Why "Pure Profit" does not mean selling James, Colwill or Palmer

The owners want to make money...success brings in the biggest profit

Many fans, including myself, are angry about the treatment of Conor Gallagher and Trevoh Chalobah by the sporting directors recently. It has appeared from the outside - and lets be clear we don’t know all the information, we only know what’s public - that they are aggressively being forced out of the club, without any respect shown for their history at Chelsea and contribution to the club. Not to mention we all can see their playing performances don’t remotely merit being sold. 

I respect that the club may want to sell them, that’s their prerogative. All I’ve wanted was that the club show them basic decency and respect for their service to Chelsea. It doesn’t on the surface appear this is the case. If it is, the club should have been more open about it. We’re seeing briefings and counter briefings, and its hard to discern the truth.

Admittedly, the language used in the PR stream from the club and briefings on this matter have been counter productive, and I know several fans who feel insulted by them. Whatever their purpose, the appearance they give is the club trying to avoid any culpability for the situation. If that’s not their purpose, then the club need to do better in how they communicate, if it is, that needs to stop.

However, I’ve been seeing recently some fans taking the criticism of the owners and directors further recently, and writing publicly about how this ownership only care about money, and will sell the likes of Reece James, Levi Colwill and Cole Palmer as soon as they get decent offers for them. Arguing the owners simply care about immediate profit, not success on the pitch. 

With respect, this is an emotional, circumstantial argument. I don’t agree with it, its not true to my knowledge, and above all, it makes no logical or business sense. 

Just for a moment put yourself in Behdad Egbahli’s shoes. So you want to maximise profits, meet PSR rules and above all, you want to maximise the value of your asset (Chelsea). You want to ensure if you ever sell the club, you sell for substantially more than you paid for it. 

So what’s the best way to do that? Sell good players for profit every year and make the team worse? If that happens the club miss out on £70m a year from Champions League (CL) money, and miss out on huge commercial deals from major companies which can make massive profit for the club - much more profit than selling players. Not only that, but the value of Chelsea FC goes down and you’d end up selling the club at a personal loss.

Why would any self respecting businessman do that? It loses them money. Its poor business. There’s no chance businessmen of the stature of Behdad Eghbali and Todd Boehly would do this.

Selling three of your best assets, Levi, Reece and Cole, actually loses you money because you end up not making CL and not getting the big commercial deals. No businessman in the world does that. 

So why sell Trev and Conor? From a football perspective, there’s no argument. Both of them deserve to stay at the club and be part of the squad.

But Chelsea have not made the Champions League two years in a row. That’s potentially £140m over two years we have to make up in terms of PSR. And fans still demand we spend big, so somehow that combined shortfall needs to be made up, until we make top 4 again and get the CL money and bigger commercial deals which go with it. 

Conor is likely to be a squad or rotational player this season - which he might be happy with for a year, as he’s willing to fight for his place (another reason we should keep him). We have a LOT of quality midfielders, including some on loan, so the club have looked at it and see him as an asset they can sell.  They’re entitled to that view, and there’s a solid argument for it.

The Trev one is the one I don’t get. He fits how we want to play, and can play several positions well. You can sell other players and make the same amount of money back. But for whatever reason he’s not perceived as elite level (and no big clubs are coming for him, which again, I don’t understand) so he’s deemed a saleable asset. 

From a purely business perspective they are both seen as not first team regulars, so are for sale at the right price. 

So why wouldn’t you sell Reece, Levi or Cole? 

In short, because all are seen as key players for the long term, and selling them ultimately LOSES money for the club (and owners).

Reece is world class, he’s our captain, and he’s rated very highly within and outside the club. If he has a season where he’s fully fit, chances are he gets a new deal in the summer. Real Madrid have looked at him, they want to keep their best players, and he is one. 

Levi Colwill is still only 22 and has huge potential. I know for a fact last summer there were huge clubs sniffing around ready to offer gigantic money for him. Then, as now, we have said he’s not for sale at any price. I’m pretty confident we’ve rejected big offers for him. In fact we gave him a 7 year deal, not the 3 year one offered to Conor. We’ve kept him because we believe he has world class potential, and don’t want to lose our best players. 

Cole Palmer meanwhile, is on a long contract, about to get a pay rise, and seen, as Todd Boehly alluded to recently, as a franchise player we can build the team around. I doubt we’d sell him for any money. 

Those three players make more money for Chelsea - and for the owners - by staying here than leaving, in prize money, CL money, commercial deals etc. So even if the owners do only care about money, then the best way to make it is by keeping those players.

It does baffle me how many people seem to think you make more profit from selling players than from getting CL football and winning trophies, and the big commercial deals which come as a result. It’s simply not true. The CL money plus commercial deals you can get with it, can make you at least £120-150m a year or more if you do it right. Selling players makes you a small fraction of this.

I’d also remind people, the previous ownership sold way more academy players and treated many just as bad as the current ones. And then we had Roman bankrolling us so didn’t even need to sell for ‘pure profit’. 

We loaned Loftus-Cheek and signed Drinkwater. We sold Ryan Bertrand and signed Emerson Palmieri. We sold Jermaine Boga and signed Ross Barkley. We also sold Nathan Ake, who now starts for Man City, and Nathaniel Chalobah, signing Bakayoko instead of promoting the latter. We sold Tammy Abraham and signed Romelu Lukaku to replace him, a disaster we’re still recovering from.

We sold Marc Guehi, for whom Crystal Palace are now demanding £70m according to reports and Tino Livramento, who some sources reported was forced to train with the U15s by Marina Granovskaia, and is now starting for Newcastle.

That’s 7 players we sold under Roman’s ownership, and that doesn’t include Gael Kakuta, Josh McEachran and several others. Many of them were replaced by inferior players, who ended up being sold themselves. 

Oh and the final coup de grace, Reece James’ dad Nigel confirmed in a podcast last year that in the summer we had a transfer ban, Chelsea accepted a bid for Reece from Crystal Palace. Frank Lampard allegedly stepped in to stop this sale, and thank god he did. 

So lets not act like selling Cobham grads for “pure profit” is a new thing, because its not. Its been going on for years, and not once then did the fans question the ambition of the owner. Roman delivered on his ambition and we won 19 trophies under his ownership, one of the greatest periods in our history, for which I know all of us are grateful. Selling these players didn’t stop us winning major trophies - it simply cost us money we shouldn’t have had to spend.

The current owners meanwhile have invested over £1 billion in the squad, and we’ve actually signed some quality players. Cole Palmer, Malo Gusto, Moises Caicedo, Nicolas Jackson, Enzo Fernandez, Romeo Lavia, Christopher Nkunku for example. They're currently trying to sign Victor Osimhen. How anyone can say they aren’t ambitious is baffling to me (and I’ve been a fan for 37 years). 

I know some people will make their usual accusations that I’m somehow blindly defending the owners or in their pocket, which is nonsense.

I think I’ve made it pretty clear in articles on this site and on Twitter, how I think they’ve screwed up royally in their handling of the Conor and Trev situations. Not to mention how other departures have been handled, is poor and disrespectful. The club have overpaid for a few of our bigger signings, and that’s pretty clear, and now have to sell players to cover that.

The owners and sporting directors have lost the trust of a lot of fans and fans are justified in feeling that way. They’ve not signed enough experienced players, and outside the fans forum and fans groups, their communication directly with the wider fanbase hasn’t been good enough. 

Bottom line, the owners have a LOT of making up to do, and they know it. People have good reason to question their motives and ambition.

But if we’re going to criticise, let's make sure our arguments are logical and rock solid, with context, because otherwise they can be easily dismissed. The argument they’ll sell any old player for profit is easily dismissed, largely because it makes no logical or business sense. 

I still believe owners ARE ambitious and want to win things with Chelsea, and play regular Champions League football. Ultimately, that’s how the club make the biggest profits, so even if their motives are money led, the most money lies in CL football and trophies.

The pressure IS on the owners and directors for the team to deliver this season, fans have tried to be patient, but any more than two years outside the top 4 is unacceptable for Chelsea, and they know it. This season they have to deliver.

But one thing they won’t do, is sell world class or potential world class players and damage the first team, because all that does is lose them money.

The Score