So, a question: What the heck is going on at Chelsea?
Not, like, literally. Since the Todd Boehly-led consortium took over the club, everyone always knows what is going on at Chelsea. We know when Boehly is having coffee with Barcelona president Joan Laporta. We know what he thinks about the transfer market’s lack of trades; we know he thinks an All-Star Game might not be a bad idea; and we know, exactly, who he wants to sign. We know this because, you know, Benfica‘s manager, Roger Schmidt, is yelling at press conferences about how Chelsea are trying to sign his star midfielder, Enzo Fernandez.
As a rule of thumb, I’d say that about 95% of transfer rumors are nonsense: leaked by an agent or an unhappy sporting director, mis-aggregated and mis-translated across different languages, or simply made up by someone who paid to get a blue checkmark added to their Twitter account. However, it seems like the opposite is true at Stamford Bridge, with Boehly still running the show into his second transfer window as the “interim sporting director.” If anything right now, 95% of Chelsea’s transfer rumors are true.
If Chelsea are linked with a given player, Chelsea are probably trying to sign that player because Chelsea are seemingly attempting to sign every player. Since the summer, Boehly’s first transfer window with the club, Chelsea have now acquired 12 new players. Add in the guys who have returned from loan (Armando Broja and Conor Gallager), and it’s up to 14.
And to what end? Last season, Chelsea were, pretty clearly, one of the five or six best teams in the world. This year, with a full lineup (and subs!) of new players added to the mix, they’re not even one of the five or six best teams in their own league. Things have gone about as poorly as possible for Chelsea’s new owners, but there has to be some kind of plan… right?
Let’s look at all their signings, in ascending order of the transfer fee, and see if we can try to find one.
12. Denis Zakaria, 25, midfielder: €3 million loan from Juventus
Even last season, Chelsea’s biggest need was central midfield. In a tactical system that typically only required two, the trio of N’Golo Kante, Jorginho, and Mateo Kovacic worked out really nicely when everyone was available. Except Kante and Jorginho were already into their 30s and Kovacic has played more than 2,000 minutes in a domestic season just twice in his career. This signing is fine in a vacuum — taking a chance on a once-highly-touted player who’s struggled with injuries — but it ended up being Chelsea’s only midfield signing.
All of their old and/or injury-prone midfielders have struggled this season, and it’s seemingly led to Chelsea’s mad pursuit of Fernandez, who looked great at the World Cup, but who was also acquired by Benfica for €14 million less than six months ago. Boehly and Co. are reportedly willing to pay a nine-figure fee to acquire the 21-year-old.
11. Gabriel Slonina, 19, keeper: €9.09 million from Chicago Fire
We’ll lump Slonina in with David Datro Fofana, Andrey Santos, and Carney Chukwuemeka. The former is 20, while the latter two are 18 — and they were all signed for somewhere between €9 and €18 million. We don’t have to try to discern the strategy here; Boehly just said it.
“The challenge that Chelsea has right now, one of them, is that when you have 18, 19, 20-year-old superstars, you can loan them out to other clubs, but you put their development in someone else’s hands,” he said at the SALT Leadership Conference over the summer.
“Our goal is to make sure we can show pathways for our young superstars to get onto the Chelsea pitch while getting them real game time. To me, the way to do that is through another club somewhere — in a really competitive league in Europe. What we really need is a place to put our 18, 19, 20-year-olds to develop them, in Portugal, Belgium, or somewhere like that.”
This is different from Chelsea’s so-called “loan army”, which was developed under Roman Abramovich as a kind of book-balancing strategy to comply with UEFA’s financial regulations. Whatever you think of the fairness of the concept, owning a second team in another competitive league and using it to develop young talent gives you a massive advantage compared to all the other clubs that don’t do that. Of all of Boehly’s publicly-declared ideas, this is the best one.
10. Joao Felix, 23, attacker: €11 million loan from Atletico Madrid
(Editor’s Note: Felix is undergoing a medical with Chelsea as the two sides finish up the fine print on this loan.)
This signing, too, is fine in a vacuum. It’s a lot of money for a couple months, but money doesn’t seem to be anything more than a structural annoyance to the Boehly group at this point. Felix is an uber-talented player who might pop with more creative freedom away from Atletico manager Diego Simeone, and Chelsea are one of the few teams who can afford to make a short-term move like this. It’s just … to accomplish what?
The team has struggled with injuries to a number of key players this season:
With Christian Pulisic, Raheem Sterling, and Armando Broja all injured to start 2023, the team can probably use another body up top. However, nabbing Felix for a few months only makes sense if you think he puts you over the top of some kind of competitive threshold.
Per FiveThirtyEight, Chelsea have a 9% chance of finishing top four and a 4% chance of winning the Champions League. They’ve already been eliminated from both domestic cups.
9. David Datro Fofana, 20, attacker: €12 million from Molde
8. Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, 33, attacker: €12 million from Barcelona
This was pretty clearly a Thomas Tuchel signing. The massive Romelu Lukaku deal was a massive failure, and with the Belgian on loan back to Inter Milan, the club needed another center forward… despite frequently playing their best soccer without a recognized center forward).
Boehly, reportedly, was interested in bringing in Cristiano Ronaldo — perhaps the biggest warning sign that the club’s new owner had no clue what he was doing. Tuchel supposedly pushed back and was reunited with his former Dortmund charge. Of course, Tuchel was then fired in early September and replaced by Graham Potter.
Needless to say, a club with a coherent plan doesn’t sign players for a manager it’s willing to fire just a couple months later. A club with a coherent plan also doesn’t fire its manager just a few games into the season.
7. Andrey Santos, 18, midfielder: €12.5 million from Vasco da Gama
6. Carney Chukwuemeka, 18, midfielder: €18 million from Aston Villa
5. Kalidou Koulibaly, 31, defender: €38 million from Napoli
On the defensive end, Chelsea lost Antonio Rudiger and Andreas Christensen over the summer. Rudiger was arguably a best-XI player across all of Europe last year, while Christensen spent long stretches as a starter, but had faded away from reliability over the course of last season. Both were signed for modest fees in their early-to-mid-20s and played significant roles for a team that won the Champions League. At the other end of the spectrum, Thiago Silva anchored the team after being signed as a free agent at the age of 36.
Rather than following either of those paths, Chelsea made Koulibaly the second-most expensive 30-plus center back in the history of the sport. Although the Senegal captain was one of the best defenders in the world while at Napoli, he hadn’t played 3,000 minutes in a season since the 2018-19 campaign. At 31, he was at an age when most players had already begun to decline.
Napoli have gotten even better without Koulibaly, while the opposite has happened for Chelsea. Previously one of the best defensive teams in the world, the Blues have allowed just the ninth-fewest expected goals in the Premier League this season.
4. Benoit Badiashile, 21, defender: €38 million from Monaco
When you’re scouting center backs, there’s all kinds of uncertainty. It’s probably the hardest position for which to isolate individual performance and since no two teams or systems are the same, any center-back signing requires a massive amount of projection. However, Badiashile checks the two boxes that seem to be most predictive of future success at this position: 1. He’s been consistently starting for a team in the Big Five leagues since he was 17, and 2. he’s French.
Pretty much all of the names on this list fall into one of two buckets: low-cost moves with little risk, but unlikely payoffs or expensive moves with a ton of risk. Given his age and his pedigree, Badiashile is the only one that doesn’t fit either profile. He’s young, he might contribute right away, he might develop into a star, and if he doesn’t, it’s not the end of the world. This type of signing should be the rule — not the exception.
3. Raheem Sterling, 27, attacker: €56.2 million from Manchester City
When Chelsea signed Sterling over the summer, here’s a bit of what I wrote:
What makes Sterling a harder player to appreciate is also what makes him such a valuable player to people who are in the business of winning games: he doesn’t need the ball. On top of that, his ability off the ball should create space for everyone else. While Chelsea had a hard time fitting striker Romelu Lukaku into their already-established mode of play, that shouldn’t be an issue with Sterling. His skills today mean that he can fit with just about anyone. Every top team needs an attacking outlet and a guy who can navigate the penalty area.
That said, the move wasn’t without risk. Given his age, Sterling wasn’t likely to improve after joining from City, and before turning 28 in December, he’d played the most minutes of any Premier League player through age 27 in the Stats Perform database (which goes back to 2009). At best, then, Chelsea were going to get the same player that Manchester City had. At worst, the minutes would quickly catch up to Sterling, and he wouldn’t even be a viable starter.
Instead, he’s landed somewhere in the middle. Just about all of Sterling’s numbers are down this season, but he’s still been Chelsea’s most effective attacker this season: 0.51 non-penalty expected goals plus assists per 90 minutes, while no one else is above 0.38. He injured his hamstring against Manchester City last week and will likely be out for a couple weeks.
2. Marc Cucurella, 24, defender: €65.3 million from Brighton
Over the summer, Chelsea made Cucurella the most expensive left-back in the history of the sport — just a year after Brighton acquired him from Getafe for €18 million. While full-backs have increasingly become invaluable attacking outlets for the world’s best teams — players whose physical range frees up attackers and midfielders to do damage closer to the opposition goal — Cucurella registered just one assist for Brighton last season (albeit on 3.2 expected assists).
He was never really a pure full-back — more of a tweener who functions best as a more attacking third center back in a back three or a more defensive fullback in a back four. While those players still have value for a team that plays like Chelsea did and do, it’s probably the least valuable role on the field. That’s a role player, not a superstar.
Plus, even if you think the value of Cucurella’s performance for Brighton last season matched his transfer fee, it was still only one season! The rest of his career was spent playing in bizarre, one-of-a-kind hyper-frantic systems at Eibar and Getafe in Spain. While there was plenty of uncertainty over how effective or valuable would be after one solid season in the Premier League, Chelsea treated him like a can’t-miss star.
Now, Cucurrella has played a bunch of minutes for Chelsea this season, but all of his passing numbers — expected assists, progressive passes, passes into the penalty area — are down significantly. More importantly — and much like with Koulibaly — his new team is worse with him, and his old team is better without him.
1. Wesley Fofana, 21, defender: €80.4 million from Leicester City
Take the “uncertainty about center backs” section of this piece, mix it with the “risks of one good season” bit from the Cucurella part, throw in a dash of “player who’s barely played over the past 18 months because he broke his leg,” and what do you get?
When Boehly is leading the way: the fourth-most expensive defender and 25th-most expensive player ever. Listen, Wesley Fofana might end up being a world-class defender, but he’s started 15 professional soccer league games in a season just one time! And that was the strange, empty-stadium 2020-21 season that was unlike anything before or after it.
Wouldn’t you want to see him play a full season after the injury and in front of fans before trying to acquire him at all, let alone come close to breaking a transfer-record to do it? Fofana has played just two Premier League games for Chelsea this season; he’s been injured since October.
So, what unites all of these moves? To me, there’s one word: overconfidence. Overconfidence that you can upend the way teams typically develop players, overconfidence in your ability to make small bets with massive payoffs, overconfidence the odds don’t apply to you, and overconfidence that you can identify the right players better than anyone else.
Almost everyone is bad at the transfer market because soccer is really hard to understand in any tangible way. You can’t break the game down to its component parts, it’s impossible to totally decontextualize a player’s performance, and so you also can’t confidently value players in the way you might in baseball.
According to some analyses, the average club-record transfer across Europe only plays about half of the available minutes during his time with the club. The top end of the market is littered with failures. And transfer market spend has almost no correlation with team success. Part of this is because most teams still don’t even try to come up with an objective criteria for decision-making, and part of it is because, historically, a lot of transfers have been more favor-based and only vaguely connected with “trying to win more soccer games”.
But the rest of it is because the game remains so mysterious, complex and ever-changing. The smartest people in the sport are the ones most keenly aware of everything they don’t know. The people running the show at Chelsea seem to think they know it all.
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