Todd Boehly blinked at Chelsea

In his exclusive column for CaughtOffside, former Liverpool attacker Stan Collymore discusses some of football’s biggest talking points, including why Todd Boehly blinked at Chelsea, Mauricio Pochettino’s ‘unfinished business’ at Spurs, Nagelsmann links to Chelsea, why Brendan Rodgers won’t manage in the top four again, and much more.

Todd Boehly blinked at Chelsea when he should’ve held his nerve

I think what Chelsea needed to do and what they were desperate to do under Todd Boehly was to try and get a coach in to develop the best young players coming through – the Lukaku’s, Salah’s and De Bruyne’s of yesteryear – and buy in the best young players from around the world, which makes perfect sense. Basically Boehly blinked, and he blinked at a time when Chelsea should’ve held on. Chelsea were never going to get into the top four this season. Maybe Europe wasn’t out of the question, and the theory was Graham Potter was going to get to the end of the season, then he could get rid of about 15/20 bodies from an incredibly over bloated squad and have a full pre-season with the players he then had. 

With him being sacked now, all it’s created is another owner after Abramovich, that’s ‘boom and bust.’ Under Roman, Jose Mourinho had a free hit for about four or five years because no other club on the planet could spend what Chelsea spent. Now, Manchester City can, Newcastle can, the Qataris at Man United will. Liverpool may well get inward investment. There are clubs that are richer than Chelsea. The options and potential for success that Chelsea had, I would say is now almost zero because you’re saying in the next 10 years you’re expecting the other club owners to not put money into those clubs or get it spectacularly wrong, which they might for one season, but not all of the clubs are going to get it wrong every season. 

Boehly wanted to crowbar as many young players in the club as quickly as possible but that doesn’t mean they’ll go on to be a great team. If it’s Julian Nagelsmann or whoever that comes in, the pressure is automatically on. Look at Mikel Arteta; when the pressure was on him the most, the Arsenal board said ‘no he’s not going’. I’m not a massive fan of Mikel but he’s rammed my words back down my throat because he’s a hop, skip and a jump away from winning the title. That’s what Chelsea needed and Boehly’s got rid of the progressive coaching…