Chelsea news: Todd Boehly has completed a huge £65million takeover of French side Strasbourg, taking a majority share in the club
A painful year came to an end with the side in 12th in the Premier League, a feat that the new owners will be looking to avoid for the foreseeable future. Behind the scenes though, the implementation of changes has been taking shape, with the recruitment team just one of the backroom departments to be completely restructured.
There's a clear goal of being sustainably run for the future, be that through young signings or the use of the academy and loan exits in the years ahead. One of the ideas that could help this is a multi-club model, similar to that of Manchester City's City Football Group or the Red Bull clubs.
It could allow for players to be signed through the system to be developed for the top level or for the easy facilitation of loan spells that work for not only experience, but also for potential work permit reasons too. “We’re going to be continuously adding resources. We’ve talked about having a multi-club model,” Boehly told the SALT Conference last year.
“I would love to continue to build out the footprint. There’s different countries where there’s advantages to having a club. Red Bull does a really good job at Leipzig and at Salzburg, both of which are playing in the Champions League, so they’ve figured out how to make that work. You have Man City that has a very big network of clubs.
“I think the challenge that Chelsea has now, or one of them, is that when you have 18, 19, 20-year-old superstars, you can loan them out to other clubs but you put their development in someone else’s hands. I think that our goal is to make sure we can show pathways for our young superstars to get onto the Chelsea pitch while getting them real game time."
The move has provoked angry reactions from fans of the club though, with some holding banners that say: "Boehly, not welcome," as their club looks set to change under new ownership, bringing into question the morality and place of multi-club models in the modern game.