Chelsea have more than TWENTY players under contract into the 2030s… Todd Boehly’s whole ‘project’ feels like lunacy
IN the year 2033, if man is still alive, we may have witnessed the advent of flying cars and the prime minister could well be an AI robot.
Or it’s possible we may be in the middle of a zombie apocalypse or some dystopian lawless future along the lines of Mad Max movies.
And yet, after the announcement of a new NINE-YEAR contract, we’re told that Nicolas Jackson will still be tied to Chelsea.
Despite the fact that the Senegalese striker, 23, isn’t actually all that good.
Despite the fact that the Blues were trying to sign Victor Osimhen to replace him as their first-choice centre-forward.
And despite the fact the club are already failing to rid themselves of unwanted players on long deals.
Chelsea now have 20 players under contract into the next decade, many of whom you’ll never have heard of.
And they now have so many wingers that there are genuine suggestions they forgot to announce the loan signing of Jadon Sancho from Manchester United, which wasn’t confirmed until 18 hours after the closure of the transfer window on Friday.
Apparently, those long contracts are all part of a brilliant ploy from chairman Todd Boehly and his Clearlake crew, designed to circumvent Profit and Sustainability Rules which are unlikely to last for very long in any recognisable form.
After Sunday’s 1-1 home draw with Crystal Palace, head coach Enzo Maresca mentioned that while the club won the Champions League just three years ago, “now it is not that kind of Chelsea”. He ain’t wrong.
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Maresca is the sixth different man to select the Blues’ first team since that victory over Manchester City in 2021.
Twenty of the 22 men on Chelsea’s team sheet that night have since left Stamford Bridge, while a 21st, Ben Chilwell, is part of Maresca’s disposable ‘bomb squad’.
It has been the most comprehensive overhaul in English football history.
Reece James, the only first-team squad member to survive, played a blinder that night in Porto by pocketing City’s Raheem Sterling.
A year later Sterling became Boehly’s first marquee Chelsea signing.
Sterling, 29, is now on loan to Arsenal, meaning he is good enough to have been signed by four of England’s five biggest clubs and to have been targeted by the fifth, Manchester United, before joining the Gunners.
Yet Sterling was approximately Maresca’s sixth-choice winger. Although we may have forgotten about one or two others.
Mykhailo Mudryk, hijacked from Arsenal when he was supposed to have been the final piece in Mikel Arteta’s title-winning team, is still at Chelsea and still stands a better chance of winning Olympic 100 metre gold than the Ballon d’Or.
Joao Felix, 24, dismal on loan at Chelsea under Graham Potter last year, has now been signed permanently. But only until 2031.
You get the picture. This whole ‘project’ feels like lunacy.
There is a fine line between madness and genius. Boehly and his mates think they are on one side of that line, the rest of us disagree.
And if you don’t support Chelsea it’s undoubtedly funny.
The Boehly regime is like a far-fetched satire of what Premier League football was already becoming — soulless, transient, junk-food content for the masses.
But if you’re a proper Blues fan — and despite the large selfie-stick element at the Bridge, there are still plenty of them — this must be a sad experience.
Because surely the essence of supporting a club is feeling some sort of connection with your players?
Surely you crave some sort of identity. Some sort of core to the team. Something with a vague air of permanence.
Yet Boehly & Co have achieved the seemingly impossible of making the trigger-happy Roman Abramovich era a vehicle for nostalgia about a more stable past.
Back then, the likes of Petr Cech, John Terry, Frank Lampard and Didier Drogba stuck together, won trophies and, yes, probably demanded the sacking of a fair few managers along the way. But they were Chelsea.
Chelsea are a circus - it will be TERRIBLE for football if they win anything, says Troy Deeney
CHELSEA are a circus — aren’t they?, writes Troy Deeney.
But the bigger concern should be if somehow, some way, Todd Boehly’s insane master-plan brings about success this season.
Finish in the top four. Win a trophy like the FA Cup.
He will then turn around and say: “See, it works” and all of a sudden, other clubs will begin considering copying this mad model to try and compete in the Premier League.
Before you know it, there will be a bigger divide between the top clubs and the rest and this country’s top flight will become something we have been fighting against — a Super League.
The smaller sides and promoted teams will be wiped out by the elite and will end up saying, ‘What’s the point?’
Football as we know it will change, and there will be no going back.
As a neutral, you don’t want to wish failure on a club or a regime, but it’s depressing to think about.
We should almost be looking at it in amazement — the owners have come in with this model and they’ve treated it as if they are buying stocks and shares, not players or human beings.
Boehly has wiped away any sense of sentiment or old-school values from that club and the worrying thing is that he doesn’t seem to care.
Does he even like football?
Read Troy Deeney’s hard-hitting opinion on Boehly’s Chelsea shambles in full.
Or check out all of Troy’s columns on SunSport.
A recognisable team at a vaguely coherent and immensely successful football club.
Chelsea may yet be severely punished by the Premier League for the financial sins of the Abramovich reign, which may lend it a less flattering hue in the memory of supporters.
That threat is one of many reasons to fear for the club’s future.
If you’re an optimist, you can point to the immense talent at Maresca’s disposal, which makes them capable of results like last week’s 6-2 win at Wolves.
If you’re capable of extreme positivity, you might even believe in Boehly’s masterplan of an inexperienced squad on long contracts growing together to conquer the world.
Even that Jackson may eventually break Lampard’s 211-goal all-time club goalscoring record.
Perhaps that will be in an Inter- galactic Champions League tie against Martians or cyborgs.
Because the year 2033 is a long, long way away.
RIK ROLL
THE Manchester United hierarchy stuck with Erik ten Hag on the basis of one result.
But that’s not as stupid as it sounds given that the result, in the FA Cup final, won United a major trophy — which is what football is all about — against one of the finest teams on Earth, which Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City side certainly are.
The trouble is that Ten Hag is now using that single result to spout delusional, overly-optimistic guff in the wake of a 3-0 home drubbing by Arne Slot’s Liverpool.
And now you have to ask not just whether Ten Hag ever was the best man for the United job, but whether he was even the best bald Dutchman for the job.
TONE DEAF
IT could be argued all the Premier League’s ‘Big Six’ clubs might have benefited from signing Ivan Toney this summer.
Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester United and even Liverpool all lack an authentic, top-class No 9, either as a Plan A or B.
As did Tottenham, before they recruited Dominic Solanke, who is probably not as good as Toney.
After selling Julian Alvarez, Manchester City could have done with a back-up for Erling Haaland too.
Yet somehow Toney finds himself in the lucrative wasteland of Saudi Arabia.
After waiting until the age of 25 to become a regular top- flight starter, then missing eight months of football due to a betting ban, Toney’s elite career may now be over at 28. It is one hell of a waste.
REF’S SPECIAL
REFEREE Chris Kavanagh might possibly be the worst of an average bunch of Premier League officials.
Yet he wasn’t wrong to send off Declan Rice in Arsenal’s draw with Brighton.
By the letter of the law, he was bang on.
Rice’s second yellow for nudging the ball away did not involve VAR, but was another example of an unwanted by-product of the VAR age.
When you insist football’s laws are applied forensically, leaving no room for common sense, you end up having to agree with plainly silly decisions like that one.
RAM IT HOME
AARON RAMSDALE is undeniably a very likeable lad.
But when he signed on for Southampton dressed as Hagrid from Harry Potter, you did wonder whether ‘zaniness’ should be part of a keeper’s job spec?
SEAN OF THE DREAD
Another defeat for Everton.
If a Sean Dyche team isn’t hard-nosed and pragmatic enough to see out a home win from 2-0 up in the 87th minute, then it might be time Everton started wondering what the point of Sean Dyche actually is.