So far we know that 3 people (Michael Edwards, Luis Campos and Christophe Fruend) have turned down the chance to become our DOF/Sports director.

I have seen it speculated that 3 more, one from RB Leipzig, one from Bayer Leverkusen and Paul Mitchell from Monaco, have also been approached and decided against joining.

On top of that the fella we hired as Commercial director has been fired one month after coming in.

This after spending near 300mill for a manager we sack 6 days later.

Is it any wonder our new owners, Todd especially, are being questioned...

So sheddenders, do you have confidence in our new owners to get things right?

Edited September 21, 20222 yr by axman2526

3 hours ago, axman2526 said:

So far we know that 3 people (Michael Edwards, Luis Campos and Christophe Fruend) have turned down the chance to become our DOF/Sports director.

I have seen it speculated that 3 more, one from RB Leipzig, one from Bayer Leverkusen and Paul Mitchell from Monaco, have also been approached and decided against joining.

On top of that the fella we hired as Commercial director has been fired one month after coming in.

This after spending near 300mill for a manager we sack 6 days later.

Is it any wonder our new owners, Todd especially, are being questioned...

So sheddenders, do you have confidence in our new owners to get things right?

As much as I want to bash them for firing Tuchel, they are seemingly aggressive in their pursuit for whatever their model of success would be - which is why things are so public since the takeover. Edwards, Campos, and Freund all have very different reasons for not joining - Edwards needs a break, Campos prefers a more casual role for whatever mounds of gold he's earning at PSG. And the director who was just fired is a moron. Less ambitious owners would've found a director sooner, probably. 

Let's wait and see if they make good on their promises of a structural rebuild. I want to see how they improve men's, women's, and youth facilities. And of course they stadium. For me the most positive thing they've done so far was the pursuit of players for the dev team during the window. Which indicates that they are indeed serious about the multiclub model - I expect there to be a purchase within the next few months. 

Edited September 21, 20222 yr by venom2011

I have to say they move fast. That pace is probably something adopted from their trade. They snap fingers if something happens in the market...

I think what they have done is a bit of a mixed bag. Some positives and some negatives. 

It is hard to judge them over this relatively short period of time. 

I like their ambition. 

It's still early days but I think they will come good. I think the longer term vision is to take from the youth academy and top up the squad with a few signings every window. We have spent close to £300m this summer which is the most for any club ever. If you had told me in May that Roman would stay as the owner and we would've signed Sterling, Koulibaly, Fofana, Cucurella I would've accepted that as a really decent window. On top of those players we have signed we have signed 4 or 5 really good younger players who hopefully can be integrated into the team.

I still think the sacking of Tuchel was a bit gung-ho, but can understand it if TT wasn't willing to adapt his role and be more hands on. They were going to butt heads over that down the line, so maybe the right decision to make that call when they did. I hope Potter is given time, and I think because he is the new owners man that they will give him more time than we are used to. I think maybe we could have been a bit more proactive in hiring a sporting director/ director of football. It seems the club are still hopeful of finding someone for this role, despite Freund deciding to stay at Salzburg.

Another point I think worth mentioning, is Roman came in and took over a club that was not regularly finishing in the top 4, hadn't won the league for 50 years and were winning the odd domestic cup. Not a bad side by any means, but Roman came in and overnight really turned us into one of the best clubs in England and Europe. Boehly however has come in and inherited one of the biggest teams in the country, and a team with European pedigree.  Because we are already at that level, I think it is more difficult to see an 'overnight' and instant success but given time I am hopeful that Boehly will help us find and sustain success.

There are also external factors outside of our control. City are a trophy winning machine, and we cannot do anything to stop them improving. Yes, we can improve ourselves to bridge the gap to them, but we cannot do anything else to stop them. As long as Pep is there they will always be in contention for the Premier League and Champions League. We just have to try and focus on ourselves to bridge the gap as much as we can. 

Boehly also didn't purchase the club in an ideal way - on the back of sanctions against the previous owner,  and with 2 of our regular centre backs walking away for free, and also inheriting a bit of a mess with some of the contracts which has been rectified to some extent with players like Barkley and Batshuayi being allowed to leave on free contracts. I'm sure if given the choice Boehly would have preferred to purchase the club in a smoother way, and not right on top of a transfer window when we desperately needed to try and find key players.

I do get some peoples concerns, and I think they are fair enough reasons to be concerned. The whole approach this summer has been a bit scatter gun and made us look a bit silly at times, but I think once there is a proper structure in place, with a manager and DOF working towards the same direction then I think things will start to look a lot better for us. I know some on here are concerned that they are only trying to make a profit - but they only way they are going to do that is by keeping us successful and regularly winning and competing trophies. We were spoilt with Roman as he did not seem to care about making a profit, but also in terms of transfers he pulled back over the last few years and we were only really spending what we were making. 

I for one cannot fault the new ambition they have shown with the money they have spent so far. I also found that interview he gave last week really interesting. Yes he made a few blunders with some of the stuff he said, but he's only been in the sport 5 minutes so prepared to give him a bit of leeway there. The overall message of that interview was that he wants Chelsea to be the biggest football club in the world, both on and off the pitch. If they are true to that, then the future could be very exciting. Let's not forget as part of the sale agreement there was a clause for the new owners to invest around 2 billion into the club over the next 10 years.

I think it's also worth mentioning that despite all the success we achieved, Roman was not perfect all the time and he and his team made some questionable decisions over the years! Given time I think we will come good, but we have to accept that Roman isn't here anymore and there's a new owner in place who wants to put his own stamp on things. As I say, early days so far but I think we will be ok. 

Brilliant post @drjonesy1994 

I’m in both camps. The start doesn’t look good for Todd and has said more in 20 minutes than Roman did in nearly 20 years.

Chelsea to Roman was a hobby that he had a big passion for, who I reckon wouldn’t have had any intention at all to sell up and the ownership would’ve seen him out.

Todd is completely different and we are in big business territory now. I think he will learn as time goes on and might start looking promising for the club. Getting to that level will be rocky for sure as the last few weeks have shown.

With all respect to Graham, I still think it was a wrong choice and a desperate move for the club. I want to be proved wrong!

Too early to say.

But the signs aren't good.

 

2 hours ago, HazardousChoice said:

Too early to say.

But the signs aren't good.

 

I'd say the signs are good. 

We have a misguided but ambitious owner. It's evident why he is desperate to add footballing people into the club. 

I'd be worried if he was planning on running things full time but that clearly isn't the case.

1 hour ago, Sconnie Blue said:

I'd say the signs are good. 

We have a misguided but ambitious owner. It's evident why he is desperate to add footballing people into the club. 

Plenty of idiots have ambition.

I'd hoped to see some competency, intelligence or at least a basic understanding of the club and the game from Boehly but he's been sorely lacking on all fronts since he took over.

I have absolutely no idea how anyone could take anything positive from Boehly causing the entire executive set up to leave without having any idea who to replace them with leading him to lone wolfing the transfer window going after players scouted by a manager who he didn't want, didn't get on with and then sacked as soon as the window ended.

He's a walking disaster. Him wanting to win doesn't change that.

Edited September 21, 20222 yr by HazardousChoice

11 minutes ago, HazardousChoice said:

Plenty of idiots have ambition.

I'd hoped to see some competency, intelligence or at least a basic understanding of the club and the game from Boehly but he's been sorely lacking on all fronts since he took over.

I have absolutely no idea how anyone could take anything positive from Boehly causing the entire executive set up to leave without having any idea who to replace them with leading him to lone wolfing the transfer window going after players scouted by a manager who he didn't want, didn't get on with and then sacked as soon as the window ended.

He's a walking disaster. Him wanting to win doesn't change that.

I think its evident why he got rid of Marina and Mclachlan. Both of which were responsible for the Lukaku disaster and our horrific recruitment strategy since 2017. I think the comments from Boehly on how he was shocked there was nothing really in place with regards to recruitment holds true when you look at our spending the past several years. 

Marina not only wanted to keep Lukaku, but she wanted to continue to initiate the tragic loan spells with extensions when we are losing money by keeping these god awful players. Mclachlan was probably let go when it came to the realisation he is a terrible scout, given he is rumored to be the one to ignore Tchouameni in favor of Lukaku + Saul on loan. 

Tuchel has also showed that he didn't want any outside involvement with the team. Just how is he supposed to handle a DoF, when it is desperately needed at this club? No manager should have full control with the squad. Txiki works hand in hand with Pep, Edu with Arteta, and look at what they are accomplishing now. You then see Tuchel's past history at Mainz, Dortmund, and PSG and things start to make sense. It was a matter of when, not if, Tuchel would fall out with the DoF, so his sacking makes sense on that regard. 

My biggest concern at the moment is the reason why those players that we approached and agreed deals with ultimately spurned us, why three DoF's have similarly turned us down and if Axman is correct another three have also done so or are about to. 

If the ambition is to be the biggest brand in the world both on and off the pitch why is it being so diffciult to recruit the fulcrum of that footballing strategy, the director of all footballing operations. What is so wrong here that it is deterring people after initial talks have occurred. Is there somethng in the detail giving people cold feet. Is it the overall vision or is it as basic as the salary package.

Forget success

We are spending the money from the £800 million debt that we now have that our " investors" have loaded our club with, despite being wealthy billionaires .

it's not their money is it ? Our club , our fans are on the hook for that, our investors want a profit from all that money that pours into every PL club, already we are into half the debt that it took Roman 20 years to accrue

 

58 minutes ago, The Rising Sun said:

Forget success

We are spending the money from the £800 million debt that we now have that our " investors" have loaded our club with, despite being wealthy billionaires .

it's not their money is it ? Our club , our fans are on the hook for that, our investors want a profit from all that money that pours into every PL club, already we are into half the debt that it took Roman 20 years to accrue

 

Fair points. My gut feeling is they don't care about the fans or the club, just to make money. 

We knew beforehand that Wyss is not a football fan, and we have heard Todd himself say he does not really get the game either. Which is odd given he tried a few years prior to buy us and Spurs yet knows not a great deal about the game.

Is not that he is a stupid man by any means, on the contrary he is very smart and ruthless, you tend to need to be as a billionaire, he just do not come across as having really passion or interest in the game itself. 

Just my 2 pennies worth, and after Harding, Bates and then Roman that leaves a bitter taste.

On 21/09/2022 at 21:06, Mod said:

Brilliant post @drjonesy1994 

I’m in both camps. The start doesn’t look good for Todd and has said more in 20 minutes than Roman did in nearly 20 years.

Chelsea to Roman was a hobby that he had a big passion for, who I reckon wouldn’t have had any intention at all to sell up and the ownership would’ve seen him out.

Todd is completely different and we are in big business territory now. I think he will learn as time goes on and might start looking promising for the club. Getting to that level will be rocky for sure as the last few weeks have shown.

With all respect to Graham, I still think it was a wrong choice and a desperate move for the club. I want to be proved wrong!

Spot on on all counts Mod. 

Particularly on Potter. This is the same naive nonsense that wanted to purchase Ronaldo in the summer. I fear for him and us, but this is our lot post Roman sadly.

Of course Boehly is in the business to make money. Just realize making money and caring about the club aren't mutually exclusive. Boehly is literally trying to set up a foundation that will allow us to coup all the top talent in the world vs solely relying on the academy. 

Some of the stuff I'm reading. Jesus. 

1 hour ago, Sconnie Blue said:

Of course Boehly is in the business to make money. Just realize making money and caring about the club aren't mutually exclusive. Boehly is literally trying to set up a foundation that will allow us to coup all the top talent in the world vs solely relying on the academy. 

Some of the stuff I'm reading. Jesus. 

I don't see any  evidence that he is setting up a foundation to capture all the " top talent in the world "

I hope it's true though sconnie mate and not just wishful thinking

1 minute ago, The Rising Sun said:

I don't see any  evidence that he is setting up a foundation to capture all the " top talent in the world "

I hope it's true though sconnie mate and not just wishful thinking

I would say Boehly publicly claiming he wants to adopt RB's model in acquiring clubs all across the world to be our 'feeder clubs', which would then allow us to have first dibs on young talent as well as having destinations for our loan players to go and develop, is evidence enough.  He also stated he wants more investment in the academy. 

Of course actions speak louder than words, but this summer proved Boehly isn't afraid to put his money where his mouth is. 

 

On 21/09/2022 at 08:58, drjonesy1994 said:

It's still early days but I think they will come good. I think the longer term vision is to take from the youth academy and top up the squad with a few signings every window. We have spent close to £300m this summer which is the most for any club ever. If you had told me in May that Roman would stay as the owner and we would've signed Sterling, Koulibaly, Fofana, Cucurella I would've accepted that as a really decent window. On top of those players we have signed we have signed 4 or 5 really good younger players who hopefully can be integrated into the team.

I still think the sacking of Tuchel was a bit gung-ho, but can understand it if TT wasn't willing to adapt his role and be more hands on. They were going to butt heads over that down the line, so maybe the right decision to make that call when they did. I hope Potter is given time, and I think because he is the new owners man that they will give him more time than we are used to. I think maybe we could have been a bit more proactive in hiring a sporting director/ director of football. It seems the club are still hopeful of finding someone for this role, despite Freund deciding to stay at Salzburg.

Another point I think worth mentioning, is Roman came in and took over a club that was not regularly finishing in the top 4, hadn't won the league for 50 years and were winning the odd domestic cup. Not a bad side by any means, but Roman came in and overnight really turned us into one of the best clubs in England and Europe. Boehly however has come in and inherited one of the biggest teams in the country, and a team with European pedigree.  Because we are already at that level, I think it is more difficult to see an 'overnight' and instant success but given time I am hopeful that Boehly will help us find and sustain success.

There are also external factors outside of our control. City are a trophy winning machine, and we cannot do anything to stop them improving. Yes, we can improve ourselves to bridge the gap to them, but we cannot do anything else to stop them. As long as Pep is there they will always be in contention for the Premier League and Champions League. We just have to try and focus on ourselves to bridge the gap as much as we can. 

Boehly also didn't purchase the club in an ideal way - on the back of sanctions against the previous owner,  and with 2 of our regular centre backs walking away for free, and also inheriting a bit of a mess with some of the contracts which has been rectified to some extent with players like Barkley and Batshuayi being allowed to leave on free contracts. I'm sure if given the choice Boehly would have preferred to purchase the club in a smoother way, and not right on top of a transfer window when we desperately needed to try and find key players.

I do get some peoples concerns, and I think they are fair enough reasons to be concerned. The whole approach this summer has been a bit scatter gun and made us look a bit silly at times, but I think once there is a proper structure in place, with a manager and DOF working towards the same direction then I think things will start to look a lot better for us. I know some on here are concerned that they are only trying to make a profit - but they only way they are going to do that is by keeping us successful and regularly winning and competing trophies. We were spoilt with Roman as he did not seem to care about making a profit, but also in terms of transfers he pulled back over the last few years and we were only really spending what we were making. 

I for one cannot fault the new ambition they have shown with the money they have spent so far. I also found that interview he gave last week really interesting. Yes he made a few blunders with some of the stuff he said, but he's only been in the sport 5 minutes so prepared to give him a bit of leeway there. The overall message of that interview was that he wants Chelsea to be the biggest football club in the world, both on and off the pitch. If they are true to that, then the future could be very exciting. Let's not forget as part of the sale agreement there was a clause for the new owners to invest around 2 billion into the club over the next 10 years.

I think it's also worth mentioning that despite all the success we achieved, Roman was not perfect all the time and he and his team made some questionable decisions over the years! Given time I think we will come good, but we have to accept that Roman isn't here anymore and there's a new owner in place who wants to put his own stamp on things. As I say, early days so far but I think we will be ok. 

Great post mate

but we never made money when we were successful, but if we DO make money , that goes OUT of our club and into the pockets of investors. It's a win , lose situation.

I know I'm always expecting the worst with our club, but the 20 years pushed it to the back of my mind, and I unwisely said to a mate early last season that we had the best owner in football who would be with us for generations. 

should have known better !

5 minutes ago, Sconnie Blue said:

I would say Boehly publicly claiming he wants to adopt RB's model in acquiring clubs all across the world to be our 'feeder clubs', which would then allow us to have first dibs on young talent as well as having destinations for our loan players to go and develop, is evidence enough.  He also stated he wants more investment in the academy. 

Of course actions speak louder than words, but this summer proved Boehly isn't afraid to put his money where his mouth is. 

 

Well I like that.

Btw , it's not HIS money, it's the £800 million debt that our investors loaded the club with before the season started that is being spent .

I believe there is a limit in the buyout that limits the debt we can carry, and some anti glazer clause to prevent the club being used as a piggy bank .

Time will tell, though .take care mate.

Just watch one of our players get injured in the internationals to balls up our new start !

1 hour ago, Sconnie Blue said:

Of course Boehly is in the business to make money. Just realize making money and caring about the club aren't mutually exclusive. Boehly is literally trying to set up a foundation that will allow us to coup all the top talent in the world vs solely relying on the academy. 

Some of the stuff I'm reading. Jesus. 

I still think that Ronaldo stuff was utter nonsense, totally made up by either Utd friendly reporters or leaked by his agent. There has been zero evidence to support Boehly wanted to buy him.

11 minutes ago, dkw said:

I still think that Ronaldo stuff was utter nonsense, totally made up by either Utd friendly reporters or leaked by his agent. There has been zero evidence to support Boehly wanted to buy him.

I too find it hard to believe after it was revealed Sterling was the 'Marquee' signing Boehly promised. 

1 hour ago, dkw said:

I still think that Ronaldo stuff was utter nonsense, totally made up by either Utd friendly reporters or leaked by his agent. There has been zero evidence to support Boehly wanted to buy him.

I think most of the rods that are being used to beat Boehly with are fabricated nonsense or at best only half truths ... all the crap surrounding de Ligt, Kounde and Raphinha for starters, all of whom have been quoted as saying they are now at their dream club ... in Raphinha's case who he wanted to play for since he was 8 years old and watching Ronaldinho at Barca.

And yet apparently Boehly's fault that we didn't get any of those signings "over the line" ... 🙂 

3 minutes ago, Sexyfootball said:

I think most of the rods that are being used to beat Boehly with are fabricated nonsense or at best only half truths ... all the crap surrounding de Ligt, Kounde and Raphinha for starters, all of whom have been quoted as saying they are now at their dream club ... in Raphinha's case who he wanted to play for since he was 8 years old and watching Ronaldinho at Barca.

And yet apparently Boehly's fault that we didn't get any of those signings "over the line" ... 🙂 

I don't think anyone has an issue with Raphina choosing Barca over us.

People have an issue with Boehly and club publically announcing we've agreed a fee with Leeds without speaking to the player, which if we had we'd know that not only did he only want Barca but he'd agreed personal terms with them months ago.

The issue isn't that we didn't get Raphina or any of those players it's that Bohely shot his load too early and saw us publically rejected all over Europe,  it's a horrible look for the club and not one we were so eager to experience under Roman.

Can't help thinking he came into it thinking he was in the NBA and he only had to make deals with other teams rather than with the players themselves.

29 minutes ago, HazardousChoice said:

The issue isn't that we didn't get Raphina or any of those players it's that Bohely shot his load too early and saw us publically rejected all over Europe,  it's a horrible look for the club and not one we were so eager to experience under Roman.

I'm not sure I agree with that.

Didn't we become the butt of many jokes in 2017 due to the sheer amount of players turning us down? (AOC, VVD, Lukaku and Alex Sandro off the top of my head, the latter in particular being quite a damaging saga).

I don't disagree he's got a lot to learn in the whole though but thankfully he seems to realise that hence the pursuit of a director.

Edited September 23, 20222 yr by Argo

23 minutes ago, Argo said:

I'm not sure I agree with that.

Didn't we become the butt of many jokes in 2017 due to the sheer amount of players turning us down? (AOC, VVD, Lukaku and Alex Sandro off the top of my head, the latter in particular being quite a damaging saga).

I don't disagree he's got a lot to learn in the whole though but thankfully he seems to realise that hence the pursuit of a director.

Did Lukaku turn us down?

If I recall Correctly Lukaku wanted to come to us but his agent didn't come to the negotiating table and told him United were the only option which led to Rom firing Raiola shortly after.

2017 was a shocking window and us failing to get our main targets and then panic buying dross set us back significantly, I'd argue we haven't actually recovered from it, we've certainly not challenged for a title since.

I'm not saying we didn't have a bad window under Roman, we had many particularly once Marina came in but the club generally conducted its affairs in a much more professional and quietly competent manner.  Boehly emulating our worst window under Roman in his very first window while having a near unlimited budget isn't promising.

There's been a lot of noise from Boehly both in failing to get things done and interviews away from the club and I'm not sure it's a positive change.

Seems a lot of the positivity is linked to us getting a mythical but yet unknown director to handle everything and keep Todd away but given we've now started being Publically rejected by directors across Europe I'm not sure I feel the optimism either.

Edited September 23, 20222 yr by HazardousChoice