For years the thing that has held Chelsea back has been their philosophy on transfers.
Chelsea’s owners Clearlake Capital and Eldridge Industries could easily create a dependable bond-like income of £25-35 million or more per season with a few changes.
They can do that as well as compete across all major competitions while regularly winning them as well.
If you know one thing about this column it’s that I have long believed Chelsea would and could be more successful in terms of results and profit if they shifted how it is they handle business in the market.
As usual, should the offer come about you all know I would obviously take up a role in recruitment at Chelsea and do us proud. As of yet, still waiting.
Now to the business side of things.
The good news is that Mauricio Pochettino is the right manager.
That the Blues’ hiring process eventually ended up there is definitely a good sign.
So we’ll build from there knowing that Pochettino prefers a 4-2-3-1 formation but also has played a 3-4-2-1 and 4-3-3 (though not by choice at PSG).
Given the way that the squad is built at the moment, it is my belief that year 1 of the Pochettino era should lean more heavily towards the 3-4-2-1 before transitioning later in year 2.5-3 to the 4-2-3-1.
There are multiple reasons for this but in terms of getting the best out of the most talented players in the team and creating some momentum and cohesion to move Chelsea into the Champions League places next season while evolving the relationships between players that makes the most sense.
Now this should be known outside of Christopher Nkunku I am of the belief that Chelsea would be best served not signing any additional players. Manuel Ugarte, I was happy to try for because of how talented a player he is. The state of Chelsea’s net spend could be done a massive favor by having a year of no spending. Transforming 600 million in one year into 300 million per year over two would provide a huge amount of breathing room.
That said though there are a couple of witty and sharp transfers that I will suggest later.
More importantly, however, it would provide two other benefits to not having any transfers this summer besides Nkunku.
They are:
- Re-stabilize our negotiating position. Teams at the moment are not scared we’ll say no and so don’t take our negotiations seriously. Too often teams see Chelsea as the opportunity to turn a profit for the year. That stops immediately.
- Help create cohesion under Pochettino and under his guidance so further moves can assimilate more quickly in the future.
If you were watching Chelsea this season you know that rather than playing like a football side they played like 11 individual people who had never played together before.
There are more than enough good players in the side right now to create a competitive and dangerous football side BUT they need to be a football side and not a blue lycra-wearing aerobic class.
The hard part for Chris Jurasek, Todd Boehly, and Beghdad Eghbali will be in their managerial acumen when communicating with Pochettino on this.
Managers like all people in business need to feel supported. Finding a way to get Pochettino to buy into a year of testing out and trying his squad and finding his feet and methodology with the team BEFORE dumping money into the team will be important.
If they can manage to get even Pochettino himself to fully buy into that then Chelsea will be in about the best place humanly possible in 2024. That though would be an incredible feat of personnel management from the Chelsea higher-ups to get Pochettino firmly into that space and even more so to do it so well that he’s able to get the squad to understand the importance of the year in proving themselves to him.
If that’s impossible it’s better to lean on the side of supporting the manager and bringing in a couple of lieutenants for him to lean on as he builds the squad’s philosophy from where it is until now. For a good example of that look at how Chelsea purchased three members of Jose Mourinho’s FC Porto side when hiring him.
Another benefit to not signing more players is the obvious: Chelsea’s team is too big compounding the issue and PAYING for the pleasure of doing so isn’t the sort of move that makes sense.
One of the practices that simply must stop is buying players with no intention of their impacting the playing team. On Cesare Casadei, Carney Chukwuemeka and Gabriel Slonina Chelsea spent roughly £45 million pounds AND damaged their long-term potential by not playing them.
Almost all the great players are starting to get significant minutes in their 18-21-year old seasons. Ronaldo (both of them), Messi, Buffon, Rooney, Neymar, Totti, Torres all played significant moments then.
Paying £45 million not only damages the long and near-term value of the assets themselves but also to not even aid the first team in doing so is probably the worst possible use for the £45 million. Even just saving the interest fee payments on the loans would be useful.
That’s not to say by the way that buying talented youngsters isn’t a good idea. Of course, it is!
But they must play.
If not with Chelsea then 30-40 matches with a top-5 league team. If they’re not even good enough to be wanted in that capacity by a single team in those parameters then one is forced to ask “why did you spend literally millions of pounds on them in the first place?”
This though is one of the reasons why Pochettino is such a good choice. Of the managers in Europe who are good at developing youth players and feel fundamentally that THAT is the real job of a coach he is within the top-3. So the appointment definitely helps in that regard.
Now though Chelsea needs to thin the squad.
Not only for the sake of getting money in the door but also salary savings are important.
Also, it should be noted here that I am going to be realistic. Some of Chelsea’s players maybe had a bad season (can you blame them in this turmoil?) or are on such high salaries that other teams won’t take them.
So in the cases where the fees I am suggesting seem too high I’ll remind you of the piece I wrote where I suggested Chelsea use their financial strength during COVID to gain a stronger foothold in the market. That same acceptance of long-term fees is something I think Chelsea should still do if only to get salaries off the books immediately.
At the moment Chelsea has roughly 40 players contracted for next season. Some of that is dependent on how various roster search sites categorize them but either way, that’s a close starting point.
The outgoing players that make the most sense would be:
(Underlined names will receive further explanation)
Romelu Lukaku, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Christian Pulisic, Callum Hudson-Odoi, Ruben Loftus-Cheek, Malang Sarr, Mateo Kovacic, Abdul Baba Rahman, Mason Mount, Edouard Mendy, Denis Zakaria and Timoue Bakayoko.
In rough fees I believe Chelsea could collect total fees of £220 million for these players.
Then if adding the yearly salaries of players in this group as roughly £77.5 million per year that would give Chelsea £277.5 million back immediately.
Lukaku and Mount are both underlined because they’re more complicated.
In the case of Lukaku if Pochettino can get him fit and firing and mentally bought in then it would be worth it to try. There are not many players who when fit guarantee you 20 goals a season. Lukaku does. The EXTREME level of baggage has to be accounted for of course. But before buying another striker Chelsea must try and sort out the last one they tried to buy.
Mount’s is just heartbreaking. I hold out hope that Mount stays. He’s too fundamental to the spirit of the dressing room and club overall to let leave easily. However, he should also know that negotiating with Manchester United while a Chelsea player is heartbreaking. If he’s willing to throw away everything for a higher salary at a direct rival of ours that’s a hard pill to swallow.
It’s not Real Madrid, Barcelona, PSG, Juventus or Milan. It’s Manchester United not even City where the level of sustained success could be curiosity-inducing. It’s a team we will be fighting for the top-4 and a traditionally heated rival of ours.
At some point, Mount needs to consider the damage he’s starting to do if he stays as well.
If he wants out then Chelsea should let him go.
Players who don’t want to play for Chelsea won’t play for Chelsea no matter how much we pay them. At some point, the Blues need to learn that lesson. It’s a simple, painful, but also necessary one to learn. No big clubs put up with this sort of thing and as I’ve always said we need to think big and part of that is expecting a standard of behavior.
Bringing Chelsea back to a total transfer spend of around £323 million with a salary of £156 million and a 28-man squad within one season is decent business.
If Chelsea were going to add players, and I still believe they shouldn’t, the one I would add the most is Jawes Ward Prowse of Southampton.
Let’s face it Chelsea is going to be in the point-hunting business next season. One of the most pragmatic business decisions they could make is signing the best freekick taker in Europe to guarantee them some tough goals.
He’s also a perfect model professional who could easily sit in a defensive midfield role alongside Enzo Fernandez and provide some of the experience and know-how that Chelsea will need to move forward. JWP has 17 direct free-kick goals. He is literally the best direct free-kick taker since David Beckham in a position of need for Chelsea. It would be a perfect and non-complicated signing and let’s face it Chelsea also need some experience and know-how to discipline the squad into order sometimes.
Chelsea were laughable from free kicks and corners last season. We can fix that for likely less than £20 million. Even less if we make the smart move of loaning them a player to try and climb back out of the Championship.
Other than that, that’s all Chelsea need to do this summer.
The squad is talented and the manager is now one of the best people to get that talent out of their body’s and onto the pitch.
If Chelsea does as I said above and the following:
Chelsea’s owners need to remember who they are –
They’re diligent and disciplined self-made billionaires for God’s sake. They need to stop letting FOMO and the excitement of the transfer market distract them from that fact.
Chelsea’s academy players should be seen as first solutions not secondary ones –
Literally having been born in the culture of English football ALWAYS adapt more quickly than transfer players. They also will be the key to creating a full and vibrant stadium full of Londoners in the 70-80k new stadium. That connection between London and London area footballers is fundamental.
Save Money for Exceptional Signing –
The transfer market is important. But 1-2 exceptional signings per season can be made without disturbing the balance of a squad. More than that and you have what happened this season. I know I quote Sir Alex too often here so I won’t again but that needs to be remembered.
If Chelsea regains themselves mentally and does the above they can create the investment that Eldridge and Clearlake are looking to and the best part is that all they need to do is have the discipline to do less.
That though is the hard part as discipline is often the hardest thing to find.