Neville slams Chelsea's eight-year contract taking away young players motivation

Gary Neville believes Chelsea's 'mad' eight-year contracts are damaging for the motivation of their young players.

Todd Boehly handed out lengthy deals to new arrivals during a £1billion spending spree in the first transfer windows after he bought the club.

Mykhailo Mudryk was handed an eight-and-a-half-year contract when Chelsea signed him from Shakhtar Donetsk for £88.5million in January 2023.

Enzo Fernandez, signed from Benfica for £106.8m in the same window, put pen to paper on a similar length deal, which doesn't expire until 2031.

Moises Caicedo, an £115m arrival in August 2023, was handed an eight-year deal, as was striker Nicolas Jackson.

Noni Madueke, Benoit Badiashile, Malo Gusto and Cole Palmer are among other Chelsea players to have committed to lengthy deals.

The idea was to help Chelsea comply with Financial Fair Play [FFP] rules by spreading the cost of the players over the long-term deal, a loophole that has since been closed.

But Neville believes a young player who believes they are 'genuinely rich' after signing such a long deal won't give everything for the cause.

Speaking on The Gary Neville Podcast about the next steps Mauricio Pochettino's side need to take, he said: 'They need good, experienced signings, they can't be going down the route of eight-year signings.

'Eight-year contracts are bad in many ways because I just don't think they make sense. But they're actually not good for a young player.

'The money is big as well and you think you've got an eight-year contract as a young 21 or 22-year-old, the club might think they've got security over you but the young player thinks: "I am rich, I genuinely am rich."

'For some that's a problem, it just affects their mindset.

'What is the motivation? For yourself and for your family, you hope that's the motivation. For your team-mates and for your manager, doing the right thing.

'But then you do sometimes think, after a year or eight months, "I need to fight for that new contract, I've only got three years left or two years left."

'They've got seven years left some of them! Those contracts are mad in every single way.

'Forget FFP and all that stuff that went on, forget the fact that if they make a mistake, you're stuck with them for a long time.

'Just for the young player themselves, to think they have that comfort.'

Former Manchester United defender Neville did admit he once signed a similar length deal at Old Trafford but knew manager Sir Alex Ferguson wouldn't forgive any lapses in standards.

'I say that, I once signed a seven-year deal when I was 24. But I was as solid as a rock,' Neville added.

'He [Ferguson] would have got rid of me after 10 minutes, forget the seven-year contract! He'd have thrown me out the door, he had control.'