Clearlake Have Seemingly Ripped The Soul Out Of Chelsea & This Could Be Worse Than The Glazers

The story goes that Carlo Ancelotti would receive a text from the big boss upstairs Roman Abramovich who would text the Italian manager with a question mark, just “?”, every time Chelsea lost a game. Ancelotti in return would reply with an exclamation.

The Italian boss who just won another Champions League title with Real in 2023/24 was sacked just two hours after a 1–0 loss to Everton at Goodison Park towards the fading end of the 2010/11 season despite finishing second & having the third-highest win percentage in Premier League history.

Times have changed & Chelsea’s romance with their uber-cool mafioso owner Roman Abramovich came to an abrupt end. As a friend who’s also a co-host on our new podcast The Famous Banter FC said, “It’s time Chelsea fans get over the Roman Abramovich era, just like United fans should get over the Sir Alex Ferguson era” — he’s a top lad, with the only blemish being that he’s a Man United fan.

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But the takeover by Clearlake Capital owned by Todd Boehly promised much but delivered disaster since the ownership changed hands. With a revolving door of managers from Graham Potter, to interim boss Frank Lampard & Mauricio Pochettino being hired & fired like dominoes, and fellow co-owners like Behdad Eghbali arriving with the air of Prince William but taking actions akin to Paul Gascoigne on a three-day bender, Clearlake inherited a team that had just won the UEFA Champions League and in two seasons managed to relegate the club to the slews of mediocrity.

Under the gaping veil & increasingly irritating shadow of branding it a “project”, almost as irritating as the chant for Marc Cucurella & Estrellas in Spanish, Clearlake have dismantled everything the Roman Abramovich regime managed to build. Everything.

The investment Abramovich put into the academy has only just reaped its benefits. “The club was here before me, and will be here after me, but my job is to ensure we are as successful as we can be today, as well as build for the future. That’s why the success of our academy at Cobham is so important to me,” said Abramovic shortly before leaving the club.

Chelsea’s academy has produced some world-class talent over the past decade. But only Reece James has been retained by the club.

Add Conor Gallagher to the long list of Cobham graduates that Chelsea have sold since 2021.

You can make a very competitive team out of those academy players sold over the past three years and still have plenty more to pick from. pic.twitter.com/t9XEgP4kAK

— SCOUTED (@scoutedftbl) August 5, 2024

Some of the best talents the academy produced were sold unceremoniously after admirable seasons & some even before their debuts. Of course, to some extent, this happened under Abramovich’s nose too. But things have got out of control under Clearlake. Clearlake has baulked at the academy using Cobham’s finest as a buy for nothing & sell for a hefty fee  scheme—  just business; American offshore business.

In a recent video on Twitter(X), Blues fan Alex Churchill gave her two cents on all the recent happenings at Chelsea & it’s hard not to agree with her.

"Stop buying everything with a price tag on it!" 😡

Chelsea fan @churchill_alex tears into the Chelsea board after what has been a disastrous spell for the club. 🔵 pic.twitter.com/VOpjOHEmug

— The Overlap (@WeAreTheOverlap) August 8, 2024

The “faceless” Clearlake have got fans across the spectrum, in England & worldwide voicing their opinions in protest online and just like Alex, are disillusioned by what’s been going on behind the scenes at Stamford Bridge. The truth is under the Boehly regime, Chelsea have gone backwards by some mile & have regressed alarmingly; again reiterating that this was after winning the Champions League.

The sinews of the Abramovich regime have been uprooted from their very roots. This is a new way of management top-down, a new way of Chelsea’s operation. But the club are increasingly becoming a business investment & not a football investment. It’s hard not to see parallels with the Glazers & their takeover of Manchester United. But Clearlake are showing signs that it could be much worse.

A pre-season tour of (where else?) America which has seen the players perform pretty sh*te all over the pitch has been wrapped up, but it seems like it’ll be a recurring theme to cash in on the growing US market & fan base. Erling Haaland scored a hat-trick in his bedtime overalls while Badiashile & Colwill refused to sprint back, because “Hey, f*ck it, it’s just preseason”.

Either that or they had too much to eat at the Clearlake preseason buffet. The buffet includes invitees of new sponsors & new commercial alliances whom Clearlake have been holding out for after their 1-year deal with Infinite Athlete came to an end. It’s clear that Clearlake are in this for the money, not the football or the glory.

A recent report in the NY Times/Athletic, suggested that Chelsea is valued at $500 million more than Clearlake paid for the club: “And yet despite the on-pitch struggles, Chelsea are worth around £500million more in 2024 than Clearlake and Boehly paid for the club in 2022. That is according to the latest European elite club valuation report published earlier this month by Football Benchmark, the football business data analytics platform established nine years ago by leading accounting firm KPMG.”

That’ll do for Clearlake. That’ll do very well. Qualification for the Champions League has now become the target after falling behind from actually challenging for the Premier League title & being there or thereabouts in the Champions League knockouts. It’s been difficult to digest for Chelsea fans — this free fall from the orbits of Champions League glory has happened in just two seasons. Two long, hard & “what the f*ck is going on at Chelsea?” seasons.

To add salt to Chelsea fans’ wounds, Clearlake have banished several players, mostly homegrown, to obscurity. Players like Conor Gallagher who captained the club in some games last season was sold to Atletico Madrid & other players like Trevoh Chalobah & Armando Broja have been frozen out of the first team with the board looking to offload them as well. This follows all the homegrown players sold over the past two seasons.

Signing some twenty U20 players to just buy low & sell high, Clearlake know what they’re doing. They’re a PE/VC firm, it’s what they do. Buy low, sell high. Most of these kids won’t even see the bench let alone the first team. Clearlake may amuse fans by using the ‘project’ & ‘youth-policy’ excuse but it’s clear & evident, the board are running the club like a gift shop on Christmas Eve on steroids with these u20 players being the sugarcoated candy being fed to other clubs when shopping time arrives in the transfer window.

The administration meanwhile is like a three-ring circus, nobody quite knows what the direction of the club is or is taking or what the owners want to achieve on the pitch. They won’t even make a comment. Not a peep. It’s this disparity & disconnection with the fans that burns a hole in the crest; worn & adorned by Blues since time immeasurable.

Pochettino wouldn’t have it & decided he didn’t fit into the club’s vision & took his cheque and left. Maresca is the hapless understudy who kisses the bosses’ a*s.

There was no reason to let go of Pochettino just as he got the side clicking & firing getting a respectable (yet mediocre) sixth-place finish, despite starting the season poorly but ending the season strongly eventually showing signs that looked like Chelsea were on the comeback trail. Hiring a manager of European pedigree would have been the norm under Abramovich—  Inzaghi, Motta, Flick, Alonso or the likes. But in Enzo Maresca the Chelsea board have a coach who can please the eye with his style of play & please the running of the club by not asking too many questions; something Pochettino would’ve surely done.

Chelsea are at a crossroads & it’s increasingly likely that they’re turning into what Manchester United were shortly after the Glazers took over. The Glazers turned United into their personal cash cow, ignoring the results on the pitch for commercial incentives & it looks increasingly like Clearlake want to do the same.

With the coming of INEOS and Harry Potter’s lost uncle Manchester United have seemingly turned things around & begun to bounce back. Clever recruitment of backroom staff & sporting directors & executives who would fit perfectly into the United club ethos including 150-goal United legend Ruud Van Nistelrooy seems to be pushing the Red Devils in the right direction. There’s a lot of deadwood at United that needs to be sold, but after Manchester City, United are the club with the most trophies in England in the past three seasons. Given the business United have done this season, it’s apparent that INEOS know what they’re doing & how to do it. So now it’s just about trimming the fat at Old Trafford.

It’s clear that American ownership & the owners themselves just don’t understand football; not only because they call it soccer but because the intentions are clear — as long as it’s profitable, it’s a success. INEOS has ushered change at Old Trafford & as Ratcliffe & co. begin the United rebuild it’s evident that Chelsea need a Ratcliffe of their own to steer the American ships to shores laden with silverware.

As it currently stands, Chelsea fans could witness what Manchester United fans had to contend with in the past decade or so under the ownership of the Glazers after Sir Alex Ferguson retired. It’s certainly looking like things could pan out for the Blues in that way.

However, a few big signings could change the mood around the fanbase. Pedro Neto is wrapped up, Omorodion seems to be over the line as well, while the Osimhen for Lukaku deal looks like it could come to fruition by the end of the window should Napoli owner Aurelio Di Laurentiis finish with his cocaine in a good mood.

For Chelsea fans dreaming of winning another Champions League or even the Premier League in the near future seems like climbing the beanstalk against giants; the likes of Man City & Arsenal have leapfrogged the Blues to acquire that status in England. Chelsea will know what Maresca is & is not capable of & whether he’s the right man for the job by December when the Christmas shop reopens. It’ll also be rather apparent whether Clearlake are different, as bad or worse than the Glazers.

Hope is a dangerous thing, but it’s all Chelsea fans have left.