A slightly unexpected and intriguing fact that has emerged from Chelsea’s spending this season will make fans wonder if things will actually be different under new owner Todd Boehly. CFC has accounted for 39 per cent of the money spent in the Premier League in this winter window. This is astonishing, in the sense that many expected Chelsea to spend considerably less in the absence of Roman Abramovich, not more. Todd Boehly clearly understands the need for spending, so here are four things to take away from the Blues’ spending numbers
There was a method to Abramovich’s madness
Many Chelsea fans complained about the spending under Roman Abramovich, claiming it was not sustainable and that Abramovich needed to find ways of spending less. Some fans suggested using even more academy graduates in the first team to reduce spending. This suggested that spending, and even excessive spending, was inherently a bad thing. It is not. Boehly is another CFC owner that has seen the need to spend in order to compete. The slight difference between Abramovich’s spending and Boehly’s spending is that Boehly eventually got people and used their expertise to control his spending. For the majority of Abramovich’s tenure, Chelsea did not have the kind of personnel that occupied technical director or head of recruitment roles.
Manchester City has also spent a lot of money, but they have achieved much more than Chels‘ in the past eight years. Abramovich had the right idea, and he knew that in a league like the Premier League spending is important to keep up with the competition.
No, Chelsea doesn’t need to promote more youth players
This may be a bit controversial, but Chelsea is promoting just the right amount of youth players at the moment. They may not have done a good job of promoting players in the past, but they’re doing so now. Bringing players that are not good into the first team just because they expect it doesn’t benefit anyone. Conor Gallagher has gone on two Premier League loans where he played 35 games on average each season. He has still not been able to lock down a starting lineup in the senior team, until very recently, and no one can say confidently that the Blues’ best lineup with everyone fit actually includes Gallagher.
There are few players that actually deserve to come through the academy and become mainstays in the senior team, and there is nothing wrong with that. The point of a youth setup is to create competent football professionals, that are saleable for profit. If players in the academy are so good that they’d benefit the first team, even better.
Boehly’s transfer strategy has been to recruit good players that are young, if the Benoit Badiashile and Mykhailo Mudryk signings are anything to go by. Yes, Mudryk cost a considerable amount of money, but Badiashile did not, and over time these things will balance themselves out. Boehly didn’t just promote some academy players who have shown nothing to deserve it.
Recruitment is more important than sales
Speaking strictly on football, there’s too much evidence supporting the fact that the players you buy are more important than the players you sell. Many fans often complain about clubs selling players they shouldn’t have sold, but don’t complain as much about their clubs buying players they shouldn’t have bought. Players are staff contracted to the club for a period of time. Clubs hope to win trophies with players, but they also hope to be able to make profits from the player if the opportunity presents itself.
Players will not be at clubs forever, and without looking it up, how many players can you name that played their whole senior careers at one club other than AC Milan’s Paolo Maldini and AS Roma’s Francesco Totti? When clubs get opportunities to sell players for profit, they very often do, but that’s never where the problem is. The problem is that these clubs do a very bad job of reinvesting that money into the playing staff. For reference, check how Liverpool reinvested the money they got from the Philippe Coutinho sale and how Tottenham Hotspur reinvested the money they got from the Gareth Bale sale. Now compare the two. Many clubs have gone on to buy poorly scouted players for huge money or even small money, to replace key players that were sold.
Chelsea has spent a lot of money in this window, and they also spent a lot of money in the window before this one, but this window saw CFC bring in better scouted players, and you know they’re better scouted because so far, the players haven’t needed four weeks to adapt. Badiashile has looked right at home from the moment he stepped in. Mudryk had a 30-minute cameo where he looked like the most dangerous player on a pitch that had Mohamed Salah, Darwin Nunez and Cody Gakpo.
Scouting should guide spending, not substitute it
Some fans have mistaken Liverpool’s model to mean that they scout very well and so don’t need to spend as much money as other teams to compete, meanwhile in reality, Liverpool has spent heavily, and have even spent relatively big money on players that haven’t worked out too. Liverpool spent £75million on Virgil van Dijk and £69million on Alisson Becker, and only then did they begin to compete for the league, as they finish 4th in the 2017/18 season, but finished second with 97 points the following season.
At the time they were rumoured to be interested in Van Dijk for that money, many would have found it ridiculous to spend that amount of money on a player, but if you scout a player very well and you know exactly what you’re getting with him, you would not mind spending what’s required to get the player. Other teams have spent the same amount of money and even more on centerbacks in the same league, but have not enjoyed the same success, this is telling.
Clubs often make big money signings, but significantly fewer clubs are getting the right players for their team’s style of play for that money. This is why scouting is important, and why clubs should scout before spending, even if they’d be spending big money. CFC’s scouting and recruitment team has been working round the clock, to get the best players on the best deals.
Ultimately, Boehly has showed that he plans to compete, and he knows spending is necessary, but he doesn’t just want to spend for the sake of it, he wants to spend on the right player, even if he’d be paying a premium, and that is why Chelsea fans can be excited about the fortunes of the west London club in the coming years and decades.