120 years of Chelsea: The BlueCo takeover and the club's future

New York Times

27-03-2025

On the latest episode of Straight Outta Cobham — the last of our three-part series celebrating Chelsea's 120th anniversary — Matt Davies-Adams, Simon Johnson and Liam Twomey looked at the club in the present day since the BlueCo takeover in 2022.
They analysed the current state of the Chelsea project, what success would look like over the next couple of years and the club's downturn in form since the arrival of the new owners at Stamford Bridge.
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You can listen to the previous two episodes in the series here.
A partial transcript has been edited for this article. The full episode is available on the Straight Outta Cobham feed on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Matt Davies-Adams: May 30 will mark three years since Todd Boehly & co. completed their takeover of Chelsea Football Club. Liam, where do you think we are in terms of the project? Do the owners believe it's on course?
Liam Twomey: We still don't definitively know what this era is going to be. I know that will frustrate many fans who already think, 'It's on fire, it's all on fire'. There has been a lot of pain in the first two years, and everything the ownership have done in that time has been so aggressively future-focused that what is in front of us still hasn't assumed its final form yet. That's what many fans are still trying to come to terms with.
Even as journalists, and Simon can speak on this as well, it's quite hard to know exactly what we're writing about because the way Chelsea are trying to operate is unlike any other club has ever tried to operate. Investing this much in players this young hasn't been done on this scale before, all while still trying to satisfy the demands of a win-now club by its modern history, and a win-now fan base.
We know the early results have been underwhelming. And the ownership — and when I say the ownership, we have to parse that as well because it's Clearlake Capital running the club right now, and Todd Boehly is very much on the side, and that situation is not resolved — but Clearlake believe the plan is working in terms of the big picture. They believe things are moving in the right direction.
I'm sure they would point to the league position as one of the metrics, and we'll see where Chelsea finish this year. But right now they're fourth, which would be an improvement on last year. Their players are getting older, closer to their primes, and there are more young players coming down the pipeline. So that's where it is. But I do find it very difficult to talk about this era of Chelsea because it's so changeable right now based on the way they're operating, so I don't feel comfortable passing judgment. It's obviously not a success right now but I don't feel comfortable calling it a complete failure either.
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Matt: If it's not a success right now, what would make it a success over the next couple of years? Is it purely just qualifying for the Champions League a couple of seasons in a row, or are the ambitions a little loftier than that?
Liam: The ambitions of the people running Chelsea are huge. They've marketed this to the players who have agreed to join as the most ambitious football project in the world. They want to be a world-class team that competes for the Premier League and the Champions League every year, and one that is in that inner circle of contenders.
The way they're looking to try and do it sustainably is to have this conveyor belt of young talent, continually investing more than everyone else and identifying and recruiting the best young players in the world, then helping them fulfil their potential and retaining them at Chelsea.
The difficulty is that we've seen clubs that win, and we've seen clubs that develop. But we haven't seen a club that can do both at an elite level, at scale. No one has tried to do this before, but that's what Chelsea are trying to do. They're trying to be an extremely expensive Brighton that wins the Champions League, essentially (laughs).
It's a massive investment development project, but they're also trying to thread the needle of being a team that can be successful. At least on par with what we saw in the Roman Abramovich era, but without the boom and bust feel of the Abramovich era. We're obviously nowhere near there right now, but that's where they're trying to get to.
Matt: Simon, you were covering the club in the Abramovich era, during the upheaval of the takeover, and now in this new era. Did you expect there to be such a downturn in form because of the upheaval the club had gone through? We forget the Champions League in 2021 maybe papered over some cracks. I remember Chelsea being called a deluxe cup team for a couple of years before the takeover happened. But even so, we've got to be surprised at just how dramatically things have fallen off in the last couple of years, haven't we?
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Simon Johnson: I've said before there was a downturn in standards, just generally speaking, under the old regime anyway. I can imagine the outcry of people listening, and going, 'How can you say that? We won the Champions League'. It's seen as an understandable, magnificent achievement and rightly so. But Chelsea had gone their longest run without winning the title under Abramovich before he left, so there were signs of a downturn.
But there are downturns, and there's this downturn. There's going from a shoo-in to qualify for the Champions League most years, let alone compete for silverware, to the first season being an absolute calamity. Arguably the worst season in Chelsea's history in terms of expectations, talent and money spent compared to the actual results delivered on the pitch. It was that bad. It was an absolute shambles of a football club.
You had players who didn't have seats in the changing room and at team meetings — absolute bonkers. The one thing you would say about the new ownership and this era is that Chelsea are still the reigning champions of being the most bonkers football club to report on (laughs). They're the undisputed champions for the umpteenth year in a row in that regard. There's never a dull moment covering them.
But when you think of the amount of money spent, we are in season three, and yes, they can point to being fourth as we speak, but it's a very unconvincing fourth. In one of the worst Premier League seasons in terms of the top four race that I can remember, it must be said.
So it has been a disappointment, and I don't think anyone can say otherwise.
There's no way the new owners bought this club thinking, 'We'll be in season three and still not sure if we're going to be a Champions League club in season four.' There's also disappointment because there's been no silverware. Last season, they did come awfully close. Mauricio Pochettino got Chelsea to a League Cup final and outplayed Liverpool until extra time, but they didn't take their chances, unlike Newcastle recently. They also outplayed Manchester City in the FA Cup semi-final, but again didn't take their chances.
This season, they can still get that dream trophy and say, 'Chelsea have won it all,' with the Conference League. But Chelsea want to be at the top table, not dining at the kids' table and feeding off the scraps. I will say no one can accuse the owners of lacking ambition, that is the one thing I will defend them on.
We've seen an extraordinary amount of money spent, but the question obviously has to be, 'Have they spent it wisely?' And the answer is a resounding 'no'.
You can listen to full episodes of Straight Outta Cobham free on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
(Top Photo: Chris Brunskill/Fantasista/Getty Images)