What has happened to the Chelsea we used to know?

Conor Gallagher is the latest homegrown talent Chelsea is looking to offload in the coming weeks, and Chelsea's decision to axe the midfielder shows how things have changed at Stamford Bridge.

The Blues are now owned by a group led by American Todd Boehly, and their fans are worried about the direction that their beloved club has taken recently.

Since he bought the club, Boehly has continued to show that he is a clueless club owner who simply does not know how to run a top football team.

That is not a surprise, considering he is American and football (soccer) is not a popular game in the United States.

In the last few years, the sport has gained more popularity in the USA, and more Americans are now buying clubs around Europe.

When Roman Abramovich ran into problems because of his close tie with Wladimir Putin, the Blues were put up for sale and several individuals came forward to buy it.

It was a tricky sale for Chelsea fans who had been spoiled by Abramovich and his extravagant spending for several years.

They worry about whether they will ever have an owner like the Russian and may have been relieved when Boehly won the bidding to become the club’s new owner.

The American has spent and continues to spend money, perhaps even more than Abramovich did, but his spending is much different and perhaps nowhere near as good as Abramovich's.

Chelsea’s spending this summer is already setting up their newest manager Enzo Maresca for failure.

The Italian has walked into a club where he can buy almost any top talent, but he is having to work with an unusually big squad at West London.

The Blues are not showing any signs of slowing down in their bid to poach the best talents in Europe and South America, which begs the question: What do Chelsea really want?

What does Chelsea want?

When Abramovich was the owner of Chelsea, it was very easy for us to tell what the Blues wanted as he spent money on the world’s best players to win trophies.

He also hired the best managers available and that yielded so much success, with Chelsea winning 18 major trophies with him as its owner.

The Russian made statement signings and brought the likes of Didier Drogba, Michael Ballack, Andriy Schevchenko, Petr Cech, among others to the club.

He was also interested in building a network of some of the best youngsters in world football and the Blues’ academy produced talents every year.

It has many graduates, including Dominic Solanke, Marc Guehi, and Reece James, among several others who are now big names in the Premier League.

However, the current owners do not seem to know what they want, and the club has lacked direction in the two seasons that they have owned it.

One thing we know is that they are obsessed with signing young players and offering them long-term deals, with some signings penning contracts until 2031.

They have also paid some ridiculous transfer fees to bag the likes of Enzo Fernandez, Moises Caicedo and Romeo Lavia.

The owners have been preoccupied with making inexperienced signings and they have also gambled on inexperience by making Maresca their manager.

Chelsea before Boehly had some audacious goals for the season and their fans are usually excited about the start of each campaign, knowing that their team will compete for top honours.

However, nowadays, they barely have enough stability even to consider finishing inside the top seven, with their managers being fired for almost no reason.

Last season, despite a fine second half to the season, the Blues elected to sack Mauricio Pochettino who had brought so much stability to the club and also helped them finish the troubled term in a European place.

Several world-class managers were linked with their job, but the owners who had previously sacked Thomas Tuchel, a Champions League winner at the Bridge, opted for Maresca.

They started the 2024/2025 season with a loss to Manchester City, but there is still time to have a good term. Hopeful fans who buy Chelsea tickets will have a reason to smile. 

Conor Gallagher: Selling off homegrown talent 

We already covered that one of the key elements of Abramovich’s era was an investment in the youth team, and graduates from that team earned chances to play for the senior side.

The likes of Mason Mount, Trevor Chalobah, Andreas Christensen, and Reece James, among others were academy graduates that won the Champions League with the Blues in 2021.

Over the years, we have watched several stars graduate from the Blues academy to become key men for their senior team.

However, Boehly is disrespecting that culture by selling off players who have come through the ranks at the club.

He keeps James as the team captain, but this summer Chelsea wants to sell Conor Gallagher, and he could still move to Atletico Madrid.

The Spanish club has an agreement in place to seal the deal for his signature, and they are expected to make him the latest star groomed at the club to leave.

Boehly has already sold Mount, Billy Gilmour, Callum Hudson-Odoi, Ruben Loftus-Cheek, Lewis Hall, and Omari Hutchinson, among others.

What could have been considered going too far under Abramovich has become the norm at Stamford Bridge, and there is no sign that the sales will stop soon.

Chelsea gained so much from Abramovich’s ownership, but we are now watching those gains being wiped off under Boehly and Blue Co, especially in terms of talent development.

When can Chelsea find some stability?

Chelsea fans would love to think the club has started a good long-term journey and handing Maresca a five-year deal shows that the Blues are preparing to support him for a long time.

However, there is no guarantee that the Italian will not be sacked before this season ends and that would not be a surprise decision from the current owners.

For the Blues to start on a journey to success, they need some stability, and that will not happen if they do not offer their manager more time.

They also need to give their new players more time to settle in before bringing in replacements from the transfer market.

Maresca can only use a few players, and the world’s most successful teams do not rely on a big squad or changing teams, instead, the manager must establish his preferred starting XI and work with them for some seasons.

Conclusion

Blue Co’s arrival as the new Chelsea owners has been painful to Blues’ fans, and they have to start making decisions that will improve the team’s fortune.