Only time will tell if Chelsea’s recent transfer business is either as reckless as it appears on the surface, or if it’s all part of a master plan that will eventually become clear.
Since Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital completed their takeover of the club in May 2022, more than £1.2billion have been spent on new players. A total of 40 players have come in, often signing contracts that run for seven or more years, while a further 38 players have departed.
Fans and pundits alike have questioned the logic of the club running with a bloated squad size, while seeing a number of homegrown favourites, such as Conor Gallagher, leave the club.
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Boehly was operating as Chelsea’s sporting director when the club’s spending spree began and a barely believable reported detail has emerged regarding his negotiation style, which, if true, cost the team a seven-figure sum and dented his reputation.
A report from ESPN claims that an agent who dealt with Boehly recalls an early deal he was doing with the American, who rang him to enquire over the asking price of one of his players. Boehly was quoted £12million, and shortly after that he contracted the agent again, offering £14million.
When the unnamed agent asked why he didn’t offer £13million as a logical next step, Boehly replied that the number 13 was unlucky. This exchange, the report adds, meant that Chelsea’s contemporaries ‘quickly formed a negative view’ of the new regime.
If true, this tale wouldn’t be the first instance of a football club owner letting superstition getting the better of them.
Cardiff City owner Vincent Tan upset fans by changing the club’s main colour from their traditional blue to his lucky colour of red in 2012, before a U-turn followed three years later, while former Leeds United chairman Massimo Cellino has more foibles than you can shake the proverbial stick at, with the colour purple and the number 17 his chief bugbears.
While at Cagliari he believed the way to end a losing run was to tell fans to turn up wearing his ‘unlucky’ colour purple, theorising that one negative would cancel out the other. He also had every seat number 17 changed to 16B due to his fear of the number and players were banned from having 17 as a squad number.
When at Leeds, the story also goes that he told his former head coach Dave Hockaday not to select goalkeeper Paddy Kenny, due to his birthday being on the 17th of May.
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