Todd Boehly arrived at Chelsea determined to make a big statement in the transfer market.
But after spending in excess of £250m on new signings, Chelsea’s new owner has turned Stamford Bridge into a soap opera. Chelsea have become the Premier League’s big spenders making up more than their fair share of this summer’s huge summer spree which pushed close to the £2billion mark.
Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang’s arrival was the most eye-catching even if it was one of their smaller deals with Marcos Alonso going the other way in a player-plus-cash move. But the other deals have been for huge sums with Wesley Fofana arriving from Leicester City for a staggering £70m.
Marc Cucurella joined in a £60m deal from Brighton which is incredible when you consider they already have Ben Chilwell at left-back. Kalidou Koulibaly and Raheem Sterling joined for £34m and £50m respectively and the whole squad is undergoing a huge overhaul. It is exactly what Chelsea boss Thomas Tuchel was demanding from the end of last season when he warned this summer was not just about two or three big transfers but a complete rebuild.
And yet the worry for Chelsea is that they have ended up effectively having to do a crazy supermarket sweep having started weeks behind all of their rivals. Boehly’s protracted takeover was only completed at the end of May which left the club playing catch up in the transfer market. Sky pundit Gary Neville has been particularly cutting about Boehly’s spending spree, calling him a “kid in a sweet shop” and accused him of playing Championship Manager.
There can be no doubting that Boehly has got carried away with everything since taking over with spending reminiscent of the early days of Roman Abramovich’s reign. But the problem is that Chelsea have resembled a team in transition in the early weeks of the season as they won at Everton, drew with Tottenham, beat Leicester and yet suffered surprise away defeats at Leeds and Southampton. At Southampton, they looked like a team without identity or direction with even Tuchel admitting that he could not wait until the end of the transfer window to bring some stability.
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Sterling has looked a good bit of business with three goals in his last two games, Cucurella has hit the ground running but Koulibaly is taking time to adjust to English football. They needed a pre-season to bed in rather than being thrust into the thick of it and now there will be pressure on Aubameyang to be their main goal getter. For a player who has just turned 33, Aubayemang must be seen as something of a desperate throw of the dice to rejoin Tuchel as the pair had a strong working relationship at Borussia Dortmund. Former Arsenal captain Aubameyang was shown the door at the Emirates in January, only lasted seven months at Barcelona and now rocks up at Chelsea in a cut-price deal but will still be a big earner.
Yet despite all of the deals, they have not solved the midfield issue with N’Golo Kante struggling with injuries and only a year left on his deal. They do not have the legs in that department without him. Despite the huge outlay and revolving door of new arrivals, no-one is quite sure what Chelsea will look like this season and whether Tuchel will be able to mould them into a team capable of finishing in the top four let alone winning trophies. Having pledged around £4billion to buy the club, the £250m splashed out on new players must bring a degree of expectation - and yet it feels like a big money gamble rather than a safe bet.
