In September last year, 106 days after he had bought Chelsea, Todd Boehly sat on a chair on a stage in New York at something called the SALT Conference, a talking shop designed for successful people to congratulate themselves on how clever they are, and did his very best impression of being the smartest man in the room. It felt like he might have had practice.
SALT is ‘a global thought leadership and networking forum encompassing finance, technology and public policy’. Presidents and ex-presidents speak to them but now they were hearing the thoughts of Boehly about the new toy he had bought in west London.
It was, the conference’s Twitter feed said, ‘a fascinating glimpse into his global vision for the English Premier League club’.
‘We know people,’ Boehly said, as he told his interviewer, with a straight face, that the best way for the Premier League to raise money for the rest of the English pyramid was to hold an All-Star Game between North and South. Todd hit that one out of the park. He said that he understood ‘human capital’, which sounded like a slightly sinister billionaire-thought leadership phrase for men and women and how to exploit them.
By then, Boehly had already given an example of how to deal with human capital by firing his Champions League-winning coach Thomas Tuchel a week after signing Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, specifically at Tuchel’s request.
Todd Boehly played Football Manager with Graham Potter’s job and he has now sacked him
Boehly (right) has served up a cocktail of arrogance and naivety since purchasing the club
‘We understand game plan and strategies,’ Boehly had said at SALT, acknowledging his role as the club’s interim sporting director. It did not augur well.
Interestingly, Boehly’s fascinating glimpse into his global vision for Chelsea did not include hiring a new manager, Graham Potter, who everyone in football recognised as a superb coach but also a man who needed time – and ideally a pre-season – to get his methods across, and then flooding the squad with a supermarket-sweep splurge of players Potter did not ask for.
Nor did his fascinating glimpse include spending more money in the January transfer window than the entire top flights of Italy, Spain, Germany and France combined.
Nor did it include buying 22 players, apparently at random, apparently without a coherent strategy other than: ‘If it costs more than £60million and it moves, buy it.’
Maybe he was saving some of them for the All-Star Game. Who knows? But the result was to leave Potter with a grotesquely bloated first-team squad of 31 elite players all agitating to play.
It would have helped if there was a recognised centre forward that the manager rated among them, but Boehly’s fascinating glimpse into Chelsea did not include one of those either.
Boehly was playing Football Manager with Potter’s career. It feels as if he has had so many sycophants telling him he is the man for so long, indulging him at thought leadership conferences, that he believed making Chelsea successful was about throwing obscene amounts of money at the situation as quickly as possible.
The truth is he was spectacularly naive. He has learned a harsh lesson. It is to be hoped he has, anyway.
If you want to point the finger at anyone for Chelsea lying 11th in the Premier League ahead of Tuesday night’s game at home to Liverpool, point it at Boehly.
Blame him not just for what he has done to the club in his short time in charge but for the way he has stained the career of a fine coach whose role he turned into the impossible job.
He got rid of Thomas Tuchel, now at Bayern Munich, and vowed to take a long-term approach
He (right) signed off on Potter (middle) and made all the noises of building for the future
Yet after he was booed off following a 2-0 loss to Aston Villa, Potter has since been dismissed
Potter trusted Boehly with taking a big step up in management from the sane, supportive, intelligent culture at Brighton to the lion’s den of the top six and Boehly failed him. He promised Potter time to build and instil his own culture and Potter got seven months and 31 games.
Boehly indulged himself with his toxic cocktail of arrogance and naivety to show the Premier League how easy it was to succeed and only succeeded in raining down chaos on Potter. Boehly’s ineptitude has harmed Chelsea and set back the cause of British coaching again by giving those who sneer at their collective abilities more ammunition.
Tuesday night ought to give Boehly pause for thought as he surveys the wreckage of his club. Liverpool may have reached the end of their first period of sustained success under Jurgen Klopp and Fenway Sports Group, but FSG’s ownership has been a model of how to win the biggest prizes with shrewd investment and clever recruitment.
The Saudi-led husbandry of Newcastle United is another example of how to build towards success but as Chelsea prepare to try to save their season by getting past Real Madrid in the quarter-finals of the Champions League, Boehly ought to reflect that his stewardship at Stamford Bridge has been a model of how not to run a football club.
The smartest man in the room? Not Boehly. Not yet, anyway. For what he has done to Chelsea so far, he is the guy in the corner, wearing the dunce’s cap.
source: dailymail.co.uk
