Chelsea are back in action tonight – thank goodness. We can return to the actual football and have a little less of the circus which continues to surround the club.
This last week has been ridiculous – just as we prepared for a quiet international break, a civil war broke out between team Todd Boehly and team Clearlake Capital. It’s been brewing under the surface for a while, but a story broke just as the international fortnight kicked off, giving it a long time to fester and to dominate the back pages while there is little else on to distract people.
That’s not a coincidence, of course. One of the two sides has deliberately put this out there, thinking they can strongarm the other into selling up.
Claim and counterclaim from warring factions
Before we get back to the action sport, there’s one final expose to read through, this time from Jacob Steinberg at the Guardian.
He has the final shreds of scandal from the whole affair, summarising the briefs of both sides quite neatly, as well as adding some new juice of his own. That includes a new shot at Boehly from Team Clearlake:
“Clearlake is said to have developed misgivings after watching Boehly work. There is regret at how that first window unfolded, at agents arguably taking advantage of Boehly. There is a claim about one signing essentially being allowed to decide his wage.”
There’s not much confusion about who that player might be, given that Raheem Sterling ended up as the highest paid player at the club, and one of the highest paid players in the league.
Meanwhile Team Boehly have had their say too: “they want to bully us out of town,” a source said of the Clearlake attempts to make the current chairman give up his current powers.