The other thing that makes me laugh at BlueCo is how much they spend on wages.

They crap on about how much they have reduced the wage bill, and yet they've done so many odd things ...

A few examples:

• Neto earned £50k a week at Wolves. BlueCo gave him a contract for £160K

• KDH on £20K at Leicester, and they gave him £80K

• Guiu £2K at Barcelona, and they gave him £50K

• Tosin £40K at Fulham and they gave him £120K

• Caicedo £60K at Brighton and they gave him £150K (you could argue he's worth it)

• Ugochukwu <£1K at Rennes and they gave him £45K

• Jackson £8.4K at Villareal and they gave him £65K

• Badiashile £9.4K at Monaco and they gave him £90K

• Gusto £6K at Lyon and they gave him £45K

• Fernandez £40K at Benfica, and they gave him £180K

• Madueke £11K at PSV and they gave him £50K

• Cucurella £50K at Brighton and they gave him £175K

• Disasi £11.6K at Monaco and they gave him £80K

• Slonina £2K at Chicago Fire and they gave him £40K

• Fofana £19K at Leicester and they gave him £200K

• Chukwuemeka £1.5K at Villa and they gave him £100K

All pretty bonkers levels of generosity LOL

This is basically Peter Ridsdale territory ! Big money for mostly bang average players

Edited January 1Jan 1 by Sexyfootball

9 minutes ago, Scott Harris said:

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.

We will lose Derry because the likes of Garnacho, Gittens and Neto will block his path. Let's not forget we already lost Rio in the same position.

Forgot Mudryk - he was on £1,131 a week at Shakhtar according to Capology, and we offered him £100K a week.

Edited January 1Jan 1 by Sexyfootball

8 minutes ago, Sexyfootball said:

Forgot Mudryk - he was on £1,131 a week at Shakhtar according to Capology, and we offered him £100K a week.

Christ, that must have been a shot in the arm for him

18 minutes ago, Sexyfootball said:

The other thing that makes me laugh at BlueCo is how much they spend on wages.

They crap on about how much they have reduced the wage bill, and yet they've done so many odd things ...

A few examples:

• Neto earned £50k a week at Wolves. BlueCo gave him a contract for £160K

• KDH on £20K at Leicester, and they gave him £80K

• Guiu £2K at Barcelona, and they gave him £50K

• Tosin £40K at Fulham and they gave him £120K

• Caicedo £60K at Brighton and they gave him £150K (you could argue he's worth it)

• Ugochukwu <£1K at Rennes and they gave him £45K

• Jackson £8.4K at Villareal and they gave him £65K

• Badiashile £9.4K at Monaco and they gave him £90K

• Gusto £6K at Lyon and they gave him £45K

• Fernandez £40K at Benfica, and they gave him £180K

• Madueke £11K at PSV and they gave him £50K

• Cucurella £50K at Brighton and they gave him £175K

• Disasi £11.6K at Monaco and they gave him £80K

• Slonina £2K at Chicago Fire and they gave him £40K

• Fofana £19K at Leicester and they gave him £200K

• Chukwuemeka £1.5K at Villa and they gave him £100K

All pretty bonkers levels of generosity LOL

This is basically Peter Ridsdale territory ! Big money for mostly bang average players

Full disclosure. They have just offered me a job as their finance admin assistant

If anyone wants a cheap holiday I have just put down a deposit on an island in the South Pacific.

GO TODD GO!

Just now, loz said:

Full disclosure. They have just offered me a job as their finance admin assistant

If anyone wants a cheap holiday I have just put down a deposit on an island in the South Pacific.

GO TODD GO!

Don't forget to invite Wyss if you bump into him in the corridor ... he apparently likes a holiday on a tropical island !

2 minutes ago, Sexyfootball said:

Don't forget to invite Wyss if you bump into him in the corridor ... he apparently likes a holiday on a tropical island !

Wyss to you. Warm Hans to his friends.

They're just vultures. Cynical and arrogant. The club as an institution means nothing to them. They look at everything as an asset.

Previous regime was slated for the revolving door policy concerning managers and "boring" football but they genuinely prioritised winning over everything and that's what even rival fans respected. This current lot has no connection to the club, the support, the history and mentality of CFC and they have showed zero respect for any of it since the moment they arrived.

Nothing personal, just business.

12 hours ago, Sexyfootball said:

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 😎

I'm sure that they are not interested in making us competitive, plenty of evidence for that. So, the other option must be true, they're in it for the profit but they are sh*t at football business (FOS sponsor deal is a proof of it). Or, they are money laundering.

Among the current PL clubs, how many permanent coaches each club has had in the BlueCo era.

• Wolves [5] = Lage, Lopetegui, O'Neil, Pereira, Edwards

• Chelsea [5] = Tuchel, Potter, Pochettino, Maresca, ?

• Leeds United [4] = Marsch, Gracia, Allardyce, Farke

• West Ham United [4] = Moyes, Lopetegui, Potter, Nuno

• Nottingham Forest [4] = Cooper, Nuno, Postecoglou, Dyche

• Crystal Palace [3] = Vieira, Hodgson, Glasner

• Bournemouth [3] = Parker, O'Neil, Iraola

• Brighton & Hove Albion [3] = Potter, De Zerbi, Hurzeler

• Sunderland [3] = Mowbray, Beale, Le Bris

• Everton [3] = Lampard, Dyche, Moyes

• Tottenham Hotspur [3] = Conte, Postecoglou, Frank

• Aston Villa [2] = Gerrard, Emery

• Liverpool [2] = Klopp, Slot

• Burnley [2] = Kompany, Parker

• Manchester United [2] = Ten Hag, Amorim

• Brentford [2] = Frank, Andrews

• Manchester City [1] = Guardiola

• Arsenal [1] = Arteta

• Newcastle United [1] = Howe

• Fulham [1] = Silva

PROTEST HAS BEEN ORGANISED FOR 17TH JANUARY HOME TO BRENTFORD

:THIS what Todd said at the Bloomberg Conference to everyone half way through last season...vvvvv

"'""Chelsea chairman Todd Boehly believes the club is worth more now than the record £2.5bn his consortium paid to acquire them in summer 2022.

The Blues have not won a trophy or qualified for the Champions League since the takeover, while Boehly’s group has spent more than £1bn on new players.

But asked whether Chelsea had increased in value in that time, Boehly told Bloomberg: “Yeah, I would say yes.”

He added: “I think the trend is our friend in this industry. I think the opportunity to be able to grow the fanbase around the world, because, unlike American sports, we have the ability to grow internationally and build our own revenue base on that international fanbase. So I think the opportunity is enormous

16 hours 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.

Welcome! What an excellent post, I hope it's the first of many .👍

38 minutes ago, The Rising Sun said:

But asked whether Chelsea had increased in value in that time, Boehly told Bloomberg: “Yeah, I would say yes.”

Well that's lovely Todd. Just your opinion though LOL and you're hardly going to be honest and admit you significantly overpaid !

I reiterate that I had not much time for Maresca and I am not even a bit sad that he has gone. But, the owners, dear God if only they could be gone too.

This is what Pep had to say today

"From my point of view Chelsea have lost an incredible manager and an incredible person," Guardiola said on Maresca's departure.

"It's a decision from the Chelsea hierarchy so I've nothing to say. (Then says) How lucky I am in the club where I am. My club is extraordinary."

As much as I was unimpressed with Maresca, I can also acknowledge that he was working in bizarre and difficult circumstances. Not the sort of carry on you'd get at the Etihad for sure.

I do hope Maresca goes there though. Let them enjoy the keeper and centre backs passing between themselves for at least an hour of the game.

Good to see this protest planned on social is gaining media traction.

3 hours ago, timetowaste said:

Good to see this protest planned on social is gaining media traction.

Does anybody actually thinks these venture capitalists hawks gives a hoot about protest?🪧

These guys only understand 💵💵 and until they are losing bucket loads of it they don’t care. They have this self righteous arrogance that they are the SMARTEST people in the room.

8 hours ago, Snedger said:

I reiterate that I had not much time for Maresca and I am not even a bit sad that he has gone. But, the owners, dear God if only they could be gone too.

This is what Pep had to say today

As much as I was unimpressed with Maresca, I can also acknowledge that he was working in bizarre and difficult circumstances. Not the sort of carry on you'd get at the Etihad for sure.

I do hope Maresca goes there though. Let them enjoy the keeper and centre backs passing between themselves for at least an hour of the game.

Bizarre and difficult circumstances he himself was pushing until a few weeks ago. I have nothing good to say about these owners, but I also feel exactly the same way about Maresca. He was in this to push whatever narrative they wanted him to push to raise his stature. It's worked out well for him. If he had stayed at Leicester, he would have been sacked the following season by them and he would be back in the Championship. He's quit on us at the right time for himself, because the way things were going, he had us heading towards mid table. He's managed to bullsh*t his way into keeping hold of his reputation and will manage to bluff his way into another managerial role at a big club.

On 02/01/2026 at 06:41, 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.

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

There is though. Keeping players especially as the team get successful is expensive, as your team get better, cl, title contention, winner. Your player will demand more money.

This is why the strongest indicator of team success is wages.

Edited January 3Jan 3 by Bob stark

Let me shine a truth that most have not wanted to see.

Clearlake DO NOT want Chelsea to be competing for the title or CL season in, season out.

To do so requires vast investment in transfer fees and, more importantly, wages, on assets that won't give them returns on their investments.

That's not what they are here for.

Steinberg: it's not so bad actually

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2026/jan/02/chelsea-enzo-maresca-liam-rosenior-analysis

21 minutes ago, PloKoon13 said:

Steinberg: it's not so bad actually

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2026/jan/02/chelsea-enzo-maresca-liam-rosenior-analysis

Shocking excuse for journalism really, might as well just replace it with AI at this point, and they’re still banging on about needing a goalkeeper 🤦‍♂️ of all things.

Fan survey from the cst out this morning about current ownership & how they’re running the club.

12 minutes ago, Munkunku said:

Fan survey from the cst out this morning about current ownership & how they’re running the club.

Received mine and have completed. Suffice to say I was very uncomplimentary about the current owners when answering the questions. It will be interesting to see how the owners respond when they receive the results of the survey. Suspect they'll ignore the results.

9 minutes ago, Boyne said:

Received mine and have completed. Suffice to say I was very uncomplimentary about the current owners when answering the questions. It will be interesting to see how the owners respond when they receive the results of the survey. Suspect they'll ignore the results.

Yeah they won’t give a sh*t at all.