Sky Sports pundit Jamie Carragher believes that Todd Boehly deserves praise for his Chelsea transfer methods, if they pay off. The former Liverpool defender also questioned whether the philosophy implemented by the Blues will work as intended, with it still in the early phases.
It comes after an unprecedented spending spree by the club over the past two transfer windows, backed by new co-owners Boehly and Clearlake Capital following their takeover in May. A frantic summer window saw the squad bolstered following some key losses, though January's attention switched towards signings for the future.
There were eight additions by the time the deadline closed, with over half-a-billion-pounds spent so far. "The club has gone through tremendous change with the ownership, there needs to be stability and calm which is hard for me to say when we have made the signings we have made," Graham Potter told Sky Sports after deadline day.
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"But going forward we have to build the team the culture and the environment and then you can start to see real progress I think."
One of the key sticking points surrounding the transfer spend has been the long contracts handed out by the club to their young signings. This is due to a concept called amortisation, which is how depreciation in transfer value is shown on the financial balance sheet.
The idea is that a longer contract will mean depreciation is slower and the costs are spread over a longer period, thus circumventing any financial troubles they may encounter by spending so much on shorter contracts. There are risks to this approach though, which has led to questions from Carragher on the Overlap Live Fan Debate, in partnership with Sky Bet.
He said: "If Todd Boehly and Chelsea have found a way around the rules, without breaking them, by putting players on eight- or nine-year contracts, I’ll say good luck to them. If he has found a way to beat the system, to go out and spend this money without breaking any FFP rules, then he’s ahead of the game.
"But there are so many smart people in football, and I can’t believe he, whose only just come into the English game, has found a way that no one else has ever thought of. What’s down the road for Chelsea, putting players on eight-year contracts?
"After a few seasons if they don’t do very well, how do you get rid of them? Or, if they do well, they’ll look at the where the market is and want more money and another contract."
Potter is one of those people impacted by the spending, with it helping him and his squad with more quality, but potentially making any cohesion difficult with an added weight of expectation. Carragher continued: "Spending this money hasn’t made Chelsea better yet, you look at where they are in the league.
"Spending money doesn’t guarantee success. Manchester City have spent an awful lot of money but have had great expertise with different managers. Manchester United is a great example of this from the other side of it - you look at their transfer spending over the last 10 years, there’s not much of a difference between themselves and Manchester City.
"With Chelsea, from Graham Potter’s point of view he must be thinking - what is going on here? You can dress it up like he’s delighted with a big squad and all these great players coming in, but he’ll be worried for his job."
It remains to be seen if this new bold approach from the owners will work or not, with the Blues still languishing in midtable in the Premier League. However, the second half of the season could be an indication on if progress is being made.
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