Todd Boehly offered us some tantalising clues as to his vision for the future of Chelsea in a talk at the SALT Conference in New York this week.
The billionaire American businessman and investor led the consortium that completed a £4.25billion takeover of the Premier League club at the end of May.
Since then, Chelsea have spent over £270million on new players in the summer transfer window and sacked manager Thomas Tuchel amid a shaky opening to the season.
Chelsea owner Todd Boehly sat down at the SALT conference in New York and partially outlined his blueprint for taking the club forward on and off the pitch
Boehly and fellow co-owner Behdad Eghbali (left) welcome new manager Graham Potter
Boehly moved quickly to appoint Brighton manager Graham Potter on a five-year contract at the end of last week.
On Tuesday of this week, Boehly sat down to discuss his blueprint for taking the club forward. Here’s what we learned.
A RELEGATION PLAY-OFF IN THE PREMIER LEAGUE
What he said: ‘The Premier League is the top of the pyramid and every year you get three clubs that get relegated and three clubs that get promoted.
‘So there is a giant distinction in that you always have to have a little bit of an eye on what is going on at the bottom of the table. Those relegation games are some of the highest broadcast games.
‘Ultimately, I hope that the Premier League takes a little bit of a lesson from American sports and asks ‘why don’t we do a tournament?’ The bottom four teams.’
The idea: Boehly appears to be suggesting that instead of the current three-up, three-down system of relegation and promotion between the Premier League and the Championship, the bottom four top-flight sides should enter an end-of-season tournament to determine who survives.
Given Boehly has stakes in the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team and the LA Lakers basketball franchise, he will be well aware the concept of relegation is an alien one in US sports.
Chelsea are unlikely to ever be involved but Boehly wants to see a relegation play-off
But he seems to want to apply the post-season play-off format that is used in the NBA, MLB and NFL to determine the champions to the bottom end of the Premier League.
He didn’t elaborate on precisely how it would work and whether one of the teams down the bottom of the Premier League would end up playing a high-ranking Championship team, as happens in Germany and France.
While struggling sides would no doubt welcome a last chance to save…