league, and perhaps Chelsea’s management themselves, may grumble about the month when Chelsea made homegrown young players so expensive.

One final note, which will tie back to this topic. I appear to have been a bit premature in my optimism when I mentioned the improved, non-Sarritological discourse around the club. Not only is Sarritology still in vogue, but I’m saddened to report that straw men are alive and well and living in the Chelsea-sphere, as are logical fallacies, meaningless phraseology and shoelaces-tied-together contradictions.

For example, during conversations about transfer fees and salaries I often hear people say things like “Why do you care? It’s not your money that the clubs are paying to or for these players.”

First, I wonder if those people are as laissez-faire about salaries and business expenditures in any other industry. That’s for a different venue.

Second, and to my immediate point, that money has to come from somewhere. If you truly don’t care what the club pays its players, you don’t get to complain about price increases for tickets at Stamford Bridge or the price of the new away kit: $99.95 – $164.95 at the Chelsea Megastore. Market distortion? #ItsAChelseaThing.