“This isn’t football manager” – Expert slams Chelsea strategy and fears unhappiness | OneFootball

An expert has slammed Chelsea’s recruitment and profit making strategy under the new ownership group this week.

It’s a recruitment strategy that has come under a lot of scrutiny since the owners arrived at the club and it is often looked at s negative and controversial.

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Chelsea have spent a heck of a lot of money and signed a heck of a lot of players since the owners came in, and it’s player trading madness that has come under the microscope as not being a great way to operate. Players have almost come and gone like a conveyor belt in all honesty.

A fear of unhappiness

A generic group photo of Chelsea. (Photo by Julian Finney/Getty Images)

TBR Football’s finance expert, Adam Williams, explained how Chelsea are going to operate in January, and how a financial settlement with UEFA is going to impact them.

He said: “Chelsea’s problem going into January is that the financial settlement that they have agreed with UEFA is hanging over them.

“This year, the measures in that settlement aren’t too extreme, but they need to cut their cloth to get within the financial parameters that UEFA has outlined for the next few seasons.

“They are trading players at an unprecedented volume, which is clearly part of BlueCo’s vision of how to outsmart everyone else.

“You can see where they are coming from, treating players like assets in a portfolio. However, this isn’t Football Manager. If you continue to have such a high squad churn, I think it’s eventually going to unsettle players, and Chelsea aren’t going to be seen as a destination club.

“What’s more, their strategy focuses so much on young players, and there might be plenty of youngsters who look at how some players have been neglected at Chelsea and treated like trading chips and say: ‘That’s not for me.’

“Premier League PSR is a non-issue for them for as long as they can sell tangible assets – another hotel, the women’s team, and so on, to themselves to book an artificial profit, but UEFA’s rules are going to be more limiting.

“They are owned by private equity big-brains, however, and the M.O. of that industry is very much ‘move fast and break things’. They don’t mind breaking rules as long as, when the time comes to exit their investment, they are up on the deal. So I’d expect to see more scheming to get around the rules going forward.

“Specifically in terms of their January budget, based on what we know about the finances and what we’re hearing about their strategy on the grapevine, I wouldn’t expect there to be much of a budget to be played with. If there is a real value opportunity that they see, I don’t doubt that they will go for it, but the same will be true of potential sales.”

I actually think he’s made some good points here.