2 minutes ago, Sexyfootball said:

More likely to happen the other way round I would have thought ... unless Todd has a mate who won't mind paying $3bn for something probably only worth $1.5bn ...

100%, and that would be my worry. Boehly and Walter at least both have experience owning various sports teams, while Clearlake is a private equity firm.

Just now, Sconnie Blue said:

Eghbali is Clearlake, or am I mistaken? He's a co-founder.

Im confused by the whole ownership thing, which ones keyser soze?

Edited January 1Jan 1 by dkw

1 minute ago, Sconnie Blue said:

Eghbali is Clearlake, or am I mistaken? He's a co-founder.

Correct. He is just the primary face that represents them at the club level, but there are others involved.

1 minute ago, Sconnie Blue said:

Eghbali is Clearlake, or am I mistaken? He's a co-founder.

Eghbali and Feliciano are co-founders of Clearlake.

3 hours ago, Jezz said:

Abramovich era (2003-2022) = 1106 games (671 wins, 241 draws, 194 losses) = 2254 points (2.04 points per game) = 60.67% winning record

• Ranieri = 59 (36-12-11)

• Mourinho = 185 (124-40-21)

• Grant = 54 (36-13-5)

• Scolari = 36 (20-11-5)

• Wilkins = 1 (1-0-0)

• Hiddink = 22 (16-5-1)

• Ancelotti = 109 (67-20-22)

• Villas-Boas = 40 (19-11-10)

• Di Matteo = 42 (24-9-9)

• Benitez = 48 (28-10-10)

• Mourinho = 136 (80-29-27)

• Holland = 1 (1-0-0)

• Hiddink = 27 (10-11-6)

• Conte = 106 (69-17-20)

• Sarri = 63 (39-13-11)

• Lampard = 84 (44-17-23)

• Tuchel = 93 (57-23-13)

BlueCo era (2022-Present) = 193 games (97 wins, 39 draws, 57 losses) = 330 points (1.71 points per game) = 50.26% winning record

• Tuchel = 7 (3-1-3)

• Potter = 31 (12-8-11)

• Saltor = 1 (0-1-0)

• Lampard = 11 (1-2-8)

• Pochettino = 51 (26-11-14)

• Maresca = 92 (55-16-21)

And don't forget Abramovitch took over a club that had never won the PL or a CL ..

Clearlake bought the complete opposite and destroyed us

1 hour ago, dkw said:

Im confused by the whole ownership thing, which ones keyser soze?

Great film reference there mate ! 👍

When Boehly bought the club, didn't he say there was going to be a fan rep on the board? What happened to that, or is that person lining their pockets too, or is that another one of Boehly's visions that Clearlake scrapped?

4 minutes ago, Frankie8Lampard said:

When Boehly bought the club, didn't he say there was going to be a fan rep on the board? What happened to that, or is that person lining their pockets too, or is that another one of Boehly's visions that Clearlake scrapped?

That fan is Boehly himself. He has a scarf to prove his credentials.

Worse owners than the glazer family.

I've said that before.

52 minutes ago, Frankie8Lampard said:

When Boehly bought the club, didn't he say there was going to be a fan rep on the board? What happened to that, or is that person lining their pockets too, or is that another one of Boehly's visions that Clearlake scrapped?

We should all put Johnny Minerals forward as our spokesperson

42 minutes ago, axman2526 said:

Worse owners than the glazer family.

I've said that before.

Can’t believe we could get worst but we have f**k me we are toast!!!!

I've been lurking around on this forum for quite some time, and this is my first post - simply because I can't hold back.

What Clearlake Capital have done to Chelsea is not modernization. It is not innovation. It is not even simple mismanagement.

It is financialization.

They have applied a venture capital model to a football club — and in doing so they are slowly dismantling the very thing they bought.

The logic is brutally simple: acquire large numbers of young players at high prices, lock them into long contracts, and treat them as speculative assets. Most will fail. A few may explode in value. As long as the upside of the winners covers the losses of the rest, the model “works”.

That is how you run a VC fund.

It is not how you run a football club.

Because football clubs are not neutral capital platforms. They are social institutions. They are built on continuity, identity, memory, loyalty, and long-term relationships between players, managers and supporters. They are where children fall in love with a badge, where parents pass on rituals, where generations recognize themselves in colours, songs and faces.

You cannot put that into a spreadsheet.

And the VC model is structurally hostile to everything that makes that possible.

It turns players into financial instruments whose primary function is to justify their valuation. It turns managers into disposable operators whose job is to extract short-term performance from unstable inputs. It turns seasons into experiments and failure into something acceptable — even desirable — as long as it is statistically rational.

And once you adopt that logic, responsibility dissolves.

When things go wrong, the model itself is never questioned. Only its components are. The coach failed. This group of players failed. That signing failed. So they are replaced. Written off. Sacrificed. And the machine continues unchanged.

That is not accountability. That is abandonment.

The human cost is treated as an externality. Careers become collateral damage. Development becomes distorted. Young players carry the weight of valuations they never chose. Managers become buffers between capital and consequence. Supporters are asked to be patient while the meaning of what they are patient for is quietly erased.

You can still win matches this way. You can even win trophies.

But you are no longer building a club.

You are operating a market.

And football is not a market with emotions attached. It is an emotional institution with a market attached.

Reverse that relationship and you do not modernize the game — you drain it of its life.

Chelsea is not being rebuilt. It is being hollowed out.

And the most painful part is this:
By the time the damage is obvious, it will already be irreversible.

The club will still exist in name, in brand, in revenue and in global reach.

But the thing people loved — the continuity, the identity, the sense that this was ours — will be gone.

And it will not come back.

9 minutes ago, CFC_Norwegian said:

I've been lurking around on this forum for quite some time, and this is my first post - simply because I can't hold back.

What Clearlake Capital have done to Chelsea is not modernization. It is not innovation. It is not even simple mismanagement.

It is financialization.

They have applied a venture capital model to a football club — and in doing so they are slowly dismantling the very thing they bought.

The logic is brutally simple: acquire large numbers of young players at high prices, lock them into long contracts, and treat them as speculative assets. Most will fail. A few may explode in value. As long as the upside of the winners covers the losses of the rest, the model “works”.

That is how you run a VC fund.

It is not how you run a football club.

Because football clubs are not neutral capital platforms. They are social institutions. They are built on continuity, identity, memory, loyalty, and long-term relationships between players, managers and supporters. They are where children fall in love with a badge, where parents pass on rituals, where generations recognize themselves in colours, songs and faces.

You cannot put that into a spreadsheet.

And the VC model is structurally hostile to everything that makes that possible.

It turns players into financial instruments whose primary function is to justify their valuation. It turns managers into disposable operators whose job is to extract short-term performance from unstable inputs. It turns seasons into experiments and failure into something acceptable — even desirable — as long as it is statistically rational.

And once you adopt that logic, responsibility dissolves.

When things go wrong, the model itself is never questioned. Only its components are. The coach failed. This group of players failed. That signing failed. So they are replaced. Written off. Sacrificed. And the machine continues unchanged.

That is not accountability. That is abandonment.

The human cost is treated as an externality. Careers become collateral damage. Development becomes distorted. Young players carry the weight of valuations they never chose. Managers become buffers between capital and consequence. Supporters are asked to be patient while the meaning of what they are patient for is quietly erased.

You can still win matches this way. You can even win trophies.

But you are no longer building a club.

You are operating a market.

And football is not a market with emotions attached. It is an emotional institution with a market attached.

Reverse that relationship and you do not modernize the game — you drain it of its life.

Chelsea is not being rebuilt. It is being hollowed out.

And the most painful part is this:
By the time the damage is obvious, it will already be irreversible.

The club will still exist in name, in brand, in revenue and in global reach.

But the thing people loved — the continuity, the identity, the sense that this was ours — will be gone.

And it will not come back.

Excellent post. I hope you stay around and post more often. Welcome!

18 minutes ago, CFC_Norwegian said:

I've been lurking around on this forum for quite some time, and this is my first post - simply because I can't hold back.

What Clearlake Capital have done to Chelsea is not modernization. It is not innovation. It is not even simple mismanagement.

It is financialization.

They have applied a venture capital model to a football club — and in doing so they are slowly dismantling the very thing they bought.

The logic is brutally simple: acquire large numbers of young players at high prices, lock them into long contracts, and treat them as speculative assets. Most will fail. A few may explode in value. As long as the upside of the winners covers the losses of the rest, the model “works”.

That is how you run a VC fund.

It is not how you run a football club.

Because football clubs are not neutral capital platforms. They are social institutions. They are built on continuity, identity, memory, loyalty, and long-term relationships between players, managers and supporters. They are where children fall in love with a badge, where parents pass on rituals, where generations recognize themselves in colours, songs and faces.

You cannot put that into a spreadsheet.

And the VC model is structurally hostile to everything that makes that possible.

It turns players into financial instruments whose primary function is to justify their valuation. It turns managers into disposable operators whose job is to extract short-term performance from unstable inputs. It turns seasons into experiments and failure into something acceptable — even desirable — as long as it is statistically rational.

And once you adopt that logic, responsibility dissolves.

When things go wrong, the model itself is never questioned. Only its components are. The coach failed. This group of players failed. That signing failed. So they are replaced. Written off. Sacrificed. And the machine continues unchanged.

That is not accountability. That is abandonment.

The human cost is treated as an externality. Careers become collateral damage. Development becomes distorted. Young players carry the weight of valuations they never chose. Managers become buffers between capital and consequence. Supporters are asked to be patient while the meaning of what they are patient for is quietly erased.

You can still win matches this way. You can even win trophies.

But you are no longer building a club.

You are operating a market.

And football is not a market with emotions attached. It is an emotional institution with a market attached.

Reverse that relationship and you do not modernize the game — you drain it of its life.

Chelsea is not being rebuilt. It is being hollowed out.

And the most painful part is this:
By the time the damage is obvious, it will already be irreversible.

The club will still exist in name, in brand, in revenue and in global reach.

But the thing people loved — the continuity, the identity, the sense that this was ours — will be gone.

And it will not come back.

The problem with these clowns logic is if you buy an asset and it doesn’t play well or in a sh*te team that asset will not appreciate in value. Also when the whole market knows what you are doing you have no leverage in the selling.

As you rightly pointed out they are applying venture capitalist mindset to a football club.

They won’t want to sell for less than a big payoff when the time eventually comes, they’ll never sell the club at a loss so if we dont improve with the terrible tools provided i can only see them asset stripping to make money back.

Edited January 1Jan 1 by Zeta

Come back Sir Martin and save us like you saved Liverpool

1 hour ago, Zeta said:

They won’t want to sell for less than a big payoff when the time eventually comes, they’ll never sell the club at a loss so if we dont improve with the terrible tools provided i can only see them asset stripping to make money back.

Isn't this VC model, you buy 20 assets and try and win big on a handful of them ?

Maybe we can be one of the ones they don't win on LOL.

We should try and do so much damage to their overall brand that they cut and run with a loss !

5 minutes ago, Sexyfootball said:

Isn't this VC model, you buy 20 assets and try and win big on a handful of them ?

Maybe we can be one of the ones they don't win on LOL.

We should try and do so much damage to their overall brand that they cut and run with a loss !

Can you do me a favour please, cos you're good at the stats? We're often going on about this relentless pursuit of the pound note over sporting success and how this strategy looks to maximise the profits from this puppy mill we are operating. Can you tell me what sort of profit have they actually made on any of these players so far. I'm not talking about inherited players, nor free hit academy kids. Investments like Angelo Gabriel, Diego Morreira. Where have they made these big profit flips so far? Madueke?

2 minutes ago, WhiteWall said:

Can you do me a favour please, cos you're good at the stats? We're often going on about this relentless pursuit of the pound note over sporting success and how this strategy looks to maximise the profits from this puppy mill we are operating. Can you tell me what sort of profit have they actually made on any of these players so far. I'm not talking about inherited players, nor free hit academy kids. Investments like Angelo Gabriel, Diego Morreira. Where have they made these big profit flips so far? Madueke?

Last time I looked at this, they'd moved on 19 players for £298.6m that they paid out £330m for ... (included the incoming loan players) so actual money loss (rather than accounting games with book value etc) of £31.4m. I did the exercise quite quickly, so may possibly have missed someone out, so if you spot one let me know and I'll update !

The 19 :

1 minute ago, Sexyfootball said:

Last time I looked at this, they'd moved on 19 players for £298.6m that they paid out £330m for ... (included the incoming loan players) so actual money loss (rather than accounting games with book value etc) of £31.4m. I did the exercise quite quickly, so may possibly have missed someone out, so if you spot one let me know and I'll update !

The 19 :

My god, when you have it shoved in your face like that, you see how sh*t it really is. How do they look at this and even think they are on to something with this model? This is without factoring in their wages too.......what a sh*tshow. 4 years of complete failure, no other way of looking at it. I don't think they could have done a worse job.

Imagine if the Saudi's never started throwing their money into the game. The losses would look so much worse.

Edited January 1Jan 1 by Scott Harris

3 minutes ago, Sexyfootball said:

Last time I looked at this, they'd moved on 19 players for £298.6m that they paid out £330m for ... (included the incoming loan players) so actual money loss (rather than accounting games with book value etc) of £31.4m. I did the exercise quite quickly, so may possibly have missed someone out, so if you spot one let me know and I'll update !

The 19 :

Not the best to support the business plan for this strategy thus far, considering that they are third of the way through their business model

4 minutes ago, Scott Harris said:

My god, when you have it shoved in your face like that, you see how sh*t it really is. How do they look at this and even think they are on to something with this model? This is without factoring in their wages too.......what a sh*tshow. 4 years of complete failure, no other way of looking at it. I don't think they could have done a worse job.

Imagine if the Saudi's never started throwing their money into the game. The losses would look so much worse.

Veiga, Madueke and Petrovic are propping these figures up statistically.

2 minutes ago, Scott Harris said:

My god, when you have it shoved in your face like that, you see how sh*t it really is. How do they look at this and even think they are on to something with this model? This is without factoring in their wages too.......what a sh*tshow. 4 years of complete failure, no other way of looking at it. I don't think they could have done a worse job.

Imagine if the Saudi's never started throwing their money into the game. The losses would look so much worse.

It's why I've said on more than one occasion that I can't see how any of this can be about money or profit. Factor in what they've also left on the table for the front of shirt sponsorship and it's all deeply unimpressive for so-called business experts.

The Brighton model they "admire" has only shown a profit in years when it's been propped up by extravagant BlueCo spending. In other years they make a loss the same as everyone else. They owe Bloom several hundred million for his free/cheap loans. He's basically just a cut price version of Roman LOL. Without any trophies 😎

Edited January 1Jan 1 by Sexyfootball

16 minutes ago, Sexyfootball said:

Last time I looked at this, they'd moved on 19 players for £298.6m that they paid out £330m for ... (included the incoming loan players) so actual money loss (rather than accounting games with book value etc) of £31.4m. I did the exercise quite quickly, so may possibly have missed someone out, so if you spot one let me know and I'll update !

The 19 :

Would it have been better if we had not bought any of these players? perhaps we should just stop now and make do with what we have , bring back a few loans , flog one or two each window, bring on an academy lad once every two years. Sorted.

We could do with a transfer ban for 2 years or so . Theres no financial or footballing benefit from buying players.

Edited January 1Jan 1 by OTL

4 minutes ago, OTL said:

Would it have been better if we had not bought any of these players? perhaps we should just stop now and make do with what we have , bring back a few loans , flog one or two each window, bring on an academy lad once every two years. Sorted.

The sad reality is that none of the wingers they have spent hundreds of millions on are any better than the one we let go, Pulisic. Estevao is the only one I expect to surpass him.