Chelsea for sale? As Todd Boehly issue shock message and silent partners
Todd Boehly has been at Chelsea since May 2022 after replacing Roman Abramovich and has not been afraid to splash the cash at Stamford Bridge but could soon be on the way out of West London
Chelsea’s future has grown uncertain after the bombshell revelation that the club’s owners are ‘exploring changes’ – just two years after their remarkable takeover.
The current consortium sealed a sensational deal to buy the Blues in May 2022 from Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich. Alongside US businessman Mark Walter and Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss, Todd Boehly and Clearlake paid an eye-watering £4.25bn to purchase the West London club.
However, it’s now claimed that those at the top of the club are “exploring” the ownership situation after a difficult two-and-a-half years.
Immediately after the news broke, Clearlake sources made clear that they have no intention of selling, and instead that co-founder Behdad Eghbali is weighing up whether they can instead raise their holding in the club – potentially buying out other stakeholders, including Boehly. They insist they remain committed to the Blues and could increase their stake – potentially pushing Boehly out the exit door.
But after such a short stint at the helm of the two-time European champions, how has it reached this stage? Mirror Football takes a look…
The Blues have twice broken their transfer record in Enzo Fernandez and Moises Caicedo, while Mykhaylo Mudryk has yet to match expectations at Stamford Bridge. In fact, of the nine players signed during Clearlake’s first transfer window at the helm, just three remain at Stamford Bridge as part of the first-team squad – evidence of the club’s scattergun approach over the past two years.
Chelsea’s underperformance
While fortunes have been invested under a clutch of managers – Thomas Tuchel, Graham Potter, Frank Lampard, Mauricio Pochettino and Enzo Maresca all having had spells at the helm – the Blues have made very limited progress on the pitch. They finished a lowly 12th in the 2022/23 Premier League season – their lowest position in nearly 20 years.
There was improvement last term with a sixth-placed finish but that was only made possible due to a late season charge under Pochettino. Boehly was seemingly set to retain faith in the Argentine.
Speaking last term, he said: “We’ve seen the last two and a half games… in the second half at Aston Villa [2-2 draw] and Tottenham [2-0 win] and West Ham [5-0 win] where we played beautiful football.
“It was so fluid, it was exactly the way we drew it up, when we came out of the back, built up and moved up the pitch, [it was] very organised and the number of shots we had. In those two and a half games, you could really start to see what we were working on coming together.”
But just as though it looked like things were starting to turn in the right direction, the Argentine was sacked. Former Leicester boss Enzo Maresca was named as his replacement as Chelsea decided to pay a huge £10m to tempt the Italian from the King Power Stadium.
They have won just once in the Premier League so far under the former Man City coach, while 2-1 Europa Conference League defeat to Swiss side Servette is an embarrassing note despite Chelsea sealing their place in the competition on aggregate.
Boardroom upheaval
Away from the dressing room and the dugout, there have also been huge changes behind the scenes. Influential figures including ex-chairman Bruce Buck, director Marina Granovskaia, chief executive officer Guy Laurence, technical and performance director Petr Cech all opted to leave when the takeover went ahead.
Even people who have been brought to the club by the current owners have already moved on. Chief executive Chris Jurasek quit over recent days just 15 months after arriving, while former technical director Christopher Vivell was placed on gardening leave just over six months after he was appointed.
Boehly – also owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers as part of the Guggenheim Baseball Management consortium – stepped up to operate as sporting director when they initially purchased the club. But gradually, over the past two years, he has faded more into the background as the club committed to overhauling its recruitment staff.
Over the past six months, Boehly has taken a step back from the day-to-day management of the club, with Eghbali now widely seen to be the most influential figure at Stamford Bridge.
Talking stakes
So if you thought that Clearlake and Boehly had been equal partners in all this, then you’d be wrong.
Because in fact Clearlake own a whopping 61.5 percent of the shares and voting rights in the UK-based company behind Chelsea, 22 Holdco.
The remainder – 38.5 percent – is split equally between Boehly, Hansjorg Wyss and Mark Walter, with each owning just short of 13 percent apiece.
Should any of that trio be interested in selling, Cearlake would be keen to sweep up their shares.
Lack of a stadium investment
Another point of debate between Boehly and Eghbali has been investment in Stamford Bridge. Ever since Abramovich’s time at the helm, there have been plans to revamp the Blues’ historic home.
But in 2018, plans were halted. The club’s current owners appointed a taskforce to lead a major £2bn redevelopment of Stamford Bridge a year ago.
The now departed Jurasek was a member of that taskforce, while it has now been claimed that ground might not actually be broken until 2027. That is despite Chelsea completing an £80m purchase of the Sir Oswald Stoll Mansions adjacent to the stadium so it appears any hope of an immediate expansion is unrealistic for now.
Player unrest
Amid talk over the club’s future, one of those players signed under the new ownership, Marc Cucurella, has urged stability going forwards. Speaking to EFE, he said: “I think the coach we have is very good, he has very clear ideas. We’ve had years of coaching changes, let’s see if we can achieve stability without many changes and so that the manager can transmit his ideas.
“We need stability. We have very high-level players and hopefully we can have the patience that is needed, that calm, so that everything goes well. We have the level, we just need stability and for the coaches and players to be allowed to work in order to do something important.”
Given the club’s own players are getting themselves involved in the club’s major coaching decisions, it just shows how messy the Chelsea’s ownership has been in the Clearlake era.