It’s a Friday evening, the transfer window is over, it’s the international break. Time to sit back, relax and enjoy the first day in a while without any significant breaking Chelsea n… oh hang on!
There’s some pretty seismic breaking news on the wire right now. As always in football, while the second biggest stories come from Fabrizio Romano or the BBC, the biggest stories come from Sunday broadsheets or business publications – in this case Bloomberg.
A bombshell piece released just now has claimed that the two main owners of Chelsea – Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital (headed up by Jose Feliciano and Behdad Eghbali) are looking at ways of ending the current arrangement.
By the looks of things, that would involve one side buying the other out. There’s talk of a “deterioration in relations”, and disappointment at the lack of return on the pitch given the money spent on the club in their insane top to bottom remodelling of the previously successful footballing institution.
What next for Chelsea
Well, maybe nothing. We don’t have enough information about how bad the issues are. Even if they have very different ideas and things have really “deteriorated” badly, both will be practical about not losing money through squabbling. It might be that both want to keep their share, or that both want to sell up.
If one wants out and the other wants their slice, it should be no issue – just a question of haggling over price. There is specific mention of Eghbali and Boehly, the two figureheads of the ownership, having had a “souring” in their relations, but obvious it’s in everyone’s interest to “remain committed to the club and running it in a professional manner.”
This could all get very explosive, very fast. There have been whispers about this before, but this is the most concrete thing we’ve heard yet.