More Badiashille's, Less Lukaku's

Some thoughts on smart recruitment

A contribution article from The Score!

When the Boehly / Clearlake takeover of Chelsea was first mooted, one of the big pluses in the eyes of most fans was the embracing of the data-led, ‘smart recruitment’ model made famous most successfully by Liverpool

Between summer 2017 and summer 2022, Chelsea spent £738.7m on player transfers , under the previous ownership. We paid a club record fee three times - Alvaro Morata (£58m) , Kepa Arrizabalaga (£71m) and Romelu Lukaku (£97.5m). .

Now, here’s a shocking stat:

Between summer 2017 and the end of the 2021/2022 season, Manchester City spent £738m on transfers according to the website Transfermarkt. The exact same as Chelsea.

Of course it doesn’t include net spend, and we made far more from player sales in that time, but our gross spend was identical. I didn’t believe it at first. I couldn’t. I had to double check. But its’ true.

Between 2017-2022 summer, Chelsea spent gross, the exact same amount on players as Manchester City.

Let that sink in.

In that time Man City won 4 PL titles (including reaching 198 points in two seasons), 4 league cups, an FA Cup and reached a CL final.

Meanwhile in the same time Chelsea finished an average of 25 points behind the league champions every season, never challenged for the title, and achieved three major knockout tournament wins, not including the European SuperCup or World Club Cup.

Granted, one of those knockout trophies was the Champions League in 2021, won largely due to a combination of the genius of Thomas Tuchel and some all time performances by N’Golo Kante.

However, despite the triumph at Porto, its’ fair to say Chelsea massively underachieved in that period given how much we spent and what Manchester City won on an identical budget.

Overall we’ve actually spent more on players than Manchester City since 2017….and yet in all that we’ve been well behind them, and the gap is getting wider.

So it’s fair to say our previous recruitment ‘model’ (if you call abysmal scouting with no team building strategy and signing some players based on whims and sentiment, a ‘model’) under the previous ownership, failed spectacularly. It took us from a team which challenged for the title most seasons, to one which battled for top 4 at best - often achieved by a change of manager / a new manager bounce - and won a few knockout tournaments. 

After the takeover, many Chelsea fans were demanding we sign top talents younger and cheaper and develop them here - maybe even sacrificing a title challenge for a couple of years to develop a winning team. 

Yet all I see now, is people begging for big money signings to prove we have ambition and because ‘other teams are doing it’ (always a good reason for a transfer….apparently).

Chelsea have got frustratingly close to getting big talents for very cheap fees in recent years. We could have signed Declan Rice in 2020 for £60m, but chose to keep Jorginho. In January 2020, we could have signed Erling Haaland from RB Salzburg for £20m plus agents fees. We didn’t want to pay agents fees for an ‘unproven talent’ and our chief scout felt he wouldn’t adapt to the Premier League. In 2020, we could have signed Mike Maignan, now one of the best keepers in world football, for just £32m but deemed him too expensive. Famously of course, the time we could have chosen to sign Aurelien Tchouameni for £30m and signed Saul on loan instead.

If Chelsea had been smart, instead of spending £97m on Romelu Lukaku, we could have signed Declan Rice, Erling Haaland, Aurelien Tchouameni and Mike Maignan for a grand total of £142m over 18 months. We’d have recouped £30-40m of that on Jorginho, ironically to Arsenal, which combined with saving on Lukaku, would easily have covered the fees for those 4 players. Not to mention Timo Werner probably wouldn’t have been needed, saving us £47m, and we may have kept Tammy Abraham. 

A very different Chelsea, and potentially long term the core of a title winning team.

This summer everyone is clamouring for us to spend big money on a striker and a midfielder. Judging from what I see on the Twitter timeline, we “have to” spend £80m on a midfielder or we’re “not serious.”

In case people wonder how serious our owners are by the way, just remember they spent £105m on Enzo Fernandez, arguably one of the best young midfielders in the world - and no one questions his fee now.

For this ‘moneyball’ approach you only have to look at Liverpool - the club whose approach we probably have to be modelling if we’re to have even a chance to catch Man City. They’ve not been linked with any of the “big name” midfielders this summer, despite needing a midfield rebuild. They declined to go for Jude Bellingham, which got widespread condemnation. But now I see them signing Alexis Mac Allister, who had a release clause of £35m, and being linked with Kepken Thuram and Manu Kone. They could rebuild their entire midfield for about £120m. No ‘big name’ there, but all excellent players with promise.

I’m almost certain if we signed 3 midfielders for £30-50m a section of our fans would talk about ‘lack of ambition’, purely because other clubs are signing big names and we’re not. 

It should be noted here, how under our new recruitment team we’ve shown signs we can find our hidden gems. In December the whole fanbase was going wild for centre-back Josef Gvardiol from RB Leipzig, and there was talk - actively encouraged by a lot of fans - of signing him for £100m in the January window. 

Meanwhile, in the background, Chelsea were quietly working on the signing of one Benoit Badiashille from Monaco for £32m - and only £20m of this was up front. The centre-back is already proving to be one of our best signings in recent years, both in terms of value and quality. The very definition of a smart signing, who is able to come immediately into the first team and improve it, but doesn’t cost a fortune. 

Also in January, we signed winger Noni Mudueke from PSV for £30m, again with only £20m paid up front. In the few games he’s played, he’s impressed with his skill, pace, and work ethic, showing the talent, mentality and commitment Chelsea fans love and demand. 

Then there’s the young talents of Andrey Santos, 19, and Kendry Paez, only 16, both of whom have shone for their respective national sides at U20 level and had call ups to their respective men's national team squad since signing for Chelsea.

Even if they never play for us - and I hope and suspect both will - we’d likely make a massive profit on them.

Now, we have young forward Nicolas Jackson of Villarreal, with whom we have now agreed terms with ahead of a potential move. Not a name known to many of us, but the data on him is unarguably impressive. His release clause is only £29.9m. 

All of these players were spotted by our much criticised recruitment team. I’ll be honest, I’ve not seen one dud in any of the targets we’ve had since they began work in late December 2022, and as we’ve already seen, two of their targets we signed cheaply in January - Noni Mudueke and Benoit Badiashille - have proved to be shrewd acquisitions. 

The main criticism I and others have with certain members of the recruitment team is their ability to negotiate contracts and close big deals. 

Spotting the talent itself is a totally different skill set - and our team have proven track records at doing that.

Our lead negotiator had rarely negotiated deals in his previous job. He’s essentially learning on the job. The strengths of all four of our team is to spot top talent before it becomes too expensive. And to be fair, they’ve demonstrated this on more than one occasion.

I’ve written elsewhere why we need a proper CEO of football, and who that should be. The point I’m trying to make is, it's highly likely our scouts already have a shortlist of midfield targets of specific profiles we are looking for. There were no panic buys in January (loan deals by definition don’t count as panic ‘buys’), and there will unlikely to be any now. Not to mention we now have Mauricio Pochettino involved in the process, a manager who is excellent at finding the best in what he already has and developing young talent with potential. 

The reality Chelsea fans need to get used to is that although we’ll still make the occasional massive signing - Enzo Fernandez proves the new ownership can spot a successful club record transfer better than we’ve done in years - most of our squad building will be “smart” signings. 

If they are all of the quality of Benoit Badiashille, for example, then it means we can build a competitive and potentially trophy winning team without having to go and spend record fees all the time. In the process, we can become a sustainable club on and off the pitch.

How? Successful teams increase income in terms of both prize money and commercial revenue through sponsorships and commercial partnerships, meaning the club can pay for itself, rather than be dependent on individuals or debt. 

To me, a long time fan who has seen Chelsea go close to administration way too many times, success in a sustainable way is the right thing for the club in the long-term. It’s also, for me, way more rewarding to build major success sustainably on a strong foundation, than just buy a team of superstars..which to be honest, hasn’t even worked for us in the league for nearly a decade.

The only question is, are a section of our fans ready for this, and do they have the patience for it? 

This remains to be seen.

The Score