"“Fortune favors the bold.”"
We’ve all heard this before. A thousand times too many and a thousand times more is a thousand times more likely.
That statement though holds particularly true in the world of professional sport but perhaps even more so in the incredibly complicated and intricate world of ambition, passion, economics, and business that make up the world of international football.
Of course, there are odd misses. Leeds’ Peter Risdale’s famous “we lived the dream” comes to mind for those whose footballing interest includes the history of the game and not just it’s Fifa scores. However, that side signed older players and glamorous players beyond their prime in obvious contradiction to CFC’s current spending.
Chelsea’s spending was bold, attractive, and more than both of those things it was necessary. Although we don’t like to admit it, the Blues had slipped into the backseat in recent years. Manchester City and Liverpool were more successful and more well-run. They could pay as much or more in both transfer fees and salaries and made agents comfortable as well. Why would you sign for the west London outfit when both of them were available and Manchester United was still willing to pay players like Paul Pogba 300k per week to take a secondary interest in football?
Chelsea needed to do something to claim back relevancy because as much as football is about sport it’s also about the imagination as well. The Blues needed to capture the imagination of the footballing world again and with their current spending, they have.
It’s an old Florentino Perez trick. The wily Spanish general at the head of Real Madrid’s commercial and sporting dominance once said that he would rather buy the player for a world record fee later because then he’d also buy the headlines and let’s be honest with ourselves football is as much about the latter as the former.
Great players, great managers, the sportsmen who believe in their bones that they have what it takes to triumph beyond simply the crucible of today’s sporting competition but that they should in fact be among those remembered for simply taking part in it have egos. What though pressurizes them and makes statements of intention and imagination so important is the opposite side of that coin. What they have in God-given talent they lack in time.
Few of the rest of us know what it’s like to try and earn not only enough money but enough credibility to carry the rest of a human life in only 10 years or so. To know that an entire lifetime worth of dedication to a craft and a dream could be over with one tackle or misplaced step. It is because of that they all know there’s not one single second to wait.
Every great sportsman knows that time is their enemy so seeing a club boldly demanding a seat at the table and suggesting that they won’t be successful later but now is something that holds vast appeal. That’s simply the philosophical side. The even more straightforward truth of the matter is that Chelsea’s side was better described by a word rhyming with hit and beginning with an S and they were properly so.
The Blues ever lovable ability to triumph above the odds led to an overly accepted notion of quality when sheer guts really were the building block. That though is why Chelsea succeeded in cup competitions and haven’t been a relevant league force since Antonio Conte simply willed it so.
CFC needed an immediate upgrade to the simple quality level of the side and it was better to do it sooner rather than later. In the end the Blues didn’t compromise on the quality of their signings, at times they overpaid, but they bought the right players.
The irritation with our amortization negotiation tactics is something I’m hoping will pass. That other clubs, rather than using that very tactic simply decided to complain about it is the sort of small-mindedness I simply can’t stomach so I’m literally going to move on from it at the end of this sentence.
Chelsea have strengthened literally every area of weakness within the squad or made future plans to do so that is of course with regard to Christopher N’Kunku and Malo Gusto. The squad is of course bloated now but that’s only for a season. There will be outgoings as Chelsea moves forward and the speed and plurality of signings will likely lessen.
Though it’s hard for people to accept Boehly’s roughly 600 million euros in net-spending can be broken up in time and dealt with, with frankly very little imagination (another reason why the recent lily-livered patheticism of other clubs’ UEFA complaints really is as distressingly feeble as it is).
Firstly, the spend is broken up over the course of multiple years. Mudryk and Fernandes are both in 2023 and not 2022. That’s 190 million euros right there. 410 million in 2022 is of course a lot of money but the Blues in the years up to 2020 were making roughly 500 million euros per year in revenue. 600 million averaged over two years is 300 million and Chelsea have openly acknowledged that the spending will slow.
Of course, it will. When the club stabilizes and possesses a higher average level of quality they’ll likely revert to the academy and one or two major additions per year philosophy that most major clubs do. The hole was just so incredibly deep that to get to the necessary level to compete with not only the Manchester City’s, United’s and Liverpool’s of the world but also Real Madrid and Bayern Munich as well.
Even if CFC buys one player a year every single year for the next 10 years at an average of even 80 million euros per player including the recent spending the average spend would be 116 million euros per season or 100 million pounds. That’s less than simply the tv money payment the Blues get from the Premier League and well under the 500 million euros of revenue the Boehly, Eghbali and the rest of the brain trust have literally said they intend to grow first and foremost.
The even more hilarious factor is that in spending as they have to get the ball rolling they’ve made it easier for themselves. Writers who aren’t interested in Chelsea are covering the Blues. TV networks again consider them to be “must-watch” television. They’re being broadcast at better times to more people in more countries than they were even six months ago and in doing so they’ll sell more shirts, more ads, more commercial everything.
This doesn’t even account for the likely outgoings that Chelsea have been better than literally any club in Europe with in recent year in terms of profiting from. Hopefully, CFC still remembers to integrate youth players properly and that no squad you buy is as good as one you grow. If they keep that in mind while they work with the level of quality they’ve bought then they’ll be fine.
Now that we discussed the economics of the matter the actual here-and-now of sporting issues needs to be addressed and it’s again simple. Chelsea are fine.
No, they didn’t beat Fulham but they looked incredibly understandably like a side that had just added over 10 players to its ranks and is going to need to blend together. It would have been weirder if Chelsea were better than they were. That would have been the sort of thing we’d have to contact a shaman or priest about. But playing rather detached and bland football for a bunch of guys who have had fewer meals together than minutes played together makes pretty decent sense to me personally.
The good news in fact is that the rest of the league is so confused at the moment. City and Liverpool are in bad form. The top-4 is literally only 10 points away and there are 17 matches left to play. Chelsea could earn 81 points this year. The league has been won with 75 before.
Anybody who is nervous needs to relax. Boehly, Behdad and the rest of the brain trust have done an incredible job. The only way it gets worse is if people panic. I for one always wanted Roman to take the Larry Miller approach with a manager to get the best out of our squad just once. For those who don’t know the history of Larry Miller, don’t worry I didn’t expect you to but I’ll leave you with this.
Larry Miller was the long-time owner of the Utah Jazz. He knew that to get the most out of his players they had to be held accountable. Sometimes talent needs to be pushed as opposed to indulged (crazy concept to some of you I know) and that a coach who has the full backing of the organization is the only way to do so.
The coach who he backed was none other than Jerry Sloan. A coach who spent the majority of his time with the Utah Jazz. Not the Lakers, the Bulls, the Celtics, or the Heat. The Utah Jazz. A small team in a small market that didn’t attract free agents or pay huge salaries. He won over 1,200 games with them and had one of the most enduring and successful careers in the history of the game.
Chelsea don’t play in Salt Lake City they play in London. They don’t struggle with high salaries they pay them graciously. Larry Miller began every single training camp (preseason) by walking out to the middle of the court and standing beside Jerry Sloan and saying:
"“This man will be here next season, the question is whether or not you will be.”"
Discord and distrust be damned. Larry Miller in that moment every year provided direction. The Blues need to behave that way. Too much is at stake now for them not to hold their nerve.
CFC toiled in the wrong direction for too many years. I would argue that the manager who Potter should have been replacing should have been graciously Jose Mourinho with a wreath and a hug but that’s an argument for another time. The Blues have done a remarkable job this transfer window now the only thing they can do to make sure they do an even better one is to allow Potter to do his.