The vision was Real Madrid. So lets stop acting like Borussia Dortmund!

The original plan is perfectly good. The execution has been poor.

Real Madrid are the most successful football club in the world. The biggest brand, the team with the most Champions League titles. They are the club every player on earth would probably leave their current club to join.

Their recent success though, has been different. Beginning about 6-7 years ago, they have gone hard in recruiting the best young talent in the world. Vincius Jr, Rodrygo, Edouardo Camavinga, Aurelien Tchouameni (remember him?), and others, to the point now they’re signing the big young talents like Jude Bellingham. Their scouting now focusses mainly on young talent from around the globe. These have been bought and integrated into the club and their traditions, history and mentality of winning by experienced elite players who’ve been at Madrid a while or are proven winners at elite level. Luka Modric, Karim Benzema, Thiabout Courtois, Casemiro our very own Antonio Rudiger. And its resulted a long period of sustained success, both in the Champions League and domestically, and seen club revenues top €1 billion for the 23/24 season.

Beleive it or not, this, I believe, was not far off Todd Boehly’s original vision for Chelsea, and its one I still believe in. The problem is the execution. We’re ignoring the experienced parts, and thats making us more Borussia Dortmund than Real Madrid.

Dortmund are one of my favourite clubs in the world, and their model is to sign the best young talents relatively cheap, use them for a few years, and sell for big profits. This works for them.

But we’re Chelsea. And we’re not meant to be run like Dortmund.

I’ve been really critical of the sporting directors, and co-owner Behdad Eghbali recently, and to me that criticism is absolutely deserved. I love Chelsea FC, and I don’t like how its being run in many ways. Of course there’s many things we don’t know as fans, but what they need to understand is the perception is fundamental, regardless of the truth - and to most fans I know its pretty negative right now. Trust in them has been almost completely eroded, and its mainly happened in the last 6 weeks or so for many, though for others, its been far longer.

I’ve discussed the issues a lot elsewhere. The summer transfer deals which seem very questionable and could be moved on after just 6 months, ignorance of good experience and top players in key positions not addressed in 4, nearly 5 windows, as well as treatment of some players who’ve served the club well.

Whatever the truth, (and I have my own views on that), the perception - and perception is what matters - of Behdad Eghbali, Clearlake and the Sporting Directors especially is almost wholly negative. Its one of incompetence, and inability to run a big football club, and of prioritising profit over on field success - and there’s absolutely some deserved criticism which I and others have made on this site, and elsewhere.

One thing I don't want to get confused about though, is that as I said above, I still believe in the essence of the long term project.

The vision, as I’ve said before, which was originally laid out by Todd Boehly, the original face of the consortium which owns the club, and which Behdad spoke of at a conference over two years ago, is of building a squad with the best young talent in the world and seeing that squad develop long term into a top class team which dominates domestic and European football.

Then, the best young talent continues to be brought in and develop as squad players or on loan at the multi club network and other top talent coming through Cobham.

That’s what I bought into at the start, I still believe that is a good plan in theory.

My criticism is not of the plan itself, not of the vision of Todd Boehly and then Clearlake. I love the plan, I believe in it.

It's in the execution of it, who is executing it, and how its being executed.

Having spent so much money (about £1.3 billion) in over two years in charge and still needing to sell players we’ve signed, still have so many gaps in the squad, rumours about even some talent players we’ve signed being sold for profit, and young talent rejecting our project. Then there’s Cobham players being moved to the “bomb squad”, treated disrepectfully and had squad numbers taken away, and refusing to sign proven, established talent in 3-4 key positions? That’s poor execution to me. There’s clearly been a level of incompetence with the running of this club, to me that’s not in dispute and its wholly fair argument.

Todd Boehly, who was the instigator of the consortium which bought the club, is rumoured to believe we need 3-4 established, more proven/experienced players in key position - along side the young talent. Something that myself, Si and many other fans have been literally begging for, for about 18 months now.

The actual model I think Todd Boehly and Clearlake had was not Brighton. They admired Brighton’s scouting network, football structure and recruitment, and he’d be right. That’s still true. Having a scouting and recruitment model like theirs is a good thing. But the model and vision for Chelsea overall, for Todd especially, was Real Madrid.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with buying the best young talent and building a world class scouting network to continue that process. This is basically what Real Madrid do currently and have done for 6 years or so. There’s also nothing inherently wrong with recruiting a lot of young talent, keeping the best, and selling on the rest for profit to invest in other players.

But what Real Madrid do, as I outlined above - and this is what I believe Todd Boehly’s original vision was - is have a few proven, experienced, elite players, leaders, winners, with club DNA, in the squad to integrate all the talented young players and give them the experience of winning, understanding the club, the expectations, and what its like to win, so they can in turn pass this on to the next generation, and so on.

This is how to build sustainable success, all the best young talent in the world around proven elite talent, winners, and leaders in key positions in the squad and the team. Then you start winning, you keep winning and the young talent keeps coming in, and you bring in the occasional superstar to take the team up a level. It also builds a sense of legacy, of family, and history to the club. And its well known how Todd Boehly respects, understand and values the concept of legacy within sport.

Chelsea already have a legacy, but that legacy needs to be built up on and sustained, and continued. Right now, on the surface, its not.

Chelsea can and should be be a legacy club. Winning the big titles regularly, with players coming through the club, winning it all and some even retiring here, with new young talent and the occasional superstar coming into to continue the tradition of winning. Acting with class towards academy products, current and former players and club legends.

I will note, the latter has been done very well. The Chelsea Foundation, including Daniel Finklestein and Barbara Charone, has especially done a great job with this, especially the Gianluca Vialli tribute game for cancer awareness last year which I attended. The club have also been with working with fan groups to get more banners of legendary players into the stadium, and doing more work with the Paul Cannoville foundation and naming a part of the stadium in his honour. I’ll always give credit where its due, and they deserve credit in this respect.

But its also about what happens on the pitch and how the club treats current players, and that area is still lacking. Real Madrid, on the pitch, have done this perfectly, and not only are they winning everything regularly, their revenue is now over €1 billion per year. They make huge profits, huge revenues and that becomes sustainable.

If Behdad and Clearlake want profits, as I’m sure they do, the best way to get the biggest profits is winning the big trophies and playing Champions League and even Club World Cups on a regular basis.

Bottom line, the biggest profits come from the biggest on field success. Behdad Ehgbali of Clearlake has said that, as well as Todd Boehly, so they know this.

I think their model is this Real Madrid model, but the execution, to me, has been just off. The execution is more like Dortmund than Real.

We’ve not signed the proven players and experience in key positions, we’ve focussed entirely on the young talent and whilst we’ve signed some gems, it's clear now we lack some experience and proven elite talent, and leaders.

It's like taking the likes of Casemiro, Rudiger, Courtois, Modric, and Benzema out of recent Madrid squads and leaving them with just the young talent they’ve signed, it doesn’t work - especially not in the competitive Premier League.

Right now, we’re more like Dortmund. Tons of young talent, no proven winners with experience and they keep messing up chances to win trophies. Dortmund got to the CL final last year, and it was telling they had Mats Hummels, a proven, elite CB, in their squad, and even Jadon Sancho, who now has more experience, on loan. And even then they lost the final to a more balanced Real Madrid side.

Thiago Silva was a good example of experience and leadership. The experienced players don’t even need to be old players, they can be in their mid twenties, in their prime, but with leadership, winning mentality and proven established ability. This is why I wanted Marc Guehi, because he has all these qualities.

Having these type of players means the pressure is off the young talent to deliver and allows them to develop in a healthy way, in a high performance environment. Its easier for young talent to grow and thrive with experience around them.

The annoying thing is there’s so much potential there. Talent like Cole Palmer, Enzo Fernandez, Moises Caicedo, Romeo Lavia, Jadon Sancho, Tyrique George, Pedro Neto, Nicolas Jackson, Marc Cucurella, Reece James, Malo Gusto, Levi Colwill, Wesley Fofana, Josh Acheampong and the likes of Andrey Santos, Lesely Ugochukwu, Mike Penders, Andre Anselmino, Estevao Willian and Kendry Paez all still to come. And I do give the Sporting Directors credit for bringing those players to the club.

That’s 20 players, who if they reach their prime together could be part of an elite squad over several years. But we were reliably told multiple the squad would be complete last summer (which I always thought was a little naive or over optimist), and to judge them on that. So fans are doingb so. Also, 6 of those players I listed above aren’t with the club yet, and at time of writing, 28th Jan 2025, there’s still some key positions not filled. A top GK, a proven experienced elite CB, potentially a true 6, another winger, and a top class true 9.

Both myself, and I think many fans, are aware it's not always easy or simple to get the players you want when you want them, and sometimes there are financial / PSR issues and yes, it's important to be compliant. However the frustration is that big money has been spent on players who are turning out not to be good enough and are getting quickly moved on, which could have been spent better on those key areas, and as we’ve seen with Man City this month, top clubs just get these things done.

An impression has been conveyed to fans that we’re just buying players solely to make a profit. I’ll say this though, I do think its important to ensure the club is financially sustainable even without CL football, and I want to believe that's one reason they’re selling squad players or players who don’t make it for profit, essentially flipping players. They want a structure that generates profit even without CL football, which as a fan who has seen us almost go bankrupt several times, I appreciate.

But the way its being done, and what is conveyed to fans, whether true or not, is that Behdad and the SD’s who work for him, actually only care about profit. Results seem irrelevant to them, trophies don’t matter, all that matters is profit.

Its conveyed consistently to fans that they don’t care about winning, or about being consistently successful at a high level, and then people start to believe that literally any player in the squad has a price.

I don’t share this view, but many do.

In reality, not every player should have a price. Cole Palmer should not be for sale for literally any price, that’s how serious, big clubs operate. They keep their best players and they also give them reasons to stay at the club in terms of success and ambition. They ensure fans know they won’t be sold for any price. They don't give the impression every signing is just signed to ultimately generate profit from a sale.

I don’t share the cynical view that the owners and directors have no ambition and just see every player as a potential sale. I just will not believe that, purely as the biggest profits come from winning consistently. Making a billion in revenue dwarfs into insignificance any kind of profit they can make by player trading, and being billionaire businessmen, I’m pretty sure they know that. So why would they sabotage their chance to make gigantic revenues? They just wouldn’t.

Even if their obsession is money, they make way more profit for them and their investors if we’re winning regularly and playing and winning CL trophies, than they do with us being 6th every year.

My view is, being new to football, and new to elite level football, Behdad and Clearlake don’t know how to construct a winning squad and how elite football clubs should be run on the sporting side. That’s not even an insult, they are new to football so its totally normal they wouldn’t. That’s why I have maintained, a proven, elite sporting director with a track record, would have been the best appointment. So then Behdad and co could learn from the best. Behdad also needs to learn to trust experts and not be so hands on. He’s a hugely successful businessman but he’s got no track record in sports ownership before Chelsea - unlike Todd Boehly, who has multiple successes in sport ownership, and knows to trust experts.

Again, what's conveyed to fans - and remember, perception is everything, regardless of the truth - is that the sporting directors and Behdad consider themselves to know better than anyone else, both within football and in the fanbase. There also appears to be no acknowledgment of mistakes or contrition, or accountability, when the overall results are conveying they don’t and undermine any kind of authority or respect they might think they hold.

This needs to change.

One thing that is clear though, is they’re not afraid to look bad with the fans, not afraid to be unpopular. They must have known the uproar - rightly - from bringing back Trevoh Chalobah, and from selling or loaning players they signed only 6 months ago, but they seem to be doing it anyway. That can be a good quality, but the fear is it comes not from good character but from simply not recognising they don’t know it all, not admitting they messed up, not seeing anything bad about these outcomes, when in fact, its pretty embarrassing to be moving potentially 3 players who cost a total of £88m on after 6 months, and that we are shows there’s been something wrong in the squad building and recruitment. There should be accountability and contrition for that.

This is why I and others want some change at the top on the sporting side, not because we don’t believe in the vision that Todd and others sold us about building a side of elite young talent, but because of the way it's being executed.

I recognise some have lost faith in the project completely, and they have every right to given what's been happening, people are entitled to their views, and given the frustrations I don’t blame people for becoming cynical. People are frustrated and angry and want answers and accountability, and there seem to be none forthcoming.

I personally still believe in the vision Todd Boehly set out. It was Todd’s leadership of the consortium which sold me the vision, it was him and his track record of elite success, his passion, his understanding of sport and fans, which I bought into. I get what his vision was, it was that vision of a Real Madrid in London, with all the best young talent in the world, aligned with some proven top players and winners, maybe the occasional superstar, consistently winning the PL and CL, dominating at home and in Europe, in a sustainable way, and making massive profits along the way. That’s the original plan and I believe and have faith in that plan.

I just don’t like the way its being executed, with Todd having less influence, Behdad Eghbali overseeing things very hands on, and the sporting directors executing the vision in a way which doesn’t work, with a focus almost entirely on young talent, several failed signings and poor decisions, and without the elite expertise from running a big, successful club.

This can be rectified, but, many fans are fast losing faith it ever will be - and whether their concerns are right or not, that's the impression which has been given.

Perception is everything, and the perception and results need to change, fast. Because right now, it's not good enough, and it's not working. We’re not Borussia Dortmund, we’re Chelsea Football Club. Lets start acting like it.

The Score