Todd Boehly’s 24 Chelsea mistakes ranked from All-Stars to Tuchel

· Football365

Todd Boehly rode in as Chelsea’s white knight in May 2022 and has now left after four turbulent years at Stamford Bridge. Here are his numerous, wide-ranging mistakes.

删掉了图片列表区的相关报道标题、作者署名、日期及缩略图（属于"更多文章"导航，非正文配图）。

Todd Boehly has sold his stake in Chelsea.

Todd Boehly rode in as Chelsea's white knight in May 2022 and has now left the club after four turbulent years at Stamford Bridge.

Clearlake Capital have purchased Boehly's stake and Behdad Eghbali will now be the figurehead taking the flak for what we suspect will be continued chaos after a brief glimmer of hope under Xabi Alonso comes to nothing.

As a parting gift, here we bring you the numerous, wide-ranging mistakes of Mr Boehly, though we confess that at least some of them are wider BlueCo blunders, for which he shouldn't be solely blamed but has been for the purposes of this hit piece. Enjoy.

24) Premier League All-Stars

Starting a pitch by claiming the Premier League could "learn a lesson from American sports" was never going to go down well, and Boehly's suggestion of a North versus South All-Star game was predictably met with xenophobically tinged responses from people who Know English Football.

It appeared to be an offhand comment made with the best intentions of giving back to the football pyramid, but the one extra game in the calendar that, let's face it, loads of people would watch and would provide millions of pounds for smaller clubs was a terrible idea as everyone would definitely get injured during that one specific, half-arsed game.

23) The Mohamed Salah, Kevin De Bruyne academy

At that same New York conference in September 2022 Boehly claimed Chelsea have "one of the best academies in the world", which is arguable, but using Salah and De Bruyne to evidence the worth of that academy rather sullies the argument, and by association any other point about Chelsea or football in general.

Salah broke through at Egyptian side Al Mokawloon before moving to Basel, while De Bruyne made the first team at Genk before a transfer to Chelsea. And namedropping either of those two players to attest to Chelsea's excellence in developing stars is unwise.

Using Boehly's earlier All-Star comments against him, Thierry Henry advised the American owner to "learn your own lessons and then come back and teach us something" in reference to his lack of knowledge on the history of his own football club.

22) Signing Joao Felix

A super talented, mercurial forward who can play on either wing or down the middle signed for £42m having cost Atletico nearly three times that much five years ago. It sounds pretty good, but it may well be the most laughable signing of all in a hugely amusing field.

He was quite clearly just a tool for Chelsea to earn pure profit through the sale of Conor Gallagher (we'll get to that sh\tshow). They actually wanted Samu Omorodion, who may not have the quality and repute of Felix but would have at least been useful to Chelsea.

You couldn't have picked a player Chelsea were less in need of when he arrived than Joao Felix, who had already played for the club lest we forget, in a distinctly average loan spell punctuated by missed chances and frustrating quality, in that it came to nothing nine times out of ten. They've already got plenty of players to deliver on those counts.

The misstep would be higher on this list had Chelsea not managed to dupe Al Nassr into paying a big chunk of what the Blues paid up front for his signing, with add-ons potentially meaning they will break even.

21) 'Disrespecting' Benfica over Enzo Fernandez

All's well that ends well, right? Well, Chelsea did get Enzo Fernandez and then somehow sell him to Manchester City for a profit but aren't on the best terms with Benfica as a result and haven't signed any of their players since.

Benfica boss Roger Schmidt wasn't at all happy with Chelsea's approach for Fernandez. Referred to as "the club who wants Enzo", like they're a footballing Lord Voldermort, Chelsea were accused of making the midfielder "crazy" through suggesting they would meet his £106m release clause, then not doing so, before meeting the Portuguese club's demands in the end.

20) Not pushing harder for Anthony Gordon

Full disclosure, when we did this ranking back in May 2023 this was titled 'Pushing for Anthony Gordon', but he's made us all look a bit daft since, starting for England at the World Cup before starring for actual Barcelona.

19) Dressing room faux pas

Football is arguably too precious about dressing rooms. While American sports allow journalists and fans into their 'inner sanctums', footballers and managers appear to want some sort of DBS check for anyone thinking of setting foot in the holiest of all places.

The Chelsea players were 'taken aback' when Mykhaylo Mudryk and his entourage were granted entry with Booehly ahead of the Crystal Palace game in January 2023, but actually it sounds entirely reasonable to introduce a new signing to the players before a game.

However, attempting to bring a group of guests and their children, with no particular affiliation to Chelsea, into the dressing room at half-time in a Premier League game, is a bold move, not least because bringing children into a dressing room with adult men, who could be changing, could be swearing, could be doing anything, feels all wrong.

Thomas Tuchel told Boehly to do one, and was sacked four days later.

18) 'Embarrassing' rant

We don't know everything about what happened, but what we do know is Boehly called the players "embarrassing", singled a senior player out for criticism leaving them 'disillusioned', and at least one onlooker thought it was "weird". It doesn't sound great.

Arsene Wenger reckons any new Chelsea manager, and there have been plenty in the last two years, should have an anti-Boehly clause inserted in their contract. It appears that clause is already in place for the sport of football as a whole.

17) Outsourcing medical work

To be fair, dismissed pair Paco Biosca and Thierry Laurent weren't doing a great job as medical chief and head physio – Chelsea topped the injury count in the Premier League in 2021/22 with 97 according to Howden's European Football Injury Index. But the injury problems ramped up significantly after Boehly decided to outsource some of the medical work to a private physiotherapy company.

Denis Zakaria, Reece James, Raheem Sterling, N'Golo Kante, Wesley Fofana, Ben Chilwell, Armando Broja, Ruben Loftus-Cheek, Christian Pulisic, Edouard Mendy and Thiago Silva all spent significant time on the sidelines in 2022/23, and we barely saw James, Romeo Lavia or Christopher Nkunku in 2023/24, with Marc Cucurella, Ben Chilwell, Carney Chukwuemeka, Trevoh Chalobah and Benoit Badiashile also out for a big chunk of the campaign.

In a leaked private message in which he explained why his client and his teammates were struggling due to a 'lack of pilates and terrain work', Chalobah's personal trainer said it best: 'It's an absolute mess at the moment, bro.'

16) Signing Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang

Given we were told by Boehly that the club's decision to sack Tuchel was made over a stretch of time and not as a result of the defeat to Dinamo Zagreb in the Champions League, how the hell can he explain the signing of Aubameyang?

He was a 33-year-old striker, who was infamously kicked out of Arsenal for being a bad influence in the dressing room, signed purely because he scored a load of goals under Tuchel eight years ago.

With his transfer fee and annual salary taken into account, Aubameyang cost Chelsea roughly £20k per minute played. He then went on to score and assist a bucketload for Marseille, because of course he did.

15) Selling Conor Gallagher

People will look at the mess Gallagher's found himself in at Tottenham and a Chelsea midfield he would now have a very tough time in getting into and see this is a good call, but we're not having it.

Can anyone think of another example of a top football club forcing their de facto captain into a transfer? Possibly if that player's been a bit of tit or they're passed their best, but other than that we doubt it.

He was Chelsea's best player other than Cole Palmer under Mauricio Pochettino, had been at the club since he was a wee boy and was sold for £20m below market value in the name of pure profit.

The two-year contract they offered – presumably just so they could say they tried – was insulting and we're glad Gallagher told them where to go. Who would want to play for a football club like that anyway?

14) Performance-related contracts

It's one of those things that sounds far better than it actually is. It seems reasonable to pay players in a team according to how well that team has done. A big problem is that some players are negatively affected by the team's poor performance and others – those with their wages assured – are not. It caused significant issues in the dressing room in BlueCo's first season.

Hard to tell if the new system has been an issue in the transfer market or not. Was it an issue for Jeremy Jacquet when he snubbed Chelsea for Liverpool, for example? We don't and probably won't ever know because as much as we would enjoy the barefaced honesty, he's unlikely to admit he moved to Anfield for the cash even if that was the case.

13) Re-apppointing Frank Lampard

It didn't really matter, but let's be clear, re-hiring Lampard was nuts. To think all that group of players needed was a pep-talk from a club legend perfectly illustrates how deluded Boehly was. 11 games, one win, eight defeats.

He's doing swimmingly at Coventry. Third time's a charm?

12) Raheem Sterling and the 'bomb squad'

> "I am not working with 42 players. I am working with 21 players. The other 15-20 players are training apart. I don't see them. It's not a mess like it looks from outside. Absolutely not. They can even have 20 years contract, it's not my point. I don't care."

Enzo Maresca there, literally saying he doesn't give two sh\ts about half of Chelsea's senior players, including Raheem Sterling and Ben Chilwell.

We get that Maresca can't work with 42 players – a bulging squad was one of the key contributors to Graham Potter's downfall – but it's an extraordinary thing to say.

And what a d\ck move to play Sterling for the whole of pre-season, telling reporters how "important" his experience and quality is to the squad, and then tell him he's not going to play and needs to find a new club with just over a week left of the transfer window. Just a horrible thing to do to him and everyone else in the 'bomb squad'.

11) Mykhaylo Mudryk

When this list was first published in January 2023 this section was titled 'failed hijacks' as we questioned why the result of cherry-picking people that we assumed were among the best in the business from Brighton, RB Leipzig and elsewhere to oversee all things transfers, those individuals appeared to be engaging with the market in the same way anyone with an interest in football with access to the interweb might – gossip columns.

And although we very quickly had egg thrown in our face as Mykhaylo Mudryk did in fact end up hog-tied and brought to Chelsea over Arsenal, it remains a 'failed hijack' by virtue of the quite astonishingly negative impact of said individual.

Arsenal got Leandro Trossard, who's been largely excellent, while Mudryk – save for brief snippets of Shakhtar-like quality – resembled a lost puppy, shooting as though his right foot is made of sweaty salami before being banned for failing a drugs test.

Good thing Boehly's tied him down for eight years, and then took up the option of a further year in the midst of his terribleness. He was on £100,000 per week before Chelsea miraculously duped Tottenham into paying him that wage on loan.

10) Skimping on goalkeepers

Even when you take into account the increased cost of outfield players in comparison, spending just £70m out of £1.6bn on goalkeepers before landing Emiliano Martinez is odd; even he was only £7.5m. Add to that the fact that that £70m was spent on four goalkeepers, all of whom have been varying shades of sh\t, and it's utterly absurd.

Kepa Arrizabalaga continues to exemplify why spending all of that cash on one stopper is a big risk, but the points dropped and games lost as a result of poor goalkeeping from purveyor of false calm Robert Sanchez and his poise-feigning understudy Filip Jorgensen makes the decision to walk away from a deal for Mike Maignan over what would account for little more than a rounding error in the summer of 2025 one of the more infuriating calls.

Read the original

People in this story

Related