Almost hidden in plain sight amid the litany of Chelsea’s corporate failings revealed this week was the mind-boggling disclosure that the club has increased its executive pay by 80 per cent.
The club disclosed this month that it had recorded a Premier League-record loss of £262.4million last season and that, despite briefing anyone who would listen last summer that player sales would earn them £300m in revenue, the offload had barely registered as profit because of the way the club had accounted for them in the first place.
Chelsea FC Holdings Ltd, the immediate parent company of the football club, paid executives £10.6m last season, compared with £5.9m the year before – with the club insisting this was because there were more ‘key management personnel’. Many Chelsea fans would assert that it is £10m too much.
Take your pick of the ways BlueCo has thrown away money. Paying a combined £280m for Moises Caicedo, Romeo Lavia and Enzo Fernandez in the space of seven months in 2023 takes some beating. As Graeme Souness put it on several occasions, Todd Boehly’s business dealings with selling clubs – briefly as Chelsea’s sporting director – ‘is called having your trousers taken down’.
But it is Chelsea’s conviction that they have invented a revolutionary new transfer market model – teaching British football how to do it after assuming control in 2022 amid the convulsions of Roman Abramovich’s abrupt departure – that has left them drowning in hubris.
They have pursued a strategy defined by long-term contracts, heavy spending on young players, and rapid squad turnover, supposedly designed to build a sustainable, future-proof squad. On Thursday it emerged that Caicedo, with five years remaining on his deal, had agreed a new contract, following Reece James last month.
Chelsea’s players couldn’t get anywhere near Manchester City last weekend – further proof that the BlueCo project is not working
Chelsea have spent a fortune on players in three full seasons of BlueCo ownership, largely on young, high-potential talent signed on unusually long contracts such as Joao Pedro
Chelsea co-owner Todd Boehly has a questionable record of dealing with other clubs in the transfer window. As Graeme Souness puts it, ‘he keeps having his trousers taken down’
But Monday’s financial results, on the back of Saturday’s thumping by Manchester City, pointed to the model which is failing both financially and competitively.
BlueCo have spent more than a billion pounds on players since taking charge of Chelsea nigh-on four years ago. They decided that spreading the costs over as many as eight years would reduce their annual accounting impact while building resale value.
But while this may look efficient on paper, there is the not-insignificant matter of winning matches. Chelsea have qualified for the Champions League just once since BlueCo took charge, finishing 12th, sixth and fourth. They are on course to miss out again this season, sitting four points off the top five with six to play.
Without consistent success, even the most sophisticated accounting structures cannot fully offset declining broadcasting bonuses, loss of European competition earnings and weaker commercial appeal.
The players handed eight-year deals to lock them in have become a millstone when they underperform and can’t be off-loaded. It creates a bloated second squad of players either frozen out – on £325,000 a week in Raheem Sterling’s case – or loaned repeatedly.
Amid what has seemed like a theoretical exercise, managers have either failed to cope with the unwieldy process of player churn (Graham Potter and Mauricio Pochettino) or become sick of top-down control (Enzo Maresca) and there is no evidence that incumbent Liam Rosenior is making any difference. Ahead of Manchester United’s arrival at Stamford Bridge at the weekend, they have won one of their last seven Premier League games.
Players are no longer hiding their scepticism about BlueCo and the departure of Maresca, which they view as having stemmed from the way the club was being run. ‘The moment Maresca left, it had a big impact on us,’ Mark Cucurella said. ‘These are decisions taken by the club. If you asked me, I would not have made this decision.’
The long-term contracts, in which salaries increase with time, have left players like Fernandez looking for bigger money elsewhere.
Liam Rosenior is the latest hire in the dugout, but he looks to be as powerless as any of his predecessors to control the madness
Enzo Fernandez and Marc Cucurella have broken cover in recent weeks to openly criticise the way Chelsea is being run
The Argentine’s agent, Javier Pastore, has openly spoken of ‘salary, respect, or the way things are handled’ as factors influencing Fernandez’s wish to leave. He added: ‘There are so many things that we aren’t seeing at the moment – or at least I, as an agent, am not seeing – that suggest the club is not handling things in the best possible way with him.’
This week co-owner Behdad Eghbali doubled down on the long-term strategy, while also suggesting the club might be ready to adapt it.
‘The view was to recruit and build elite players that can, frankly, be together and have that stability in the squad – we’re still in the 40th, 50th minute of that process,’ he said. But the view is to keep, sign and retain and compensate and extend some of the world’s best players, and ultimately the view was you need, eight, 10, 12, 15 elite players to win and win sustainably, year after year.
‘I think we’ve done a few things right, a lot of things right. We’ve got to be better on a few things, to add more ready-made players at this part of the project, to take it to the next level, to be consistent over time.’
Time will tell how that plays out. As Manchester City and Arsenal demonstrate the benefits of continuity and a clearly defined way of playing, it’s self-evident that every notion BlueCo has eschewed – quality over quantity in recruitment, stronger focus on development, gradual refinement – would have been preferable.
Monday’s accounts revealed more of the financial gymnastics BlueCo has needed to skirt trouble with the Premier League’s profitability and sustainability rules. Kingsmeadow, the home of Chelsea Women was sold to Chelsea Football Club Women Limited (CFCW), the company which generated £198.7m in June 2024 when it was ‘sold’ to another BlueCo company.
Saturday brings real significance with Chelsea four points adrift of Liverpool, who occupy the last Champions League spot, yet regardless of which European tournament they compete in next season, there will again be a need to sell, to overhaul the squad.
Fernandez, Welsey Fofana, Alejandro Garnacho, Nicolas Jackson and Marc Guiu (signed for a combined £257m) are among those who could leave.
Chelsea are being left behind by the likes of Arsenal and Manchester City as a result of their scattergun recruitment
Chelsea paid Manchester United £40m for Alejandro Garnacho last summer and he already looks to be heading for the exit door
Strikers Nicolas Jackson and Marc Guiu are also up for sale this summer as the churn continues at Chelsea
Among those speaking up for the kind of Chelsea that many fans want the club to be are the protest group NotAProjectCFC, who will lead a march against the owners with the message ‘BlueCo Out’ on Saturday night.
Two leading members of the group pointed out this week that the home defeat to City damned the Blues’ owners philosophy, with former Chelsea academy player Marc Guehi, sold to Crystal Palace in 2021, scoring the second goal.
The group’s last protest came ahead of the game against Brentford in January and made enough impact for Chelsea director Daniel Finkelstein to contact them for a meeting. NAPCFC later disclosed details of the meeting, including the claim that Finkelstein had told them it was ‘f***ing obvious’ Chelsea were building a world-beating side.
It’s unclear how much more on-field punishment is required before the very highly remunerated ‘key management personnel’ who are taken £10m home between them realise that Chelsea are a football club, not a social experiment.
