“To this day” – Manchester United icon shares thoughts on Chelsea’s lengthy player contracts

Neville comments on lengthy Chelsea player contracts

Chelsea as a football club has been going through a controversial couple of years. It all started with Roman Abramovich’s ownership coming into question after Russia’s involvement in the political issue with Ukraine and things have been turbulent since despite Todd Boehly’s purchase of the club from the incredibly successful tycoon.

The American investor has earned a significant share of criticism for the way he has run the club. Mainly the signings made by Boehly have not made utmost sense to the fanbase and media. To compound his misery, Chelsea have been on a downward spiral ever since Thomas Tuchel was uncharacteristically fired with no signs of recovery so far.

In the last two or three years, the board has failed to come up with a coherent transfer strategy which has seen them spend almost a bit cluelessly in the transfer market. As a result, their squad strength stands unreasonably high with over 40 players a part of the first team alone. Not just that, their lengthy contract offers have also come under the radar with Gary Neville offering his thoughts.

The former Manchester United right-back spoke the below on his podcast on Sky Sports’ YouTube channel (starting from 5:04):

“There’s some things that happen at Chelsea that are slightly obscure and bizarre the sort of long-term contracts that to this day I can’t no one can tell me why the owners here think that it’s the right strategy and why that everyone else in the game doesn’t do it you that’s the question I’m asking what do they know that everyone else in the game doesn’t know about the sort of if you like length of contracts because you can control a player’s contract on five or six years I don’t think you need to offer eight and nine I know there’s a financial engineering element to it as well”

Indeed, it is incredibly hard to provide a logical justification for the kind of contracts Chelsea has offered. It also seems to be a recurring theme with Cole Palmer being the latest man at Stamford Bridge to sign a contract that runs through to 2033.

The Blues are compromising severely on their bargaining power with such a model.

Players with unusually long deals have no financial incentives to perform as nearly a decade of their career is well looked after by the Premier League giants. As such, Chelsea are legally obliged to pay a player until his respective contract expires regardless of performance and that has caused several players to display very lethargic body language on the pitch.

In addition to that, it also makes it difficult for the west Londoners to get rid of underperformers with other clubs shying away from sitting down for negotiations as a result of lengthy contract validities. And normally, players also aren’t willing to leave because of having several years valid on their contracts – perhaps more so than a newer recruit would be ready to offer.

In hindsight, it is fair to say that Todd Boehly’s investment in Chelsea has so far been a failure. They were a Champions League winner just some months before his takeover and the entire unit looks like a mid-table club at this point in time with no coherence visible in any department at the Bridge.