Phase one of Chelsea's £212million fire sale has been a success, allowing the club to rebuild under Mauricio Pochettino.
Co-sporting directors Paul Winstanley and Laurence Stewart have masterminded a plan to ship out seven players to reset after a chaotic season.
They have rejected Inter Milan's efforts to sign both Romelu Lukaku and Kalidou Koulibaly on cut-price loan deals, insisting their focus is only on selling players.
Winstanley and Lawrence have put the majority of the club's senior players up for sale this month to re-mould the squad in July. Chelsea are working on signing midfielders in Brighton's Moises Caicedo and Celta Vigo's Gabri Veiga, with Villarreal's striker Nicolas Jackson having completed his medical — but sales have been the focus.
Top brass Todd Boehly and Behdad Eghbali remain informed but have allowed their newly-appointed sporting directors to lead the rebuild.
Boehly did travel to Riyadh in early June, however, to meet Al-Hilal's owner before they signed Koulibaly, who would have struggled to find a European move on his £200,000-a-week wages. Lukaku went on to reject a move to the same club.
Edouard Mendy joined Al-Ahli in Saudi Arabia but Hakim Ziyech's move to Al-Nassr collapsed. N'Golo Kante joined Al-Ittihad for free.
Premier League rivals have privately expressed concern at Chelsea's ability to do deals with Saudi clubs to potentially help them out of a Financial Fair Play (FFP) hole. Clearlake Capital, the Los Angeles-based private equity firm that owns a majority stake in Chelsea, has played down concerns that it can influence the Saudi Public Investment Fund.
Chelsea's players are highly attractive to clubs in Saudi Arabia. They are famous, willing to leave English football and, crucially, have Muslim stars excited about the opportunity.
Chelsea have also allowed their players to join English rivals, with the Premier League so much richer than those around Europe. Kai Havertz has joined Arsenal, Mason Mount will soon join Manchester United and Mateo Kovacic has joined Manchester City. The windfalls from those three will account for £162m of the £212m raised in sales.
Real Madrid wanted Havertz but would only pay £43m as Arsenal ultimately ended up spending £67m. Chelsea did not want to lose Mount in particular, but as with Havertz and Kovacic, a practical decision was taken to sell a player unwilling to renew his contract. Ruben Loftus-Cheek is the only outlier this month, joining AC Milan last night for £17m.
Many of the players sold have been on contracts with less than a year to run. Chelsea were stung losing Andreas Christensen and Antonio Rudiger for free last season and their replacements, Koulibaly and Wesley Fofana, have underperformed — a situation they are keen to avoid in future.
Importantly, Winstanley and Stewart have also got these players off the books before June 30. They can now register the sales as during the 2022-23 season, in which they broke the world record by spending £600m across Boehly and Clearlake's first two transfer windows.
They did so while on UEFA's FFP watchlist, having lost an estimated £100m in revenue by failing to qualify for Europe and having registered over £100m in losses in the past two years.
The accounts will look much healthier from next week, when Pochettino will begin work at the training ground on Monday. The 51-year-old is now seven players down, having seen his predecessors struggle to work with a 32-man squad last season. Players were forced to change in corridors because they could not fit inside the dressing room at the Surrey training base.
In the second phase of the selling effort, Winstanley and Stewart could raise a further £100m. Lukaku, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Christian Pulisic, Callum Hudson-Odoi, Trevoh Chalobah, Cesar Azpilicueta and Marc Cucurella could all potentially leave.
Chalobah and Pulisic are desirable to buying clubs, but the rest may be tougher to shift. They are older, on higher wages and did not perform well last season. Some may also be stuck at Chelsea until September 1, when the transfer window closes. The Blues may need to pay some of those players off to get them off the books, while they could also be a disruptive influence for Pochettino in pre-season.
