Chelsea FC: a case of BlueCo Blues

By Adam Jamison

In the first few tumultuous months following BlueCo’s purchase of Chelsea Football Club, many fans were quick to point a finger at the British government, and some to Vladimir Putin himself, as the upstream political causes of continued poor results. If it weren’t for war in Ukraine, then surely, Chelsea wouldn’t be owned by these hapless Americans. Roman Abramovich would never have fired a popular manager only a few months into his reign, while splashing incredible amounts of cash on transfers, which, to be generous, could best be described as ‘hit-or-miss’... right?

Now, with a couple years of hindsight to rely on, the BlueCo strategy and project as a whole has come into focus. In the first full year of BlueCo’s Chelsea, the parallels to that of Abramovich were clear; but now, though, the Club has seemingly been transformed. No longer spending heavily on proven veterans, decimating the much-vaunted ‘Loan Army’ to only a fraction of its former size, resetting the wage structure, having managerial consistency (for the moment, fingers crossed), and- most interestingly- relying on recently-purchased RC Strasbourg for external player development.

Most Chelsea fans, upon hearing of Chelsea’s sale to BlueCo, assumed the worst. Is there truly any phrase that terrifies a fan of a Premier League club more than ‘our new American owners’? True to these fears, in the first year under BlueCo, the new ownership group seemed dead-set on emulating the quick success of the beginning of Abramovich’s reign. As such, the Club followed the Abramovich playbook: spend big on veteran players, get the manager carousel spinning again, collect silverware, repeat.

BlueCo took over Chelsea in May 2022, and the proverbial floodgates opened. Whether the initial moves following the takeover were more influenced by Abramovich’s early years or Todd Boehly’s (one of the leaders of the BlueCo consortium) prior experience taking over the LA Dodgers, we may never know. What we do know is that the majority of the first year of signings, both player and manager alike, were not ideal. To put it lightly, it did not inspire confidence in the fanbase to have a first season where more than €600m were spent on signings (including a combined €100m on aging veterans Raheem Sterling and Kalidou Koulibaly), while both Thomas Tuchel and Graham Potter, his intended long-term replacement, were both sacked before the season was done, as Chelsea finished 12th.

Behind the scenes, though, there was a sort of administrative power struggle occurring- the sporting-finance-heavyweight version of ‘too many cooks in the kitchen.’ Todd Boehly proceeded to step down from his (self-appointed) position as sporting director in January 2023, which seemed to have a clarifying or narrowing effect on Club strategy. This was not, however, the end of his influence at the club; simply a step back. Boehly’s fingerprints are all over the next crucial step the Club took to show their new direction- the June 2023 purchase of French club RC Strasbourg, who play in Ligue 1. The Club now had an external stepping stone for all its promising young players. This is similar to the situation Chelsea had in the past, under Abramovich, with Vitesse Arnhem, who played in the Eredivisie at the time (they have since lost their license as a professional football club, which I’m sure is entirely unrelated…), yet Ligue 1 is a clear step up from the Dutch first league. Furthermore, Chelsea never actually owned Vitesse, as the influence wielded over them by Chelsea was a result of actions undertaken by Abramovich himself, via a series of loans that made them. These, understandably, made Vitesse much more friendly toward Chelsea and happy to take on any number of young players on loan. When it comes to Strasbourg, though, BlueCo has full control. Indicative of the direction that BlueCo wants to take the Club in, both Chelsea and Strasbourg have consistently fielded the youngest squads in their respective leagues this season (average squad ages of 24 and 21 years, respectively).

The existence and usage of Strasbourg as a sort of ‘feeder club’ shows how much has changed since the ‘Loan Army’ of the 2010s under Abramovich. In those seasons, it wouldn’t be uncommon to have upwards of twenty players out on loan in any number of locations. In fact, some players who were involved in this incessant series of loans have since spoken out about how it disrupted their careers, and how it was clearly not beneficial for anyone involved, even the Club- which makes complete sense in hindsight. How can you truly evaluate a player’s quality if they play in a position, formation, or league that has nothing in common with Chelsea? How can you compare them to other players of similar caliber? How can you measure a player’s growth year over year when they’ve been loaned to teams in five different leagues in each of the last five years? (Lucas Piazon, I’ll always love you.) It’s just not possible.

This is where we can truly see the value of Strasbourg. Their squad currently includes Chelsea loanees Kendry Paéz (18), Mamadou Sarr (20), and Mike Penders (20), Emmanuel Emegha (22) who has signed a pre-contract to join Chelsea next year, along with Ben Chilwell (28) and Mathis Amougou (19) who both joined from Chelsea over the summer on ‘permanent’ transfers. It’s the closest equivalent that exists in football to the ‘farm system’ in Major League Baseball, where each MLB team has its own system of Minor League teams and young players to constantly monitor and pull new recruits from. To be clear, I’m not arguing that one club owning another club is good for the sport, nor that every club should do this. But, it does seem to be working. Chelsea currently finds itself in second place in the Premier League while also once again playing in the Champions League, while Strasbourg currently is in fifth place in Ligue 1 while playing in Europe for the first time since the 05/06 season.

These three loanees at Strasbourg constitute a large portion of the seven players the Club has out on loan. If we wish to count players on pre-contracts to join Chelsea, then the number rises to ten players in total. This can be compared with, for example, the thirty-two players out on loan during the 13/14 season. Of course, sheer numbers don’t prove anything per se, but they do lend credence to the claim of the more focused perspective within the current Club administration. A young player joining Chelsea now, as opposed to the Chelsea of a decade ago, knows that they have been hand-picked by the scouting department, and as long as they improve and play to their potential, there exists a very clear path into the first team (see: Estévão, Andrey Santos). 

This brings us to the last topic of discussion- the financial side. If we ignore the first season of transfers from both Abramovich and BlueCo and see what their respective tendencies were, it’s clear. Under Abramovich, Chelsea always bought up cheap young talent, as evidenced by purchases like a 22-year-old Petr Cech in 2004 for an inflation-adjusted €63m* or any of the hundreds involved in the Loan Army, but these signings were always secondary to the marquee signings of veteran players. There are endless examples of this, both successful (26-year-old Didier Drogba for an inflation-adjusted €183m* also in 2004) and ultimately unsuccessful (29-year-old Andriy Shevchenko for an inflation-adjusted €204m* in 2006, a 26-year-old injury-prone Fernando Torres for an inflation-adjusted €186m* in 2010). And we’ve not even begun to bring up the innumerable ‘medium-tier’ transfers that seemed to occur for no real reason- the football equivalent of going shopping just because you’ve received your paycheck earlier that day. A clear example of this is the 17/18 season, where among others, Álvaro Morata, Tiemoué Bakayoko, Danny Drinkwater, and Davide Zappacosta were purchased for a combined €150m. I’ve got a gold star sticker for anyone who can convince me any of these purchases made the slightest bit of sense, now or back then.

I bring this up to contrast the styles of player recruitment, as well as the accompanying financial aspects of these recruitment strategies. Over the past three seasons (23/24, 24/25, 25/26), Chelsea have almost exclusively purchased players under the age of 25, with a focus on signing young talent to long-term contracts. In the past, signing players to long-term contracts was seen as a poor decision, given that players could choose to run down their contracts and receive guaranteed money (See: Raheem Sterling). BlueCo has changed the game when it comes to player contracts. I mean this quite literally, as UEFA has now implemented a new rule to limit the amount of amortization a club can take on a player to five years- though all existing contracts that exceed five years, such as those for almost all Chelsea players, are grandfathered in and not subject to this new ruling. 

The concept of amortization is simple. Let’s take Enzo Fernández as an example- Chelsea paid an (at the time) Premier League transfer fee record €121m for him. If he were to have signed the typical four or five year contract, then his amortized cost per year, or accounting cost, would be 121 divided by the number of years on the contract, so between €24m - €30m per year. Instead, Chelsea signed him to a nine year contract, which was virtually unheard of. Because of this, Fernández only costs Chelsea around €13m per year. This difference, though it doesn’t seem to be massive, frees up more money each year for other transfers, while also helping the Club to comply with Financial Fair Play (FFP) regulations, which limit the amount of annual operating losses a club can have. As such, yes, Chelsea spending billions of euros in the past few years doesn’t have the same financial effect as it did in the past, where, under Abramovich, these marquee signings had shorter contracts and weren’t subject to the same strict wage structure, forcing Abramovich to continuously pump money into the Club, as without careful financial constraints and a long-term perspective, these signings would destroy the Club financially.

Chelsea’s wage data reflects this new direction, as well. In 21/22, the last season before BlueCo took over, Chelsea had total weekly payroll costs of €4,079,062 and an average annual salary of €7,576,404, which included seven players making upwards of €200,000 p/w. This season (25/26), there are weekly payroll costs of €3,588,499 and an annual average salary of €4,784,666, which includes only four players making more than €200,000 p/w. The reinstatement of a strict wage structure- currently only broken by Raheem Sterling, the only current Chelsea player to make more than €300,000 p/w- was a necessary step towards a more financially responsible Chelsea, which I’m aware is a humorous thing to say about a club that has spent more than a billion euros on transfer fees in the last few years. I digress.

An additional bonus to the way that BlueCo have gone about their transfer business- specifically targeting young talent and signing them to long-term contracts with comparatively low wages- is that these players are often sought after by other clubs, while also being fairly easy to offload due to other clubs being willing to increase their wages upon leaving Chelsea. This can be seen in the lucrative, high-profile sales of players like Kai Havertz, Mason Mount, and Noni Madueke in recent years, who have all been effectively replaced by João Pedro, Cole Palmer, and Estévão respectively, all at an accounting profit. And to be clear, when I say ‘accounting profit,’ I mean that the value of a player sale is calculated as the total amount of sale less the remaining non-amortized cost of the original purchase price for a player. As such, the sale of Mason Mount for €68m to Manchester United was ‘pure profit,’ while the €75m sale of Kai Havertz to Arsenal was only around a €45m profit, as his initial purchase price had not yet been fully amortized. This demonstrates why there will always be a struggle between fans wanting to keep players from their academies and sporting directors that might be more inclined towards selling them for ‘pure profit’ to fund further transfers.

In short, it seems as though BlueCo quickly learned that the best way to grow the value of their asset, Chelsea Football Club, was not to follow in the erratic, flashy ways of the past. Instead, it seems that for once, Chelsea is actually investing in players smartly, giving a manager time to come into his own, and allowing players time to grow within the system- all without demanding immediate success. 

Of course, we can revisit this article in six months after Maresca gets sacked after a run of bad games, Chelsea finishes fourth, wins the Champions League with an interim manager, and then finishes 12th the following year and signs a 42-year-old Cristiano Ronaldo for €60m. We can dream, can’t we?