# Chelsea fans grapple with the art of omission by Boehly’s trainee regime

Think it is easy spending £1bn with no silverware in return? Leave it out! Letting down supporters is harder than it looks

## Introduction

“T the one thing I’ve learned about the British press is they exaggerate a lot and leave stuff out.” The words of Todd Boehly there, the jaw-droppingly handsome  chair whose name was being sung so passionately by fans outside Stamford Bridge last week. “We want Boehly ! We want Boehly !” they sang in their thousands, alongside a sea of banners bearing the words “BOEHLY ” and “CLEARLAKE & BLUECO ”.

Clearly Chelsea fans cannot get enough of their hybrid-leadership apparat, and frankly who can blame them when their leaders are in this vein of form? Perhaps, as a functional human with a life, you missed Boehly’s appearance at the Financial Times Business of Football Summit on Thursday, where he treated the audience to a little of the privileged wisdom he has accumulated during his 33 months in the game.

“Three years isn’t a lot of time,” he said, although clearly more than enough for the  discarded in that period. “If you look at contracts in football, a seven-year contract is really a five-year contract,” he observed with a flash of insight that probably would feel startling to anyone who hadn’t been following football before 2022. Elsewhere, he explained away Chelsea’s lack of options up front with the truism that “you can’t get a striker from the grocery store”. Say what you like about the London School of Economics, Citibank and Credit Suisse: they do not breed fools.

For all this, Chelsea’s fans – at least those who turned out last Tuesday before the  – remain bafflingly lacking in gratitude towards a regime that has bestowed them zero trophies, no Champions League qualification, , more than , , and the first ticket price rises in 13 years. Guys: do you not realise Todd and Behdad Eghbali have been going on a learning journey here? Do you not realise how hard it is to spend £1bn in an era of profit and sustainability rules?

And obviously it is worth saying this disgruntlement is in part tied to performances on the pitch, a rotten post-Christmas run that has put Enzo Maresca’s side out of the title race and left them wondering what purpose, exactly, this juddering investment vehicle is meant to serve. Win the Conference League, sign well in the summer, assemble an early tilt at the 2025-26 title, and inevitably the protests will subside.

## Chelsea protest sentiment

“Three years isn’t a lot of time,” he said, although clearly more than enough for the  discarded in that period. “If you look at contracts in football, a seven-year contract is really a five-year contract,” he observed with a flash of insight that probably would feel startling to anyone who hadn’t been following football before 2022. Elsewhere, he explained away Chelsea’s lack of options up front with the truism that “you can’t get a striker from the grocery store”. Say what you like about the London School of Economics, Citibank and Credit Suisse: they do not breed fools.

For all this, Chelsea’s fans – at least those who turned out last Tuesday before the  – remain bafflingly lacking in gratitude towards a regime that has bestowed them zero trophies, no Champions League qualification, , more than , , and the first ticket price rises in 13 years. Guys: do you not realise Todd and Behdad Eghbali have been going on a learning journey here? Do you not realise how hard it is to spend £1bn in an era of profit and sustainability rules?

And obviously it is worth saying this disgruntlement is in part tied to performances on the pitch, a rotten post-Christmas run that has put Enzo Maresca’s side out of the title race and left them wondering what purpose, exactly, this juddering investment vehicle is meant to serve. Win the Conference League, sign well in the summer, assemble an early tilt at the 2025-26 title, and inevitably the protests will subside.

## Failure to reform

Of course the Chelsea protesters relinquished a lot of goodwill among rival fans when they started singing for the return of Roman Abramovich. But in wild and wayward times the silent strongman – be it the oligarch or the sovereign wealth fund – will always carry a powerful nostalgic appeal, an invocation of simpler, more patriarchal times. It is up to the rest of football to provide a more compelling vision of ownership, one in which everyone has a stake, in which fans have genuine ownership of their club, a say in decisions, a seat at the table.

Until this happens, fans will remain the last puppy at the trough: simply another lever to pull, simply another resource to be squeezed, an asset to be sweated for the enrichment of others. “You realise how important the fans are to the team,” Boehly said last week. Perhaps, on reflection, the British press are not the only ones with a talent for omission.
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