This is actually pretty comical now. Arguably the most incompetent showing of sports administration seen at a global sporting franchise. 

Best thing Boehly can do now is sack himself and let the next owner, who is hopefully competent, get rid of Potter. Hope he is booed mercilessly by the home fans at the Dortmund game. He deserves it. 

2 minutes ago, dansubrosa said:

Honestly can’t get my head around Boehly.
 

He couldn’t wait to get rid of Tuchel, one of the best coaches in the world and hired f*cking Potter. Now he’s standing by him through thick and thin, why couldn’t he have done the same for Tuchel? At least Tuchel proved himself in winning trophies and he should have been given time with new signings to improve league form, which wasn’t amazing but miles and miles better than now.
 

Tuchel secured top 4 while going through sanctions, change of ownership, Lukaku situation, and Potter can’t even get a bloody goal never mind getting a win!

That's why the whole 'trust the process' talk seemed crazy to me. We had a process with Tuchel, and after one semi-rough patch he was binned, despite all the success he'd brought us

8 minutes ago, Dean said:

Wow. when you then start subtracting all the CL revenue etc that would have been in their projections, the picture gets more 😱 . 

 I fear football is kind of in a bubble - particularly the premier league. There’s a lot of complacency about its pre-eminence / invincibility. But So many signs of excess, and things that just don’t add up/ don’t smell right. Cracks appearing like this city FFP scandal. It could be in for a reckoning.  This isn’t a prediction but it’s worryingly easy to make the case.

The hit you mention could then get a lot worse. What if that valuation data drops to €200 mln? It’s not impossible. Is Cucurella worth more than 20% of what we paid? 10% even? 
 

it would probably be good for football in the long run, but terrrible for Chelsea for the foreseeable future.

Someone referred earlier to the Swiss Ramble guy, a Brit in Switzerland who likes to blog on football finances, amongst other things.

This is his latest take on Chelsea :

https://swissramble.substack.com/p/how-much-money-did-chelsea-really 

It's a very long piece but quite interesting all the same. 

“We’re all in – 100% – every minute of every match. Our vision as owners is clear: we want to make the fans proud.”

He added, “Along with our commitment to developing the youth squad and acquiring the best talent, our plan of action is to invest in the club for the long-term and build on Chelsea’s remarkable history of success.”

Time to walk the talk Todd old chap !

14 minutes ago, Sexyfootball said:

Someone referred earlier to the Swiss Ramble guy, a Brit in Switzerland who likes to blog on football finances, amongst other things.

This is his latest take on Chelsea :

https://swissramble.substack.com/p/how-much-money-did-chelsea-really 

It's a very long piece but quite interesting all the same. 

Thanks. I am interested in this stuff. Will try and find some time !

17 minutes ago, Sexyfootball said:

Someone referred earlier to the Swiss Ramble guy, a Brit in Switzerland who likes to blog on football finances, amongst other things.

This is his latest take on Chelsea :

https://swissramble.substack.com/p/how-much-money-did-chelsea-really 

It's a very long piece but quite interesting all the same. 

I feel for the new owners, they did everything that they could by spending a whole lot but they picked the wrong profile for the project.

We're cursed you can even see the 666 there in that article ☠️

1 hour ago, Spiller86 said:

This is actually pretty comical now. Arguably the most incompetent showing of sports administration seen at a global sporting franchise. 

Best thing Boehly can do now is sack himself and let the next owner, who is hopefully competent, get rid of Potter. Hope he is booed mercilessly by the home fans at the Dortmund game. He deserves it. 

I reckon he will take over the team next week, he would be thinking how hard would this f* sports be? Let Potter do the press, Boehly picks 11 out of his signings, give them a kick in the backside they deserved for a long time, and go play the way they been taught before joined Chelea. I mean what's there to lose, we may just beat Leeds with Boehly in charge.

1 hour ago, Spiller86 said:

This is actually pretty comical now. Arguably the most incompetent showing of sports administration seen at a global sporting franchise. 

Best thing Boehly can do now is sack himself and let the next owner, who is hopefully competent, get rid of Potter. Hope he is booed mercilessly by the home fans at the Dortmund game. He deserves it. 

If fans are that unhappy then they shouldn't be attending the games.

Empty stadium would be a lot more effective than boos ever could be but (not just isolated to our fanbase) not many have the balls to do it.

1 hour ago, Argo said:

If fans are that unhappy then they shouldn't be attending the games.

Empty stadium would be a lot more effective than boos ever could be but (not just isolated to our fanbase) not many have the balls to do it.

Spot on Argo. If that is how the match going fans really feel then that is your best way to get your point across. No ownership in the world can stay stubborn if the fans leave them a basically empty stadium.

3 minutes ago, axman2526 said:

Spot on Argo. If that is how the match going fans really feel then that is your best way to get your point across. No ownership in the world can stay stubborn if the fans leave them a basically empty stadium.

It's not just loss of income but also brand damage.

Arsenal are the main case in point here.

For years and years they were protesting and calling for Wenger to be sacked to no avail, then as soon as The Emirates becomes half empty he's gone.

Truly astoundes me how many football fans don't know (or care) how counterproductive moaning about owners decisions or owners themselves are while you've just paid them a kings ransom for a ticket.

3 minutes ago, Argo said:

It's not just loss of income but also brand damage.

Arsenal are the main case in point here.

For years and years they were protesting and calling for Wenger to be sacked to no avail, then as soon as The Emirates becomes half empty he's gone.

Truly astoundes me how many football fans don't know (or care) how counterproductive moaning about owners decisions or owners themselves are while you've just paid them a kings ransom for a ticket.

👏👏👏

Ted sack him now.

While most of the criticism is firmly coming at Potter, a fair few are now starting to point fingers at the owners.

A common question is why was so much money spent and proven goalscorers were not added. All those creative players, more future signings, 600mill plus and the only goal scorers that came were a kid from Norway, who still looks better than Havertz, and a past it forward who came to play for TT.

Is not like Broja did his ACL on Feb 1 and we had made him number 1 and he was banging in goals, we knew well in advance. So on this I agree with the critics.

Even if your number 1 target is Oshiman or Benzema and you believe you can get them in the summer we left ourselves so short. Should have used some of that money to sign Mitrovic or someone like him, both a leader and goalscorer. 

10 hours ago, icecoolguy22 said:

 we may just become Leeds with Boehly in charge.

Fixed it for you 😉

Also I thought this was a superb outline of the key issue:

https://sports.yahoo.com/chelsea-premier-league-rules-ffp-champions-league-162003960.html

"The biggest problem with Chelsea's manic January spending spree wasn't the sheer sum of money. It wasn't the British-record $130 million paid for Enzo Fernandez or the $385 million splashed on transfers in total, if add-ons materialize. It wasn't even that the stunning outlay could run afoul of financial rules imposed by the Premier League or UEFA.

Chelsea's problem is that, even with $600-plus million worth of players joining since the summer, its team is still frighteningly mediocre."

We've paid so much for so little value without addressing the key issues. Honestly the level of incompetence here is at a staggering scale. Boehly makes the Glazers and Kroenke look good!

Boehly seems to have completely disappeared from the media eye in recent months, in stark contrast to the early weeks of his takeover.

Potter is absolutely drowning and needs some visible support from his hierarchy, And yet all we see/hear are tumble weeds and the whistle of the wind ... 

This is clearly unknown territory for Todd, as from what I can glean from googling, his previous sporting franchises have never had a performance downturn anywhere even close to this to test his patience with either his plan or his staff appointments ... bloke must be even more shell-shocked than Potter.

It looks more like it's an ego issue with Boehly. He probably doesn't want to admit he messed up with whole sacking of Tuchel and appointment of Potter

So far I thought the owners keep backing Potter to evade total embarrassment, but after watching this video I think it may still be out of conviction.

Boehly sounds like he wants to revolutionise the sport with all sorts of fresh ideas. The coaching role is extremely straightforward in those ideas, he merely needs to nurture the players and let the data wizardry unfold its magic on the pitch. That's why Potter was and still is the perfect fit for our project: A quiet man offered 600% his former salary on a 5-year deal. 

I see two possible future scenarios on that basis. He'll either stick with Potter and trust that his own genius will eventually manifest (he just bought all the best players, so surely at some point they'll start being the best team, right?). Or he loses patience and concludes that somehow Potter managed to mess up the easiest job in the world. 

Even in that second scenario, I think our current thoughts about potential replacements are way off. We're just thinking if Zidane/ Flick/ Pocchetino would be the best fit for our squad, but we're failing to consider entirely which of these managers is ready to play a 4-4-3. I suspect any decorated manager with a strong belief in their own methods is out of the question. They're "old football" and would suffer the same fate as Tuchel did. Unless Boehly has a sudden moment of complete clarity, Potter would have to be replaced by another Potter. 

When watching the video I see a rare combination of arrogance and idiocy, and it would actually be a beautiful sight if it wasn't our club that's subjected to it. 

Just like many Americans ( no offense intended), he over simplified the football game. It's just money ball, sign young players on contract, a PR type of manager to ensure everyone is happy , and success! He's probably just shocked as many on how hard the game really is, which made he look like a fool just fire people in place and get a lower tier manager to run his 600M team. He says he made a wrong, but ego not allowing that. What may force his hand is when he brings this Chelsea team to US for the pre-season tour, it's really a hard sell to market the 12th best team in the EPL to the Americans. I mean, they only love winners, right?

Reckon the only chance we have of not imploding is Vivell being competent enough to put his foot down and convince Boehly to end this thing. Personally I think Boehly comes across as a damned fool and have since he sacked Tuchel. Or before actually as he spent a summer trying to push Ronaldo down our and the managers throat.

 

 

I don't know how different US sports function, but I know football is a competition of the best feet and minds. Nobody would deny today that data analysis is an extremely valuable tool in all parts of the game, but it will always be secondary to the coach's methods and character. Football is always volatile and there is no formulaic method to be permanently successful. The arrogance of the new owners to believe they'll be the first ones to do football right is mental. In the end, all they will achieve is to raise everyone's respect for other megamoney projects like ManCity, PSG and Roman's Chelsea. They at least understood the game well enough to know that getting in the right football people is priority no. 1.

17 hours ago, forbzy said:

Boehly and Clearlake have to take a big chunk of the blame for this shambles of a season. Starting with a mess of a pre-season when seemed to prioritize showing off their new asset over bringing in a much needed Director of Football. Then making a bunch of expensive signings to back a manager that they were already planning to get rid of. Then bringing in an inexperienced replacement, again before appointing a Director of Football. Hopefully things will improve, but unfortunately they have probably thrown away a lot of the goodwill that they are enjoyed from fans following the initial takeover.

I agree with you, the summer window was shambles. But since then, they've been building a solid structure bringing technical directors and recruitment personnel. They've since targeted young promises, it is too early to say if they've overpaid or not, but some of these players are showing quality (specially Enzo). The idea of a long term plan is something most fans were looking forward. Ok, Potter is not cutting it and he's failing to build any identity for the team, but the long term plan is something to look forward (with some other coaching team). So, those writing in here that Boehly is useless, he doesn't know anything and should go, etc, just haven't got a clue about how things work. They've not made all the money they have by being clueless and not having a work plan with all details studied in place. This is not Roman's hobby any longer, they want Chelsea to be a successful sports Club so they can have economic success, and these two go hand in hand.

3 hours ago, OriginalS said:

Or before actually as he spent a summer trying to push Ronaldo down our and the managers throat.

Is there anything even resembling proper evidence of that?

Above all else if all that is true then why didn't he go back in for him in January when he was a free agent with a manager every one says is a puppet who wouldn't contradict him?

2 hours ago, RMH said:

I agree with you, the summer window was shambles. But since then, they've been building a solid structure bringing technical directors and recruitment personnel. They've since targeted young promises, it is too early to say if they've overpaid or not, but some of these players are showing quality (specially Enzo). The idea of a long term plan is something most fans were looking forward. Ok, Potter is not cutting it and he's failing to build any identity for the team, but the long term plan is something to look forward (with some other coaching team). So, those writing in here that Boehly is useless, he doesn't know anything and should go, etc, just haven't got a clue about how things work. They've not made all the money they have by being clueless and not having a work plan with all details studied in place. This is not Roman's hobby any longer, they want Chelsea to be a successful sports Club so they can have economic success, and these two go hand in hand.

In order to successfully run a football club, you need to be good at football. 

Data are an extremely valuable tool for those good at football, but cannot replace them. Consider recruitment for example: You can analyse a player's current performances from every single angle, but the all-decisive question of how they will perform within your teams always requires an element of judgment. 

There have been 13 transfers above EUR 100m in football history. I'd assume in 70% of these cases the fans were excited, and 30% of them turned out to be a resounding success. Did the other 70% fail because the club management only based their decision on 2 youtube compilations and transfermarkt.de? The most expensive transfers should be the most likely to succeed at their new club (hence the most expensive), but history teaches us that these football decisions are incredibly risky judgment calls every single time. Professionals and fans constantly get it wrong, and it's really the teams with the least mistakes that end up with the upper hand most of the time. 

So forget all their prior successes in other industries, there are only two things that would make me optimistic about the new owners: Either they're very good at football, or they hire people to run the club that are very good at football. So far all I've heard is that they'll implement the genius structures from other sports, and that has me extremely concerned. 

18 hours ago, Argo said:

If fans are that unhappy then they shouldn't be attending the games.

Empty stadium would be a lot more effective than boos ever could be but (not just isolated to our fanbase) not many have the balls to do it.

Boycotts rarely ever work and these days there are more international fans attending games who aren’t going to boycott a game after making an expensive trip.