The Blues spent £288 million (328.5m Euros) to add to the £270m spree last summer – which itself broke the Premier League record for total summer transfer outlay. It brings Chelsea’s total spend under new owners Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital to upwards of £558 million in eight months.
Much has already been written about this seemingly reckless spending. Chelsea have signed 17 players since Boehly’s takeover. The current squad sits at a total of 33 players. The club has spent more on transfers in 2022/23 than all 20 clubs in Spain’s La Liga combined.
The final piece de resistance to this month of wild splurging came on deadline day, when Chelsea saved the most for last by breaking the British transfer record to sign World Cup winner Enzo Fernandez for £107 million (121m €).
Clearly there are question marks about this new strategy, the implications for European football in general, and around how exactly Chelsea are managing to get around Financial Fair Play (the answer: amortisation).
But amidst all the glitz and glamour of Chelsea’s January transfer window, tucked away below the fold of spending sprees, media headlines and ‘Here We Go’s there is another storyline.
A curious thing happened at Chelsea this past month.
On a cold January night in Cambridge in front of just a few hundred spectators, Chelsea’s Under-18s suffered a stunning 1-0 defeat in the FA Youth Cup fourth round to Cambridge United, a result described as “one of the biggest shocks of the 2022/23 season”.
The defeat marked the earliest stage Chelsea have been knocked out of the competition in five years, an embarrassing exit for a club with such a proud FA Youth Cup record.
For the past two decades Chelsea’s academy has been one of the standard-bearers of youth football in England, a dominant force that has won the prestigious FA Youth Cup seven times since 2010 and appeared in nine finals.
They are second only to Manchester United as the most successful club in the competition’s history, and Chelsea’s academy during that time has grown to be considered arguably the place to be for any aspiring young footballer.
Countless top-class footballers have come through Chelsea’s academy to go on and enjoy high level careers. Mason Mount, Reece James, Tammy Abraham, Nathan Ake, Ruben Loftus-Cheek, Dominic Solanke, Fikayo Tomori, Tariq Lamptey – the list of talents Chelsea have produced goes on, and that’s not to mention past graduates such as famous former captain John Terry.
The academy at Chelsea has become a source of pride for Blues fans. So losing in the fourth round to a Category 3 academy like Cambridge United, who have nowhere near the resources of their opponents, is a huge shock.
Taken individually it can be seen as a minor blip. Accidents happen after all.
But it does raise a question looking forward. With a bloated Stamford Bridge squad filled with 33 senior players, will a change of strategy from the top risk threatening the status of one of English football’s finest talent-producing academies?
When Chelsea’s new owners completed their takeover in May 2022, they announced their intentions clearly. “Along with our commitment to developing the youth squad and acquiring the best talent, our plan of action is to invest in the Club for the long-term and build on Chelsea’s remarkable history of success.”
“Further investment in the academy” was one of the key areas of focus mentioned by Boehly and Clearlake. Admirable words in theory. But after £550 million splashed on new players in eight months, can Chelsea fans really trust they will be applied in practice?
Marc Cucurella, Raheem Sterling, Kalidou Koulibaly, Carney Chukwuemeka, Cesare Casadei, Wesley Fofana, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Gabriel Slonina, Denis Zakaria, Benoit Badiashile, David Datro Fofana, Andrey Santos, Joao Felix, Mykhailo Mudryk, Noni Madueke, Malo Gusto and Enzo Fernandez have all come in for more than half a billion pounds.
Many of these players are under-23 themselves, meaning Chelsea’s academy prospects may have to share minutes with multi-million pound stars even in development squad football – let alone first team.
Chukwuemeka is 19, signed from Aston Villa. Badiashile is 21. Andrey Santos is 18, Madueke 20. These signings are all older than Callum Hudson-Odoi, for example the one-time Chelsea golden boy who now finds himself far away from first team matters, loaned out to Bayer Leverkusen at 22.
The departure of Jude Soonsup-Bell to Spurs on deadline day, a 19-year-old described as ‘one of the finest players in the Blues’ academy’ also raises eyebrows.
Chelsea’s strategy appears to have shifted to signing the best young talents in the world as quickly and as aggressively as possible. Shopping at Waitrose rather than growing your own.
In itself it could be seen as a smart strategy that has seen them find a loophole around Financial Fair Play (putting players on seven- or eight-year contracts to reduce annual amortisation costs) and exploit it to their advantage.
But will the plan to continue developing their own young talents through the academy system soon become an afterthought?
Last year, prior to the Boehly / Clearlake takeover Chelsea unveiled their ‘Vision 2030’ for the academy, an ambitious plan they are working on at youth level with the following five main aims:
- 15% of their Premier League minutes to be from Academy players
- 25% of their first team squad to be from the Academy
- to have above national average GCSE and A-Level results
- to have more Academy players in the professional game than any other Academy
- to win more national and international competitions than other Academies
Will the new regime at Chelsea truly commit to helping realise these admirably lofty ambitions?