Chelsea to adopt new transfer strategy akin to that of FSG at Liverpool after Todd Boehly takeover
According to (h/t football.london), speaking to Speaking on Sky Sports, football finance specialist Kieran Maguire said Chelsea are expected to take a different approach in the transfer market. Under the ownership of Todd Boehly’s group, the Blues could try to duplicate the transfer strategies introduced by Fenway Sports Group (FSG) at Liverpool following the Red’s recent success.
Chelsea announced on their official website recently that arrangements had been negotiated with a new ownership group led by Todd Boehly to take over the club after the former owner Roman Abramovich was sanctioned by the Uk government.
This announcement came as a huge relief to Chelsea’s management and the players, who would have been concerned about the club’s future. In the transfer market, Meguire expects the Boehly group will employ a new strategy. As the club prepares to part ways with Abramovich, his spending habits are also likely to fade.
“Roman Abramovich’s approach was ‘if I sign a player and it doesn’t work, then we just go and sign another player or we replace the manager.’ I think what we will see is a more data analytical, a more measured and more money-ball approach coming from the Boehly group”
We’d like to see a more data-driven and long-term approach to the club’s signings, rather than investing a lot of money and then regretting it afterwards.
Can Chelsea match Liverpool’s transfer market success?
Liverpool, who will play in the Champions League final later this month, has had excellent success in the transfer market, spending half a billion pounds less on players over the last nine years than Chelsea, Manchester United, and Manchester City.
Liverpool, according to Maguire, has been successful in investing less and acquiring young talents who can be developed into quality players and he believes Chelsea needs to do the same.
“They’ve seen what FSG have achieved at Liverpool. Liverpool have spent half a billion pounds less over the course of the last nine years investing in the player market compared to Chelsea, Manchester United and Manchester City and yet we’re sitting this morning with Liverpool on the brink of a potential quadruple.”
“So, I think we will see a more measured approach to spending money. Less big fees, more investment in younger players who perhaps Chelsea can look to move on at a later stage and there will be a strategic movement as far as the player recruitment and retention is concerned.”
We just saw the case of Romelu Lukaku, who was bought for £97.5million last summer and is now linked with a move away from the Bridge. This becomes even harder to swallow when we realise that the club let go of talented academy graduate, Tammy Abraham, to Jose Mourinho’s AS Roma in the same window.
In the last 15 years, we’ve had 11 managers, some of whom deserved a second chance to establish themselves and develop a long-term strategy for the club. Hopefully, the new owners are patient and calculated in the decisions and risks they take at Chelsea.
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We hope that the new owners will take note of how Liverpool have handled the transfer market and devise similar techniques so that the club can achieve a long-term goal. Rather than the previous owners’ practice of trying out different managers and players every season, using tools like data analytics to guide their decisions would be a welcome change.
More than that, the club would be wise to realise that patience is the name of the game. Spend wisely, give the players and managers some time to adjust and reach their potential, and have a big picture in mind. Short-term success is great but long-term stability to ensure that we remain one of the European giants, especially in this sport that gets even more competitive as the years go by, is more important.