Boehly Bother: He's Spent £1.3 Billion on Players - But Are Chelsea Any Better Off Under Their Current Owner?

What a difference a week can make in football.

When Chelsea hosted Manchester City on the opening weekend of the season, so comfortable was the manner of victory for Pep Guardiola’s side that Todd Boehly, sat high up in the posh seats, stormed out of the game with plenty of time still left on the clock.

 
It wasn’t exactly the best way to kick off the new campaign, with that seeming lack of support for new head coach Enzo Maresca in his debut game hardly a harbinger of a successful working relationship.

 
Fast forward a week and all was seemingly right in Chelsea’s world, however. A 6-2 drubbing of Wolves, with a hat-trick of goals from Noni Madueke and assists by Cole Palmer, has helped to right the ship. That said, was the manner of that victory all as it seemed?

 
And are Chelsea really any better off now, as world football’s biggest spenders over the past couple of years, than they were before Boehly opened his chequebook for the first time?

Distrust the Process

When you win 6-2 on the road, you can forgive anyone associated with a football club for feeling pretty chipper about their day.

 
But sometimes in football, when you dig a little deeper you uncover a suggestion that the result was one of the sport’s peculiarities, rather than evidence of a team in rude health.

 
According to the stats, Wolves actually won the Expected Goals count by a margin of 1.96-1.68. Another metric, "Big Chances" had the two teams tied at five apiece. The Midlanders also had more touches of the ball in their opponent’s box than vice versa.

 
Who cares? you might be thinking. The only set of numbers that counts is the 6-2 scoreline.

 
That’s true, but in a sport in which ‘trust the process’ is becoming an increasingly used mantra, you would have to query the process that Maresca is deploying given how readily his side was cut apart by Wolves.

 
The data suggests that Chelsea were fortunate to score six goals and Wolves unlucky to net only twice, and while it makes sense not to hang your hat on the outcome of a single game, the defensive fragility that the Blues have shown mirrors that of Maresca’s former employer, Leicester City, under his stewardship.
 

The Foxes won the Championship title under the Italian, but did so while conceding an average of just shy of a goal per game. Not exactly the domination you would expect from a league champion. They also kept just 15 clean sheets….meaning that they shipped at least one goal in more than two-thirds of the games they played.
 

The argument would be that (no offence Leicester fans) Chelsea simply have better defensive players than the Foxes, but that quality can only sustain them so far. If they are poor as a collective unit, and if their head coach’s tactics leave them exposed to counter attacks in particular, then there are only so many fires that individuals can put out.

 
Chelsea could be a fascinating watch for neutrals this season, but a failure to improve on that Wolves showing from a defensive standpoint will have their fans tearing their hair out over the course of an entire season.
 

And it’s not a problem that Boehly will be able to solve simply by opening his wallet….

Embarrassment of Riches
 

You certainly can’t accuse the American owner of being a spendthrift.  He’s splashed £1.3 billion on new players since taking the keys to the club in the summer of 2022, but is yet to truly get much of a reward from his investment.

 
In the season before Boehly took charge (2021/22), Chelsea finished third in the Premier League table.

 
In the American’s first season, they finished 12th. In his second, they finished sixth.

 
So what it actually means is that Chelsea have gotten worse DESPITE Boehly spending £1.3 billion on new players. It’s a situation that can best be described as awful business.

 
Perhaps in the long run his spending, powered by the huge team of analysts and data scientists at his disposal, will come to fruition. There has been a clear and obvious preference for younger players with potential to burn.

 
But then, maybe it won’t. That’s the problem of betting on potential, rather than proven quality.

 
The other downside of such frivolous spending is that you accumulate a huge squad of players. As of August 2024, Chelsea have around 40 in and around their first team. In fact, the situation has become so farcical that as many as a dozen players have been jettisoned and made to train on their own.

 
The challenge now is getting rid of the likes of Raheem Sterling, Ben Chilwell, Trevoh Chalobah and Kepa Arrizabalaga before the closure of the transfer window. Convincing other clubs to take a chance on players that haven’t had a competitive pre-season won’t be easy. There’s also the challenge of satisfying profit & sustainability rule (PSR) obligations. Chelsea have been exponents of the amortisation strategy of spreading the cost of a player’s transfer fee over the course of their contract. That loophole has since been closed.

 
It’s a tactic that has kept them out of trouble, in terms of so-called financial fair play rules, up until now, but if they cannot sell more of their outcasts (Conor Gallagher and Romelu Lukaku are amongst those to have left the club this summer), then they could be heading for problems come the PSR deadline next year.

 
Premier League clubs are allowed to post losses of up to £105 million over a three-year period under the rules. Since Boehly took charge, the Blues have spent £1.3 billion on players and (at the time of writing) recouped around £425 million in the same timeframe.

 
Even allowing for other commercial profits that feed into the PSR calculation, you don’t need to be an accountant to work out that Boehly’s spending does not add up. This is particularly the case  if Chelsea’s fortunes on the pitch don’t improve this season.

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