Chelsea owners and board

[Chelsea_Matt]

7 hours ago, east lower said:

If someone regaled you the story, you’d say they’re making it up!

Almost beyond belief, except that it’s happened/happening and we’ve still not learned the lesson - there’s another one coming after his ‘gardening-leave’. 
 

https://www.espn.co.uk/football/story/_/id/39561876/brighton-transfer-guru-joins-chelsea-amid-man-united-interest

Oh joy. 💀🤣💣🤪

[ROTG]

7 hours ago, east lower said:

If someone regaled you the story, you’d say they’re making it up!

Almost beyond belief, except that it’s happened/happening and we’ve still not learned the lesson - there’s another one coming after his ‘gardening-leave’. 
 

https://www.espn.co.uk/football/story/_/id/39561876/brighton-transfer-guru-joins-chelsea-amid-man-united-interest

You forgot Winstanley other mate who the club recently recruited from WBA

[Max Fowler]

I want to make a simple point about the owners. I believe if the fans were 100% on side at the moment, we would quite likely be doing much better than what we are currently doing. All the talk, the pressure, the criticism on social media, the mainstream media jibes has clearly got to the players at different times during the season. 

Some have taken that to mean that the fans should just get behind the team rather than make things more toxic. But many fans feel that even if we supported the team 100%, the plan wouldn't work to make the team really successful - rather line the pockets of the owners.

The point is -

The reality of the situation is it's the owners' responsibility to make this project work and if they think they can do it without the backing of the fans, good luck. I am not saying they have to talk more directly to the fans, it has been pointed out that many other owners do not do this.

But simply that the reality of fan disengagement is not going away and potentially going to get worse if we are happy to sacrifice short-term success for this project.

Based on Boehly's Forbes interview, they are going to keep going with the plan and ride out the pressure. Fair enough. But I hope they are taking into the account the fact that the fans can have a huge impact on the team and the success of their project overall.

It may be that they are not actually factoring in how impactful unhappy fans can be on team performance and that the whole project simply won't work without having fans onside.

What's the solution? Question for another post. Here I am not saying they should do things differently. Simply - I bloody well hope they are aware of the mood and all the potential ramifications of it.

Edited April 3 by Max Fowler

[Chelsea_Matt]

14 minutes ago, Max Fowler said:

I want to make a simple point about the owners. I believe if the fans were 100% on side at the moment, we would quite likely be doing much better than what we are currently doing. All the talk, the pressure, the criticism on social media, the mainstream media jibes has clearly got to the players at different times during the season. 

Some have taken that to mean that the fans should just get behind the team rather than make things more toxic. But many fans feel that even if we supported the team 100%, the plan wouldn't work to make the team really successful - rather line the pockets of the owners.

The point is -

The reality of the situation is it's the owners' responsibility to make this project work and if they think they can do it without the backing of the fans, good luck. I am not saying they have to talk more directly to the fans, it has been pointed out that many other owners do not do this.

But simply that the reality of fan disengagement is not going away and potentially going to get worse if we are happy to sacrifice short-term success for this project.

Based on Boehly's Forbes interview, they are going to keep going with the plan and ride out the pressure. Fair enough. But I hope they are taking into the account the fact that the fans can have a huge impact on the team and the success of their project overall.

It may be that they are not actually factoring in how impactful unhappy fans can be on team performance and that the whole project simply won't work without having fans onside.

What's the solution? Question for another post. Here I am not saying they should do things differently. Simply - I bloody well hope they are aware of the mood and all the potential ramifications of it.

I wonder what then vulture capitalists who’ve invested in this clown show make of it, because there’ll be no CL football/trophies/success that earns so much in prize money and sponsorship for many years to come. 

[Max Fowler]

18 minutes ago, Chelsea_Matt said:

I wonder what then vulture capitalists who’ve invested in this clown show make of it, because there’ll be no CL football/trophies/success that earns so much in prize money and sponsorship for many years to come. 

Honestly Matt the sad reality is there is a lot of money to be made in football without high levels of on the pitch success. Sport is an incredibly easy business to invest and make money in - grows every year despite recessions. EPL is a huge market. And even if our young players fail to reach their maximum potential you can easily see how they could turn far more profit buying 16 year olds than 28 year olds on 300k per week.

[east lower]

19 minutes ago, Max Fowler said:

I want to make a simple point about the owners. I believe if the fans were 100% on side at the moment, we would quite likely be doing much better than what we are currently doing. All the talk, the pressure, the criticism on social media, the mainstream media jibes has clearly got to the players at different times during the season. 

Some have taken that to mean that the fans should just get behind the team rather than make things more toxic. But many fans feel that even if we supported the team 100%, the plan wouldn't work to make the team really successful - rather line the pockets of the owners.

The point is -

The reality of the situation is it's the owners' responsibility to make this project work and if they think they can do it without the backing of the fans, good luck. I am not saying they have to talk more directly to the fans, it has been pointed out that many other owners do not do this.

But simply that the reality of fan disengagement is not going away and potentially going to get worse if we are happy to sacrifice short-term success for this project.

Based on Boehly's Forbes interview, they are going to keep going with the plan and ride out the pressure. Fair enough. But I hope they are taking into the account the fact that the fans can have a huge impact on the team and the success of their project overall.

It may be that they are not actually factoring in how impactful unhappy fans can be on team performance and that the whole project simply won't work without having fans onside.

What's the solution? Question for another post. Here I am not saying they should do things differently. Simply - I bloody well hope they are aware of the mood and all the potential ramifications of it.

Having invested the enormous sums of money (wherever that money has come from, their own pockets, investors etc) it was, in my opinion that sadly the project/process/strategy was not going to be massively deviated from. 

But, with next to no forward inertia or discernable improvements, the plan is stalling. They can change the coach (needed), they can buy the odd player whilst selling some to balance books, they can keep following the 'advice' of those that they have employed as the Football Directors, keep recruiting as they are and see where it takes them/us.

The more that I look at the scenario, the more it seems that they want us to be a better version of Brighton - playing the same game but doing it in the upper echelons of the PL, Europe and whatever other machinations of global football emerge.  Problems are, cash doesn't equal success, investing in inexperienced young players is very high risk (if you're playing the game as Brighton do with lowish initial purchase values, you only need to be successful at a rate of 1 in 5 or maybe a little greater, to make profit?), we're trying to do similar but our buying price is initially higher for the Washington's etc. Also, who's coming in to us with £100m+ bids for our players?

We've overpaid for a number of first-team players. Whether the majority of them could be classed as a success is very much open to debate.

We're a right mess, that's my view and I don't think Bohely or his buddy can say anything else but trust the plan now. I don't believe it's reversible, unless the spending rules change and perhaps the owner's change also (somehow).

[Max Fowler]

15 minutes ago, east lower said:

Having invested the enormous sums of money (wherever that money has come from, their own pockets, investors etc) it was, in my opinion that sadly the project/process/strategy was not going to be massively deviated from. 

But, with next to no forward inertia or discernable improvements, the plan is stalling. They can change the coach (needed), they can buy the odd player whilst selling some to balance books, they can keep following the 'advice' of those that they have employed as the Football Directors, keep recruiting as they are and see where it takes them/us.

The more that I look at the scenario, the more it seems that they want us to be a better version of Brighton - playing the same game but doing it in the upper echelons of the PL, Europe and whatever other machinations of global football emerge.  Problems are, cash doesn't equal success, investing in inexperienced young players is very high risk (if you're playing the game as Brighton do with lowish initial purchase values, you only need to be successful at a rate of 1 in 5 or maybe a little greater, to make profit?), we're trying to do similar but our buying price is initially higher for the Washington's etc. Also, who's coming in to us with £100m+ bids for our players?

We've overpaid for a number of first-team players. Whether the majority of them could be classed as a success is very much open to debate.

We're a right mess, that's my view and I don't think Bohely or his buddy can say anything else but trust the plan now. I don't believe it's reversible, unless the spending rules change and perhaps the owner's change also (somehow).

I agree with most of this but I still think it's easier to make money with average players than you give credit for. Look at Jackson - he's done okay but arguably he might never be good enough for us to win the title. Nonetheless he's 22 years old and we bought him for what 30 million? He's on a low wage and we resell him in 4 years for at least that price including inflation.

Same could be true of D. D. Fofana and others. You don't need them to explode for them to be much more profitable than buying a 28 year old on high wages - even if that leads to more success. 

Yes we have criminally overpaid for other players but they are still on really low wages and really young. 

I also feel part of our strategy has been to invest more heavily into supposedly the most ready made young talents (Mudryk, Caicedo, Enzo etc.) who still demand low wages but can supposedly deliver for the team right away and will be here for a while.

Add on top of that the more speculative signings like Jackson, Washington and Fofana and you have a lot of assets who can potentially come good but importantly low operating costs on all of them and high potential for some sort of resale value.

[Bison]

Winstanley and Stewart still being employed despite overseeing the waste of several hundreds of millions will never make sense to me. People have been fired for a lot less. 

[Chelsea_Matt]

Some really interesting views here espesh @Max Fowler and @east lower

One thing I know I do and I think others too is that we’ve really lowered the bar in an attempt to find the positives. We’ve really fallen from European powerhouses to an utter shitshow in two years. 

Also imo we’ve gone so far with this stupid “project”, destroyed our identity and any link with the fans, committed financial hari-kiri and generally lost our way that it’ll be a decade before we’re anywhere close to challenging for prizes. 

[east lower]

1 hour ago, Max Fowler said:

I agree with most of this but I still think it's easier to make money with average players than you give credit for. Look at Jackson - he's done okay but arguably he might never be good enough for us to win the title. Nonetheless he's 22 years old and we bought him for what 30 million? He's on a low wage and we resell him in 4 years for at least that price including inflation.

Same could be true of D. D. Fofana and others. You don't need them to explode for them to be much more profitable than buying a 28 year old on high wages - even if that leads to more success. 

Yes we have criminally overpaid for other players but they are still on really low wages and really young. 

I also feel part of our strategy has been to invest more heavily into supposedly the most ready made young talents (Mudryk, Caicedo, Enzo etc.) who still demand low wages but can supposedly deliver for the team right away and will be here for a while.

Add on top of that the more speculative signings like Jackson, Washington and Fofana and you have a lot of assets who can potentially come good but importantly low operating costs on all of them and high potential for some sort of resale value.

The one thing the owners have done successfully is reduce the wage bill, but that's come at its own cost in terms of loss of experience on the pitch - Although, if we are to believe Winstanley & Lawrence there were some that actively wanted out.

What Brighton do is buy cheap, they identified that Europe was generally an expensive place to buy players and without some of the restrictions that used to be in place they moved their focus to the less fashionable Sth American countries, who's players and agents would be attracted by an opportunity and a defined pathway into the goldmine of the PL.

We are still buying expensive Sth Americans, I hope the chap Paez turns out to be the phenomenon that he is reported as being. But I don't see that we will move D.D. Fofana on for massive profit or even Jackson for that matter - And I think the latter will turn out OK. 

[Max Fowler]

18 minutes ago, east lower said:

But I don't see that we will move D.D. Fofana on for massive profit or even Jackson for that matter - And I think the latter will turn out OK. 

It's not about massive profit so much as a lack of loss on each player. We signed D D Fofana for 20 million - loan him to Burnley who presumably pay all his wages. Already you would argue he is worth more than that on this market. But we have him for another 7 years and can keep loaning him out or sell him for more when the price is right. Or maybe he even becomes a first team option.

Jackson is on 65k a week with us. Compare that to Rudiger who was on double that (117k a week) and we lost on a free having signed for 35 million. It's easy to see how Todd and Co looked at us losing the likes of Rüdiger and were like WTF - how can we just lose the key assets that we have for free?

And honestly a lot of this isn't all bad. We likely needed to get the wage bill down. Needed to shift a lot of players and frankly if we can make additional revenue through buying young talents and having a mulitclub model I'm all for it (although they should treat Strasbourg better).

The problem is - there isn't enough incentive for them to prioritise doing the right things to win trophies. They look at older players and have flashbacks to the likes of Rüdiger. They think they can build a young side over a number of years into an experienced outfit that can win - they think they have found a loophole in the system that no other big club has tried ever.

Problem is - all footballing common sense suggests these players will not grow unless they are bred into a winning culture. They will not reach their potential without experience around them. That might not matter in the end as the owners may still profit despite us never being truly successful on the pitch.

Edited April 3 by Max Fowler

[east lower]

5 hours ago, Chelsea_Matt said:

Oh joy. 💀🤣💣🤪

Sam Jewell, son of Paul Jewell the ex-Wigan and Bradford manager. Never kicked a professional football, but was a scratch golfer! So that’s all good then 😉

To be fair to him, he’ll have been around professional football and you do read positive things about work ethic, good networking but he’s young - 31 and for me there’s the thoughts that is it a bit of the ‘old boy’s club’ thing going on and is he experienced enough to play in the big leagues?

But, good luck to him - if he’s a success it’s probably going to mean we’ll be doing better.

[east lower]

30 minutes ago, Max Fowler said:

It's not about massive profit so much as a lack of loss on each player. We signed D D Fofana for 20 million - loan him to Burnley who presumably pay all his wages. Already you would argue he is worth more than that on this market. But we have him for another 7 years and can keep loaning him out or sell him for more when the price is right. Or maybe he even becomes a first team option.

Jackson is on 65k a week with us. Compare that to Rudiger who was on double that (117k a week) and we lost on a free having signed for 35 million. It's easy to see how Todd and Co looked at us losing the likes of Rüdiger and were like WTF - how can we just lose the key assets that we have for free?

And honestly a lot of this isn't all bad. We likely needed to get the wage bill down. Needed to shift a lot of players and frankly if we can make additional revenue through buying young talents and having a mulitclub model I'm all for it (although they should treat Strasbourg better).

The problem is - there isn't enough incentive for them to prioritise doing the right things to win trophies. They look at older players and have flashbacks to the likes of Rüdiger. They think they can build a young side over a number of years into an experienced outfit that can win - they think they have found a loophole in the system that no other big club has tried ever.

Problem is - all footballing common sense suggests these players will not grow unless they are bred into a winning culture. They will not reach their potential without experience around them. That might not matter in the end as the owners may still profit despite us never being truly successful on the pitch.

Maybe that’s where our POV differ slightly, as I think that part of the funding that the investors are factoring in is to have positive financial contributions made by the buying and selling of players.

I think that they’ll buy players designed for the first team, for the here and now and then be punting a futures market - in investment terms I.e. buy potential (cheap rates) and if they turn out, just below our level sell them on for profit. If they do turn out to be the real-deal then all’s good.

Maybe, and I don’t know the rules - if they get them young enough they can count them as academy players for FFP, and then it’s all ‘profit’ for those book-keeping purposes.

[Max Fowler]

11 minutes ago, east lower said:

Maybe that’s where our POV differ slightly, as I think that part of the funding that the investors are factoring in is to have positive financial contributions made by the buying and selling of players.

I think that they’ll buy players designed for the first team, for the here and now and then be punting a futures market - in investment terms I.e. buy potential (cheap rates) and if they turn out, just below our level sell them on for profit. If they do turn out to be the real-deal then all’s good.

Maybe, and I don’t know the rules - if they get them young enough they can count them as academy players for FFP, and then it’s all ‘profit’ for those book-keeping purposes.

Yeah I agree with all of the above. Obviously we still need our first team to be somewhat successful and if someone like Palmer comes along it's good for the club in multiple ways. I agree that we are buying some young players with the expectation of never likely playing them (though possible) but just turnover for profit.

If the first team is successful, it's uncontroversial that the players' value will go up.

My issue is there isn't a big enough incentive to focus primarily on making the team the most successful in the country. The model of buying experienced, world class players runs counter to the model of buying low wage young players on long contracts. 

Even though we have blown a lot of our FFP budget, the biggest problem is that we have little wiggle room to change course and even likely have to sell the likes of Gallagher to stay afloat.

Actually the owners still have shed loads of money and we have overpaid for a lot of players, but they still will see that as a good investment because of the low age and low wage model.

I don't think Chelsea fans really care that we spent 1 billion, other than the fact we are clever enough to realise that once we've blown all that money there's not much else we can do for a while.

The prospect of having cornered ourselves by blowing our FFP budget on a team who will never challenge for titles is one that deserves criticism but the owners aren't changing any time soon.

Edited April 3 by Max Fowler

[east lower]

@Max Fowler

Not going to quote the whole post (guidelines and all that). 
 I think that, and I’m being kind and for brevity, the owner have completely mis-read the room. They’ve been badly advised and their egos couldn’t deal with someone who said no - Tuchel. 
 

Keep the experience around until you have your own minds completely clear in how best to move forwards. Construct your plan, find the right people to implement your plan and stage-by-measured-stage implement it.

Have your goals, SMART objectives and piece-by-piece.

Not this mob though gung-ho, crash bang and now we’re all getting walloped!

[Bones]

15 hours ago, Max Fowler said:

Facts. Our model does not require on the pitch success to be successful.
I'm sorry - it just doesn't.

 

 

It does require finding fools buying players for insane amounts of money 😄

But if this was to be the case (making money without winning trophies) why did we buy Cucu for 60? those two for 100? I am sure they can understand basic maths even though they are not football people. We won't resell these for more.

I think the the plan is to grow the value of the whole club and sell it rather than make positive cashflow each year.

[Chelsea_Matt]

4 hours ago, east lower said:

The one thing the owners have done successfully is reduce the wage bill, but that's come at its own cost in terms of loss of experience on the pitch - Although, if we are to believe Winstanley & Lawrence there were some that actively wanted out.

What Brighton do is buy cheap, they identified that Europe was generally an expensive place to buy players and without some of the restrictions that used to be in place they moved their focus to the less fashionable Sth American countries, who's players and agents would be attracted by an opportunity and a defined pathway into the goldmine of the PL.

We are still buying expensive Sth Americans, I hope the chap Paez turns out to be the phenomenon that he is reported as being. But I don't see that we will move D.D. Fofana on for massive profit or even Jackson for that matter - And I think the latter will turn out OK. 

Agree with all of this but it’s the reckless and stupid way it was done. The rebuild could have been done over three windows, judiciously signing players the manager wanted. 👀💀🙃

[chiswickblue]

1 hour ago, Chelsea_Matt said:

Agree with all of this but it’s the reckless and stupid way it was done. The rebuild could have been done over three windows, judiciously signing players the manager wanted. 👀💀🙃

I don't think we can rely on one manager identifying the right players and sticking around long enough to make good use of them. The club needs to decide what sort of football they want to play and then sign appropriate players. One of the issues seems to be that they wanted to sign players to play tiki-taka when all of the currently successful English clubs are signing plenty of big, powerful players and playing far more directly.

Injuries to Fofana, Lavia and Ugochukwa haven't helped, but we could obviously do with a PL-ready CB (if Fofana isn't going to be back anytime soon), a PL-ready DM (depending on how Lavia and Ugochuwa come back from injuries) and a PL-ready ST (assuming Broja will be sold and continues to struggle to get back to full fitness after the big injury.

[Max Fowler]

2 hours ago, Bones said:

It does require finding fools buying players for insane amounts of money 😄

But if this was to be the case (making money without winning trophies) why did we buy Cucu for 60? those two for 100? I am sure they can understand basic maths even though they are not football people. We won't resell these for more.

I think the the plan is to grow the value of the whole club and sell it rather than make positive cashflow each year.

I mean Liverpool would have bought Caicedo for the same price. Enzo arguably might be worth that much too, but he seems really unsuited to the Premier League.

Cucurella came at a time when we were trying to get players in just to fill the gap and subsequently build the structures around them. Since then we have doubled and tripled down on our youth player policy at all costs. Also City were interested in him, but we of course overpaid massively.

Yes we have invested a lot in the team but the general strategy remains to look at potential target through the lens not only of a) who is the best quality player to get us to where we need to get to but also b) does this player represent an asset who will likely retain his value or grow in value over time and/or fit in with our wage structure.

Far too much emphasis on b) - not enough emphasis on a)

[Mark Kelly]

Pochettino signed 27 players during his Spurs tenure and other than Son and Alderweireld they're a very mixed bag if I'm being nice .

I wouldn't trust him to sign a decent player as far as I could bounce him. 

[Bob Singleton]

6 hours ago, east lower said:

[SNIP]

Maybe, and I don’t know the rules - if they get them young enough they can count them as academy players for FFP, and then it’s all ‘profit’ for those book-keeping purposes.

To count as an academy or "home grown" player, they will need to have been at the club for 3 years prior to when they turn 21 (though which side of 30 June/1 July also plays a part and I can't find the relevant clause at the moment).   

Essentially our looking at 16/17 year olds from South America, and possibly elsewhere, and getting them to sign pre-contracts (as they can't "work" here until they are 18) clearly falls into  the "master plan" of churning out young players in their early twenties who can either contribute to the first team squad or else be sold for "pure profit" from a Profit & Sustainability Regulations perspective.

[chiswickblue]

48 minutes ago, Bob Singleton said:

To count as an academy or "home grown" player, they will need to have been at the club for 3 years prior to when they turn 21 (though which side of 30 June/1 July also plays a part and I can't find the relevant clause at the moment).   

Essentially our looking at 16/17 year olds from South America, and possibly elsewhere, and getting them to sign pre-contracts (as they can't "work" here until they are 18) clearly falls into  the "master plan" of churning out young players in their early twenties who can either contribute to the first team squad or else be sold for "pure profit" from a Profit & Sustainability Regulations perspective.

Also, these players are not seen as pure-profit because they are home grown, they are seen as pure-profit as there was no transfer fee so no amortisarion to write off when they leave.

If we sell Deivid Washington in a couple of years for 40 million, he won't be seen as pure profit as we paid a transfer fee for him. The accounting profit is the transfer fee received minus the remaining book value. Something like 10 million this summer counts as profit on Kepa (no chance of that happening).

Malang Sarr would also count as pure profit if we could somehow convince someone to pay a transfer fee for him.

[patThenevin]

10 hours ago, Chelsea_Matt said:

Some really interesting views here espesh @Max Fowler and @east lower

One thing I know I do and I think others too is that we’ve really lowered the bar in an attempt to find the positives. We’ve really fallen from European powerhouses to an utter shitshow in two years. 

Also imo we’ve gone so far with this stupid “project”, destroyed our identity and any link with the fans, committed financial hari-kiri and generally lost our way that it’ll be a decade before we’re anywhere close to challenging for prizes. 

Your post absolutely nails it in two short paragraphs. 

The direction of travel is startling given the scale of money 'spent'. Yet still some are utterly myopic; a change of manager will make it all better, dear oh dear.

[Chelsea_Matt]

1 hour ago, patThenevin said:

Your post absolutely nails it in two short paragraphs. 

The direction of travel is startling given the scale of money 'spent'. Yet still some are utterly myopic; a change of manager will make it all better, dear oh dear.

Thanks bro! 😎🩶💯 I wish it wasn’t so but here we are. 💀

[Bones]

5 hours ago, Max Fowler said:

I mean Liverpool would have bought Caicedo for the same price. Enzo arguably might be worth that much too, but he seems really unsuited to the Premier League.

Cucurella came at a time when we were trying to get players in just to fill the gap and subsequently build the structures around them. Since then we have doubled and tripled down on our youth player policy at all costs. Also City were interested in him, but we of course overpaid massively.

Yes we have invested a lot in the team but the general strategy remains to look at potential target through the lens not only of a) who is the best quality player to get us to where we need to get to but also b) does this player represent an asset who will likely retain his value or grow in value over time and/or fit in with our wage structure.

Far too much emphasis on b) - not enough emphasis on a)

Yeah, fair points