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Chelsea FC: Enzo’s A Messca

HagnSprayGooners

HagnSprayGooners

@TNAT's Lone Subscriber

Country: Northern Ireland
Honestly Chelsea football club is finished man. They’ve got £205M coming out every year in amortised fees along with a wage bill of £150M.

Revenue is around the £500M mark meaning next season they can only spend £350-370M on amortised fees, wages, agent fees and coach fees.

This is why they the offer for Osimhen was so weirdly structured and it’s the reason why they couldn’t offer a fee.

Next summer you’ll see Chelsea get a transfer ban or being forced to sell multiple assets to be able to sign anyone.

They’ve signed 100 players for a reason…
 
pure profit FC

pure profit FC

Shift & Caps Lock keys broken

Country: England

Player:Gabriel
HagnSprayGooners said:
Honestly Chelsea football club is finished man. They’ve got £205M coming out every year in amortised fees along with a wage bill of £150M.

Revenue is around the £500M mark meaning next season they can only spend £350-370M on amortised fees, wages, agent fees and coach fees.

This is why they the offer for Osimhen was so weirdly structured and it’s the reason why they couldn’t offer a fee.

Next summer you’ll see Chelsea get a transfer ban or being forced to sell multiple assets to be able to sign anyone.

They’ve signed 100 players for a reason…
Click to expand...
they always find a way out of whatever dodgy situation they place themselves, they just wont die, they'll keep overspending their way back to being a good team again regardless of PSR.
 
HagnSprayGooners

HagnSprayGooners

@TNAT's Lone Subscriber

Country: Northern Ireland
pure profit FC said:
they always find a way out of whatever dodgy situation they place themselves, they just wont die, they'll keep overspending their way back to being a good team again regardless of PSR.
Click to expand...

Not how it works now my friend, they’re exhausting options and desperately need to get back into the CL.

These amortised payments don’t just go away, they’ve got players on 7/8 year contracts.
 
lufere7

lufere7

Active Member

Player:Martinelli
Really interesting article on The Athletic today about the ownership crisis:
The biggest story at Chelsea is finally out in the open: a little more than two years after their £2.3billion ($3.02bn) takeover of the club from sanctioned Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, majority shareholder Clearlake Capital’s marriage to co-owner Todd Boehly is in tatters.

Rumblings of discontent have been audible behind the scenes for some time, but specific accusations of a breakdown in relations between Boehly and Clearlake co-founder Behdad Eghbali — the most visible and actively engaged member of Chelsea’s ownership consortium over the past 18 months — were always denied until now.


Now, in the wake of a Bloomberg report last week that revealed Clearlake and Boehly are each exploring the ownership options, all parties have for the first time acknowledged the scale of the rift. People familiar with Boehly’s thinking say he considers his relationship with Clearlake and Eghbali to be “irreconcilable”, and others claim the two men barely speak to one another.

Amid the many other points of contention, there is broad agreement that three factors in particular have contributed to the fracturing of Chelsea’s owners:

  • A fundamental cultural difference in how the Premier League club should operate, with Clearlake and Boehly each believing the other has sought to unduly influence sporting decisions
  • The decision to mutually part ways with head coach Mauricio Pochettino at the end of last season, which exposed the first public fault lines between Boehly and the club’s leadership structure
  • A lack of tangible progress in the stadium project over the last two years, with the club not yet resolved on a revamp or rebuild of Stamford Bridge or moving to a nearby site at Earl’s Court.
We can reveal that a meeting took place last month when the pair decided to explore their options. Boehly and associates have received approaches from investors in recent weeks with a view to buying out Clearlake, while Clearlake has aspirations to buy out Boehly.

To tell the fuller story of how and why things have reached this point, what happens next and how it could impact Chelsea, The Athletic has spoken to individuals on both ‘sides’, as well as those who have observed the breakdown of relations first-hand. All have been granted anonymity to enable them to speak freely.

In the two years since Clearlake and Boehly’s takeover, Chelsea have disrupted and dominated football’s global transfer market, committing more than £1.2billion in transfer fees and generating more than £500m in sales. Players have been bought and sold at a speed and scale that has been as divisive as it has been dizzying.

Boehly has been the name most often cited in headlines criticising Chelsea’s transfer policy and the face of online memes mocking the club for outspending their rivals while labouring in the middle of the Premier League table. However, he has not led recruitment at Stamford Bridge since January 2023, when he relinquished his ‘interim sporting director’ title and signalled that he would step back from day-to-day responsibilities.

That move coincided with the introduction of a new sporting leadership team at Chelsea, formally announced at the start of February last year, with Paul Winstanley and Laurence Stewart confirmed as co-sporting directors. The winter window of that 2022-23 season also signalled a significant shift in the club’s recruitment strategy to focus on younger talent prepared to accept lower base salaries as part of longer, heavily incentivised contracts.

But while Boehly stepped back, Eghbali remained very active on the sporting side in that January window, flying to Turkey with Winstanley to pitch Ukrainian club Shakhtar Donetsk on a deal to sign their winger Mykhailo Mudryk for an initial €70million (£59.1m, $77.4m at current exchange rates), with a further €30m potentially due in performance-related add-ons.

The two men also led the negotiations that resulted in Chelsea paying a British-record fee of €120million to Benfica of Portugal for midfielder Enzo Fernandez on deadline day of that same window.

In the 18 months since, Winstanley and Stewart have continued to work closely with Eghbali, who is more engaged in day-to-day operations at Stamford Bridge and the Cobham training complex than any other member of the ownership group and, as the representative of the private equity firm that owns 61.5 per cent of the club’s shares, can be considered the most powerful figure at Chelsea.

This dynamic speaks to what, in Boehly’s view, is the major continuing tension with Clearlake: a cultural difference over how the co-owners operate.

Boehly’s approach, as evidenced by his work with Major League Baseball’s Los Angeles Dodgers, is to hire specialists and allow them to get on with their jobs, while Clearlake, particularly Eghbali, has taken a role considered by Boehly to be micromanaging — a source close to Boehly’s side described Eghbali as being “obsessed with player trading”.


One person familiar with Clearlake’s thinking disputes this, insisting that Eghbali’s level of engagement in Chelsea’s recruitment serves only to support Winstanley and Stewart — not least regarding the numbers involved in transfers and contracts and the structuring of deals, where his financial acumen complements their football expertise.

In any case, all major decisions taken at Chelsea require sign-off from Boehly as well as from Eghbali and fellow Clearlake co-founder Jose E Feliciano, and Boehly has never exercised his veto power over transfers. This lack of open resistance, according to figures close to him, is due to a desire to pick his battles.

Similarly, there were no Clearlake checks on any of the transfer business conducted during Boehly’s ill-fated tenure as interim sporting director in the summer of 2022. Chelsea have since attempted to address many of the unsuccessful signings made in that window, swiftly selling on Kalidou Koulibaly and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and freezing out Raheem Sterling last month before loaning him to London rivals Arsenal on deadline day.


Yet plenty have questioned the wisdom of subsidising a large part of Sterling’s wages as he lines up for a team likely to be one of Chelsea’s direct competitors this season in the race for Champions League qualification.

That first window is remembered with regret rather than recrimination by Clearlake, conducted as it was in the chaotic first weeks after an accelerated takeover and driven partly at the direction of Thomas Tuchel, a head coach with whom all of the owners quickly agreed they simply could not work.


Pochettino was a very different case.

In the second half of May, as speculation surrounded the Argentinian’s future at Chelsea with an end-of-season review conducted by Winstanley and Stewart looming, Boehly made public pronouncements at the Sportico conference and Qatar Economic Forum that appeared to advocate for keeping him on as head coach.


“The number one thing is you have got to be patient,” Boehly said at the latter event when asked about Chelsea’s strategy. “You are putting something together and expecting it to come together really quickly, but the reality is (that) anything really good takes a little bit of time.

“Patience was always a thought for us. This is a young and exciting team that will be together for a long time. If you look at franchises that dominate for a long time, they have real stability in the team, front office and coaching staff.”

Boehly then raised eyebrows at Stamford Bridge by inviting Pochettino to a private dinner on the Friday evening before Chelsea’s season-ending 2-1 home win against Bournemouth — a courtesy that the coach promptly disclosed to journalists in his final press conference of the campaign.

“Look, if I invite you alone and you are me and we have a dinner, it’s not for a bad thing, no?” Pochettino asked. “I don’t believe that.”

The following Tuesday, it was announced that Pochettino and Chelsea had mutually decided to part ways after six hours of discussions over two days at Cobham with Winstanley, Stewart and Eghbali, while Boehly dialled in from the United States.

Winstanley and Stewart had flown out to see Boehly the week before his dinner with Pochettino to explain their thinking about making a coaching change. He responded in supportive terms at that meeting, though his subsequent words and actions were construed very differently.

People familiar with Boehly’s thinking say he wanted Chelsea to retain Pochettino, but he did not formally veto when the final decision was mutually reached. These sources add he considers Eghbali to be trigger-happy and the driver of the call to move on — an accusation that is strenuously denied on Clearlake’s side.

A person familiar with Clearlake’s thinking contends that it is Boehly who engaged in owner interference, attempting to put his thumb on the scale of Winstanley and Stewart’s end-of-season review with words and actions that displayed public backing for Pochettino rather than allowing Chelsea’s co-sporting directors to complete their process and arrive at their own decision.


There is also a belief on the Clearlake side that being overruled by Chelsea’s sporting leadership on Pochettino was the tipping point for Boehly to begin exploring his options within the ownership structure — a move that has, in recent days, spilt out into the public discourse as media reports about a potential bid to gain full control of the club.

People familiar with Boehly’s stance deny this and insist the broader cultural clash with Clearlake is driving his thinking.

Several more neutral sources briefed on the matter have echoed Boehly’s view, suggesting the divide rests on the differing aims and objectives of the ownership groups. On one hand, Boehly’s investment is personal money and he views his sporting investments as long-term, lifetime plays. Clearlake, as a fund, is managing money on behalf of investors.

This will inevitably lead to diverging interests at times, particularly since the club is entering its second successive season without the financial rewards of Champions League football.

The question is why the parties did not see this tension coming when they came together to buy out Abramovich in 2022. The answer to that, according to people familiar with the co-owners, is that all parties were under time pressure to bring together a consortium to buy a club put up for auction by the UK government following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the sanctioning of Abramovich.

While Clearlake and Boehly had done deals together, they had never operated a business together. A risk was taken and it has flatly backfired.

The tensions between Boehly and Eghbali tested Pochettino’s patience during his tumultuous single season as head coach at Stamford Bridge, and the way his departure played out exposed the fault lines among Chelsea’s owners, which have now fractured.

On their arrival at Chelsea in 2022, Boehly and Clearlake signalled that they expected to communicate a stadium plan by the end of that calendar year.

That self-imposed deadline was extended to the summer of 2023, then to some time in 2024. More than two years into their ownership, the vital question of what to do with Stamford Bridge — and potentially the tantalising former Earls Court Exhibition Centre site less than a mile away — still has no answer.


For the first year of their ownership, the project was being led by two of Boehly’s trusted associates: Jonathan Goldstein, a London property developer and fellow Chelsea board member as well as chief executive of investment firm Cain International, was front and centre with Janet Marie Smith, executive vice president of planning and development for the Dodgers, enlisted as a prominent consultant.

Goldstein personally handled the purchase of the 1.2-acre Sir Oswald Stoll Mansions site adjacent to the stadium in July last year, as well as representing the club at several meetings with key stakeholders and supporter groups. But things changed in October with the appointment of Jason Gannon, former managing director of the state-of-the-art SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, as Chelsea’s chief operating officer.


Gannon, who was promoted to club president and chief operating officer in Chelsea’s latest executive reshuffle this month, has been tasked with leading the stadium project ever since his arrival. Several architects including Populous, the firm responsible for the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, have been consulted to inform the club’s deliberations.

Gannon’s role is not a source of tension — Boehly and Clearlake consider him the right leader to formulate a stadium plan, backed by a new management team formed in the wake of chief executive Chris Jurasek’s departure — but the lack of progress on the project is cited as a factor in the relationship breakdown between owners.

Chelsea’s time in stadium purgatory since Abramovich paused his ambitious redevelopment project indefinitely in 2018 has cost them; their 40,173-seater historic home is now only the ninth-largest by capacity in the Premier League, placing a relatively low ceiling on matchday revenue even with the unpopular decision to raise general admission season-ticket prices, for the first time in more than a decade, for the 2024-25 season. The club also do not have a front-of-shirt sponsor this season, further increasing the need to up prices.

Last year’s tentative target for Chelsea to be playing in a new home by 2030 already looks optimistic and there will come a time when either revamping or rebuilding Stamford Bridge are the only viable options. In March, the Earls Court Development Company unveiled detailed plans for the first phase of its proposed work on the exhibition centre site, with the aim of construction getting underway in 2026.

Taking the slow path forward on a stadium plan may matter less if Clearlake and Boehly are truly prepared to wait a long time to realise a return on their vast investment in Chelsea. The events of the last month cast serious doubt over whether they will pursue that together.

During a meeting last month, Boehly and Eghbali agreed that he and Clearlake would explore possible buyout options in light of the breakdown in their relationship.

People familiar with Boehly’s thinking on the matter believe there will be a clear indication of the direction of travel within the next two months. But what does that mean?

Since that August meeting, figures familiar with the talks claim multiple parties have approached Boehly indicating they are willing to take on Chelsea with him: long-term investors, not people who expect short-term returns, ideal candidates seen as passive financial backers who can provide perpetual capital.

Clearlake’s stance is that the future holds only two possible options: a continuation of the status quo or a buyout that would see it take full control of Chelsea. A person familiar with the firm’s thinking insists that it has no need or desire to sell its majority stake and already has the funds to relieve Boehly and his fellow investors, Mark Walter and Hansjorg Wyss, of their shares if they are unwilling to continue with the existing arrangement.

There is suspicion on the Clearlake side that this schism being played out in the public domain is actually a ploy to disguise the true motive of Boehly’s camp, which they believe is an attempt to put pressure on them to make a big offer to purchase his stake.

But Boehly’s recent actions are not those of a man who appears to be losing interest. The billionaire keeps his distance more than before but asks for updates on what is happening at Chelsea, with sources saying regular communication takes place with Winstanley and Stewart.

He flew in for Chelsea’s opening Premier League game of the season against Manchester City and would have attended the 6-2 victory at Wolverhampton Wanderers the following week but it clashed with a personal engagement, where he was constantly provided with match updates.

In the summer, Boehly travelled to South Carolina to observe a training camp run up by the Real Madrid Foundation. Seeing youngsters training in Real Madrid kit has led Boehly to consider the possibility of setting up similar mini-academies for Chelsea around the world. Such a scheme requires long-term planning.

Both sides have matching rights and veto powers regarding potential offers from outside investors. Clearlake can therefore credibly argue that all roads must go through it as majority shareholder, but Boehly and the others also have a measure of protection against any changes to the ownership structure that do not have their approval.

It is also important to note that not all Chelsea shares are created equal.

Clearlake’s shares are Class A senior while those of Boehly and his co-investors are Class B junior, meaning the latter are exposed to first loss if the club lose value. Despite this difference in shares, however, Boehly, Walter and Wyss would be guaranteed the same rate of return on selling their stakes as Eghbali, Feliciano and Clearlake investors would receive for relinquishing theirs.


Exploring the mechanics of selling is appropriate because, while the events of recent days have been described as the breakout of civil war in the boardroom, it is every bit as likely to be the bruising prelude to a fierce negotiation.

Clearlake and Boehly have set out their respective stalls but posturing with an exaggerated level of conviction is part of high-level business. What happens if Clearlake offers Boehly, Walter and Wyss a financial off-ramp to start again at another club with more agreeable partners? What happens if Boehly’s group finds new backing and presents Clearlake investors with a handsome return on investment after two painful years running Chelsea?

Neither party is going on the record to clearly state their intentions and reassure the club’s supporters. Nobody knows how or when this will end.

What is clear, however, is that the public litigation of these grievances only deepens the sense of disorienting instability Chelsea have failed to escape since the ‘For Sale’ sign went up outside Stamford Bridge more than two years ago.
Main takeaway from me is that Boehly seems to surprisingly be the lesser of 2 evils, I always thought it was the other way around with how public facing he is compared to Eghbali. Bear in mind the article seems to have contacted sources on both sides so each side obviously presented themselves very favorably. But if stuff like this is true I'd much rather Clearlake buy Boehly out rather than the other way around:
Boehly’s approach, as evidenced by his work with Major League Baseball’s Los Angeles Dodgers, is to hire specialists and allow them to get on with their jobs, while Clearlake, particularly Eghbali, has taken a role considered by Boehly to be micromanaging — a source close to Boehly’s side described Eghbali as being “obsessed with player trading”.
Click to expand...
Boehly apparently was the one that wanted to keep Pochettino too, so the rash decision making and irresponsible player buying seem to come from the other side. Clearlake are also adamant on not selling on the article, so good news.
Clearlake’s stance is that the future holds only two possible options: a continuation of the status quo or a buyout that would see it take full control of Chelsea. A person familiar with the firm’s thinking insists that it has no need or desire to sell its majority stake and already has the funds to relieve Boehly and his fellow investors, Mark Walter and Hansjorg Wyss, of their shares if they are unwilling to continue with the existing arrangement.

There is suspicion on the Clearlake side that this schism being played out in the public domain is actually a ploy to disguise the true motive of Boehly’s camp, which they believe is an attempt to put pressure on them to make a big offer to purchase his stake.
Click to expand...
 
M

Melquiades

Well-Known Member
lufere7 said:
Really interesting article on The Athletic today about the ownership crisis:
The biggest story at Chelsea is finally out in the open: a little more than two years after their £2.3billion ($3.02bn) takeover of the club from sanctioned Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, majority shareholder Clearlake Capital’s marriage to co-owner Todd Boehly is in tatters.

Rumblings of discontent have been audible behind the scenes for some time, but specific accusations of a breakdown in relations between Boehly and Clearlake co-founder Behdad Eghbali — the most visible and actively engaged member of Chelsea’s ownership consortium over the past 18 months — were always denied until now.


Now, in the wake of a Bloomberg report last week that revealed Clearlake and Boehly are each exploring the ownership options, all parties have for the first time acknowledged the scale of the rift. People familiar with Boehly’s thinking say he considers his relationship with Clearlake and Eghbali to be “irreconcilable”, and others claim the two men barely speak to one another.

Amid the many other points of contention, there is broad agreement that three factors in particular have contributed to the fracturing of Chelsea’s owners:

  • A fundamental cultural difference in how the Premier League club should operate, with Clearlake and Boehly each believing the other has sought to unduly influence sporting decisions
  • The decision to mutually part ways with head coach Mauricio Pochettino at the end of last season, which exposed the first public fault lines between Boehly and the club’s leadership structure
  • A lack of tangible progress in the stadium project over the last two years, with the club not yet resolved on a revamp or rebuild of Stamford Bridge or moving to a nearby site at Earl’s Court.
We can reveal that a meeting took place last month when the pair decided to explore their options. Boehly and associates have received approaches from investors in recent weeks with a view to buying out Clearlake, while Clearlake has aspirations to buy out Boehly.

To tell the fuller story of how and why things have reached this point, what happens next and how it could impact Chelsea, The Athletic has spoken to individuals on both ‘sides’, as well as those who have observed the breakdown of relations first-hand. All have been granted anonymity to enable them to speak freely.

In the two years since Clearlake and Boehly’s takeover, Chelsea have disrupted and dominated football’s global transfer market, committing more than £1.2billion in transfer fees and generating more than £500m in sales. Players have been bought and sold at a speed and scale that has been as divisive as it has been dizzying.

Boehly has been the name most often cited in headlines criticising Chelsea’s transfer policy and the face of online memes mocking the club for outspending their rivals while labouring in the middle of the Premier League table. However, he has not led recruitment at Stamford Bridge since January 2023, when he relinquished his ‘interim sporting director’ title and signalled that he would step back from day-to-day responsibilities.

That move coincided with the introduction of a new sporting leadership team at Chelsea, formally announced at the start of February last year, with Paul Winstanley and Laurence Stewart confirmed as co-sporting directors. The winter window of that 2022-23 season also signalled a significant shift in the club’s recruitment strategy to focus on younger talent prepared to accept lower base salaries as part of longer, heavily incentivised contracts.

But while Boehly stepped back, Eghbali remained very active on the sporting side in that January window, flying to Turkey with Winstanley to pitch Ukrainian club Shakhtar Donetsk on a deal to sign their winger Mykhailo Mudryk for an initial €70million (£59.1m, $77.4m at current exchange rates), with a further €30m potentially due in performance-related add-ons.

The two men also led the negotiations that resulted in Chelsea paying a British-record fee of €120million to Benfica of Portugal for midfielder Enzo Fernandez on deadline day of that same window.

In the 18 months since, Winstanley and Stewart have continued to work closely with Eghbali, who is more engaged in day-to-day operations at Stamford Bridge and the Cobham training complex than any other member of the ownership group and, as the representative of the private equity firm that owns 61.5 per cent of the club’s shares, can be considered the most powerful figure at Chelsea.

This dynamic speaks to what, in Boehly’s view, is the major continuing tension with Clearlake: a cultural difference over how the co-owners operate.

Boehly’s approach, as evidenced by his work with Major League Baseball’s Los Angeles Dodgers, is to hire specialists and allow them to get on with their jobs, while Clearlake, particularly Eghbali, has taken a role considered by Boehly to be micromanaging — a source close to Boehly’s side described Eghbali as being “obsessed with player trading”.


One person familiar with Clearlake’s thinking disputes this, insisting that Eghbali’s level of engagement in Chelsea’s recruitment serves only to support Winstanley and Stewart — not least regarding the numbers involved in transfers and contracts and the structuring of deals, where his financial acumen complements their football expertise.

In any case, all major decisions taken at Chelsea require sign-off from Boehly as well as from Eghbali and fellow Clearlake co-founder Jose E Feliciano, and Boehly has never exercised his veto power over transfers. This lack of open resistance, according to figures close to him, is due to a desire to pick his battles.

Similarly, there were no Clearlake checks on any of the transfer business conducted during Boehly’s ill-fated tenure as interim sporting director in the summer of 2022. Chelsea have since attempted to address many of the unsuccessful signings made in that window, swiftly selling on Kalidou Koulibaly and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and freezing out Raheem Sterling last month before loaning him to London rivals Arsenal on deadline day.


Yet plenty have questioned the wisdom of subsidising a large part of Sterling’s wages as he lines up for a team likely to be one of Chelsea’s direct competitors this season in the race for Champions League qualification.

That first window is remembered with regret rather than recrimination by Clearlake, conducted as it was in the chaotic first weeks after an accelerated takeover and driven partly at the direction of Thomas Tuchel, a head coach with whom all of the owners quickly agreed they simply could not work.


Pochettino was a very different case.

In the second half of May, as speculation surrounded the Argentinian’s future at Chelsea with an end-of-season review conducted by Winstanley and Stewart looming, Boehly made public pronouncements at the Sportico conference and Qatar Economic Forum that appeared to advocate for keeping him on as head coach.


“The number one thing is you have got to be patient,” Boehly said at the latter event when asked about Chelsea’s strategy. “You are putting something together and expecting it to come together really quickly, but the reality is (that) anything really good takes a little bit of time.

“Patience was always a thought for us. This is a young and exciting team that will be together for a long time. If you look at franchises that dominate for a long time, they have real stability in the team, front office and coaching staff.”

Boehly then raised eyebrows at Stamford Bridge by inviting Pochettino to a private dinner on the Friday evening before Chelsea’s season-ending 2-1 home win against Bournemouth — a courtesy that the coach promptly disclosed to journalists in his final press conference of the campaign.

“Look, if I invite you alone and you are me and we have a dinner, it’s not for a bad thing, no?” Pochettino asked. “I don’t believe that.”

The following Tuesday, it was announced that Pochettino and Chelsea had mutually decided to part ways after six hours of discussions over two days at Cobham with Winstanley, Stewart and Eghbali, while Boehly dialled in from the United States.

Winstanley and Stewart had flown out to see Boehly the week before his dinner with Pochettino to explain their thinking about making a coaching change. He responded in supportive terms at that meeting, though his subsequent words and actions were construed very differently.

People familiar with Boehly’s thinking say he wanted Chelsea to retain Pochettino, but he did not formally veto when the final decision was mutually reached. These sources add he considers Eghbali to be trigger-happy and the driver of the call to move on — an accusation that is strenuously denied on Clearlake’s side.

A person familiar with Clearlake’s thinking contends that it is Boehly who engaged in owner interference, attempting to put his thumb on the scale of Winstanley and Stewart’s end-of-season review with words and actions that displayed public backing for Pochettino rather than allowing Chelsea’s co-sporting directors to complete their process and arrive at their own decision.


There is also a belief on the Clearlake side that being overruled by Chelsea’s sporting leadership on Pochettino was the tipping point for Boehly to begin exploring his options within the ownership structure — a move that has, in recent days, spilt out into the public discourse as media reports about a potential bid to gain full control of the club.

People familiar with Boehly’s stance deny this and insist the broader cultural clash with Clearlake is driving his thinking.

Several more neutral sources briefed on the matter have echoed Boehly’s view, suggesting the divide rests on the differing aims and objectives of the ownership groups. On one hand, Boehly’s investment is personal money and he views his sporting investments as long-term, lifetime plays. Clearlake, as a fund, is managing money on behalf of investors.

This will inevitably lead to diverging interests at times, particularly since the club is entering its second successive season without the financial rewards of Champions League football.

The question is why the parties did not see this tension coming when they came together to buy out Abramovich in 2022. The answer to that, according to people familiar with the co-owners, is that all parties were under time pressure to bring together a consortium to buy a club put up for auction by the UK government following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the sanctioning of Abramovich.

While Clearlake and Boehly had done deals together, they had never operated a business together. A risk was taken and it has flatly backfired.

The tensions between Boehly and Eghbali tested Pochettino’s patience during his tumultuous single season as head coach at Stamford Bridge, and the way his departure played out exposed the fault lines among Chelsea’s owners, which have now fractured.

On their arrival at Chelsea in 2022, Boehly and Clearlake signalled that they expected to communicate a stadium plan by the end of that calendar year.

That self-imposed deadline was extended to the summer of 2023, then to some time in 2024. More than two years into their ownership, the vital question of what to do with Stamford Bridge — and potentially the tantalising former Earls Court Exhibition Centre site less than a mile away — still has no answer.


For the first year of their ownership, the project was being led by two of Boehly’s trusted associates: Jonathan Goldstein, a London property developer and fellow Chelsea board member as well as chief executive of investment firm Cain International, was front and centre with Janet Marie Smith, executive vice president of planning and development for the Dodgers, enlisted as a prominent consultant.

Goldstein personally handled the purchase of the 1.2-acre Sir Oswald Stoll Mansions site adjacent to the stadium in July last year, as well as representing the club at several meetings with key stakeholders and supporter groups. But things changed in October with the appointment of Jason Gannon, former managing director of the state-of-the-art SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, as Chelsea’s chief operating officer.


Gannon, who was promoted to club president and chief operating officer in Chelsea’s latest executive reshuffle this month, has been tasked with leading the stadium project ever since his arrival. Several architects including Populous, the firm responsible for the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, have been consulted to inform the club’s deliberations.

Gannon’s role is not a source of tension — Boehly and Clearlake consider him the right leader to formulate a stadium plan, backed by a new management team formed in the wake of chief executive Chris Jurasek’s departure — but the lack of progress on the project is cited as a factor in the relationship breakdown between owners.

Chelsea’s time in stadium purgatory since Abramovich paused his ambitious redevelopment project indefinitely in 2018 has cost them; their 40,173-seater historic home is now only the ninth-largest by capacity in the Premier League, placing a relatively low ceiling on matchday revenue even with the unpopular decision to raise general admission season-ticket prices, for the first time in more than a decade, for the 2024-25 season. The club also do not have a front-of-shirt sponsor this season, further increasing the need to up prices.

Last year’s tentative target for Chelsea to be playing in a new home by 2030 already looks optimistic and there will come a time when either revamping or rebuilding Stamford Bridge are the only viable options. In March, the Earls Court Development Company unveiled detailed plans for the first phase of its proposed work on the exhibition centre site, with the aim of construction getting underway in 2026.

Taking the slow path forward on a stadium plan may matter less if Clearlake and Boehly are truly prepared to wait a long time to realise a return on their vast investment in Chelsea. The events of the last month cast serious doubt over whether they will pursue that together.

During a meeting last month, Boehly and Eghbali agreed that he and Clearlake would explore possible buyout options in light of the breakdown in their relationship.

People familiar with Boehly’s thinking on the matter believe there will be a clear indication of the direction of travel within the next two months. But what does that mean?

Since that August meeting, figures familiar with the talks claim multiple parties have approached Boehly indicating they are willing to take on Chelsea with him: long-term investors, not people who expect short-term returns, ideal candidates seen as passive financial backers who can provide perpetual capital.

Clearlake’s stance is that the future holds only two possible options: a continuation of the status quo or a buyout that would see it take full control of Chelsea. A person familiar with the firm’s thinking insists that it has no need or desire to sell its majority stake and already has the funds to relieve Boehly and his fellow investors, Mark Walter and Hansjorg Wyss, of their shares if they are unwilling to continue with the existing arrangement.

There is suspicion on the Clearlake side that this schism being played out in the public domain is actually a ploy to disguise the true motive of Boehly’s camp, which they believe is an attempt to put pressure on them to make a big offer to purchase his stake.

But Boehly’s recent actions are not those of a man who appears to be losing interest. The billionaire keeps his distance more than before but asks for updates on what is happening at Chelsea, with sources saying regular communication takes place with Winstanley and Stewart.

He flew in for Chelsea’s opening Premier League game of the season against Manchester City and would have attended the 6-2 victory at Wolverhampton Wanderers the following week but it clashed with a personal engagement, where he was constantly provided with match updates.

In the summer, Boehly travelled to South Carolina to observe a training camp run up by the Real Madrid Foundation. Seeing youngsters training in Real Madrid kit has led Boehly to consider the possibility of setting up similar mini-academies for Chelsea around the world. Such a scheme requires long-term planning.

Both sides have matching rights and veto powers regarding potential offers from outside investors. Clearlake can therefore credibly argue that all roads must go through it as majority shareholder, but Boehly and the others also have a measure of protection against any changes to the ownership structure that do not have their approval.

It is also important to note that not all Chelsea shares are created equal.

Clearlake’s shares are Class A senior while those of Boehly and his co-investors are Class B junior, meaning the latter are exposed to first loss if the club lose value. Despite this difference in shares, however, Boehly, Walter and Wyss would be guaranteed the same rate of return on selling their stakes as Eghbali, Feliciano and Clearlake investors would receive for relinquishing theirs.


Exploring the mechanics of selling is appropriate because, while the events of recent days have been described as the breakout of civil war in the boardroom, it is every bit as likely to be the bruising prelude to a fierce negotiation.

Clearlake and Boehly have set out their respective stalls but posturing with an exaggerated level of conviction is part of high-level business. What happens if Clearlake offers Boehly, Walter and Wyss a financial off-ramp to start again at another club with more agreeable partners? What happens if Boehly’s group finds new backing and presents Clearlake investors with a handsome return on investment after two painful years running Chelsea?

Neither party is going on the record to clearly state their intentions and reassure the club’s supporters. Nobody knows how or when this will end.

What is clear, however, is that the public litigation of these grievances only deepens the sense of disorienting instability Chelsea have failed to escape since the ‘For Sale’ sign went up outside Stamford Bridge more than two years ago.
Main takeaway from me is that Boehly seems to surprisingly be the lesser of 2 evils, I always thought it was the other way around with how public facing he is compared to Eghbali. Bear in mind the article seems to have contacted sources on both sides so each side obviously presented themselves very favorably. But if stuff like this is true I'd much rather Clearlake buy Boehly out rather than the other way around:

Boehly apparently was the one that wanted to keep Pochettino too, so the rash decision making and irresponsible player buying seem to come from the other side. Clearlake are also adamant on not selling on the article, so good news.
Click to expand...

This actually makes sense because it didn't really jive that the same guy was using the same decision-making process for the wonderfully-run LA Dodgers as for the Chelsea gongshow.
 
lomekian

lomekian

Essays are my thing
Best bit was this "Yet plenty have questioned the wisdom of subsidising a large part of Sterling’s wages as he lines up for a team likely to be one of Chelsea’s direct competitors this season in the race for Champions League qualification."
The only way they are competing with us is if we have an injury crisis
 
SuperGoon

SuperGoon

Lost A Bet And Now He’s A Top G

Country: Ireland

Player:Saka
lomekian said:
Best bit was this "Yet plenty have questioned the wisdom of subsidising a large part of Sterling’s wages as he lines up for a team likely to be one of Chelsea’s direct competitors this season in the race for Champions League qualification."
The only way they are competing with us is if we have an injury crisis
Click to expand...
Ummm, we had a bad international break, pal.
 
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