Boehly's Chelsea project risks becoming an expensive descent into mediocrity

Todd Boehly has taken a step back from Chelsea this season to focus on his many other business interests.

The American owner was a familiar sight at their matches last season and was operating as their de facto sporting director.

But Boehly has been less prominent this season, attending fewer games and delegating the hands-on aspects to his co-owner Behdad Eghbali.

Chelsea fans who have grown increasingly disillusioned about the direction of the club would say that's no bad thing.

That's because 18 months after Boehly and his consortium completed their £4.25billion takeover at Stamford Bridge - following Roman Abramovich's ousting - his project just looks like a very expensive descent into mediocrity.

Put it this way, the season before Boehly arrived, Thomas Tuchel led them to a third-place finish in the Premier League and two domestic cup finals. A year before, they were kings of Europe.

Today, they sit a lowly 12th in the Premier League standings, the same position they finished last season. Given they don't have European commitments this season, it's thoroughly miserable.

Mauricio Pochettino's side have suffered grim losses at Manchester United and Everton - two teams hardly setting the world alight - in the space of a few days.

The situation is even more shocking given the vast amount of money - over £1billion on nearly 30 players - spent by Boehly.

So what has gone wrong since the American took charge at Stamford Bridge?

RESULTS

Sunday's defeat at Goodison Park was Chelsea's seventh league loss of the season. Reach back into last season under Frank Lampard's woeful return and it's a meagre six wins in 28 league outings.

Pochettino is still only a few months in and is continuously reminding us of how building Chelsea back into a force will be a 'long process'.

But it's clear, rather like Manchester United, the aura the club once had now belongs to the past.

Defeats to the likes of Nottingham Forest, Brentford and Everton - who'd be above them if not for their 10-point penalty - have become the norm.

Performances remain some way off what is required. 'Soft' is a word fans and pundits alike keep returning to when describing Chelsea.

'Inconsistent' is another topical word. A team that went toe-to-toe in a thrilling 4-4 draw with Manchester City were then crushed 4-1 by an injury-crippled Newcastle.

The attacking statistics look a lot healthier under Pochettino compared to the start of last season under Thomas Tuchel and then Graham Potter.

But defensively, Chelsea have too often been either bullied or ripped wide open. They've conceded as many goals as they've scored and still look deficient at the back in spite of the money spent.

Yet asked about the poor form after Sunday's loss, Pochettino said: 'Anyone who understands football [knows this] is a new project, a new team.

'Too many circumstances again, it is tough to explain. Too many problems and circumstances from the start of the season. And it is not easy to build something new.'

It didn't sound like a manager with a clear vision of how to restore Chelsea to title challengers, more one still sweeping up the mess of predecessors and using it as a handy excuse.

If Boehly hoped for a piece of silverware or a title challenge to kick-start his time leading the club, he's been sorely disappointed and may well be for some time yet.

MANAGERS

Was Boehly too hasty in sacking Tuchel just a few weeks into last season?

Hindsight is a wonderful thing but the disastrous Potter tenure that followed only posed questions about Boehly's judgement.

Does Pochettino deserve more time to build than Potter received? How many bad results will be be afforded? What is the yardstick of progress?

Boehly has spoken about Tuchel 'not being aligned' with his vision for Chelsea. 'Our vision for the club was to find a manager who really wanted to collaborate with us,' he said last year.

'The reality of our decision was that we weren't sure that Thomas saw it the same way we saw it.'

The bizarre thing was firing the German seven days after the closure of a transfer window in which they'd spent a record £272million.

Did it only emerge in those few days that Tuchel didn't share the owner's vision for the club?

Potter was clearly seen as more pliable but was ill-equipped to deal with the bloated and expensive squad he inherited. He was expected to usher in a new style of football while getting immediate results and keeping a 30-strong squad happy.

A process-driven coach anyway, Potter was always going to need several years to bring Chelsea back to strength in what was his first 'big' coaching job.

Instead, he took charge of just 31 games across seven months before being ditched. Given he was Boehly's hire, he actually backed Potter far later than others on the board until things came to a head in early April.

The job proved far too big for Potter and even Pochettino is starting to look overwhelmed by the scale of the task he has taken on.

The Argentine looked an excellent appointment but only if afforded the patience to get on with his work and autonomy over recruitment to build a winning team in his image.

A few months in and as results deteriorate, he might be struggling for both.

STAFF

In the corporate world of America Boehly is accustomed to, new owners tend to announce their arrival by shaking things up staff-wise.

It was no different at Chelsea, where a thorough 100-day audit of the structure at Stamford Bridge led to numerous high-profile departures and a severing of links to the Abramovich era.

Bruce Buck stepped down as chairman after 19 years, then the influential Marina Granovskaia - who took charge of Chelsea's transfer business under Abramovich - followed.

This confirmed that Boehly wanted to take charge of transfer business and contracts - which he did, with mixed results as we'll get on to.

But the cull didn't stop there. Performance director Petr Cech, international head of scouting Scott McLachlan, commercial director Damian Willoughby and director of communications Steve Atkins also departed.

Even long-serving medical chief Paco Biosca departed, which came as a surprise to the players. Given the new owners sent £80m signing Wesley Fofana all the way to the United States for his medical, rather than doing it in-house, Biosca may have seen it coming.

Even the ground staff weren't spared, with long-serving head groundsman Jason Griffin and his assistant and son Reisse leaving early this year.

By the start of 2023, the new-look Chelsea recruitment department had taken shape with Laurence Stewart and Paul Winstanley appointed as co-sporting directors, to work alongside technical director Christopher Vivell.

That allowed Boehly to take a step back on the transfers but the money pump continued to operate at full blast.

It all amounts to a lot of change and disruption behind the scenes in a relatively short space of time.

SIGNINGS AND CONTRACTS

One quite comical aspect of Pochettino's post-match comments after the defeat on Sunday came when he suggested Chelsea need to spend themselves out of trouble.

Over £1billion spent in three transfer windows under Boehly but it appears another blank cheque is required next month.

'We need to talk and to try to improve in the next transfer market. That's a thing to analyse with the sporting director and the owner and see what we can do to change the dynamic and improve,' Pochettino said.

In fairness to Poch, he's only overseen one transfer window and so many of the players he hasn't inherited. It's likely quite a few won't fit into his plans at all.

Quite how Chelsea can spend so much money and still be so deficient both in attack and defence is a real head-scratcher.

The only discernible strategy under Boehly has been to sign apparently talented young players and tie them down to ridiculously long contracts.

Enzo Fernandez and Mykhailo Mudryk signed 8.5-year deals, while Moises Caicedo's is eight years. It amounted to a clever accounting hack, with smaller annual payments recorded on the accounts, but UEFA have now closed that loophole.

The problem is what happens if these big money signings don't perform? Can Chelsea ever hope to recoup their money on them?

Caicedo [£115m] and Fernandez [£106.8m] do not - as yet - look anywhere near the formidable midfield partnership Chelsea would love them to be. Mudryk [£88.5m] is hardly setting the Premier League alight with his creativity.

They have been unfortunate with the injuries suffered by Christopher Nkunku [£53m] and Romeo Lavia [£53m] and will be praying they're not injury-prone.

But neither are likely to solve Chelsea's lack of potency up front. Nicolas Jackson [£31m] has seven goals for the season but has been criticised for missing sitters.

Pochettino still seems to be sifting through all these expensive arrivals, deciding who will deliver and who won't. It's a lot of people to keep happy.

Clearly, the manager wants more of his own signings, meaning Chelsea may have to cut their losses on a good few who arrived only last year.

Boehly clearly sees no hard in flexing financial muscles but Chelsea massively overpaid on so many of these signings. Did they try and negotiate?

Pundits like Gary Neville have accused Boehly of 'playing Football Manager' - and not very well.

The returns on this heavy investment have so far been negligible. There have been some successes - Cole Palmer [£42.5m] has started promisingly and Raheem Sterling [£47.5m] has returned to form this season.

But overall, Boehly's time at Chelsea so far has been chaotic, messy and expensive - with little indication of any progress.