Chelsea’s Blues: Bizarre transfer window policy suggests deeper problems

Lying in 4th is one thing. Being outbid for Steven Pienaar by Spurs? A different matter altogether. Joe Steppel returns to Just Football to look at the underlying problems at Chelsea.

A while ago I wrote an article entitled The Chelsea Politburo, which detailed how I felt the derailment of Chelsea’s season could be traced back to the convoluted and surreptitious structure of the club’s board. In the light of recent form and a rather perplexing January transfer window it is definitely time to start asking the questions that I intimated at earlier in the season.

The transfer saga of Steven Pienaar was a personification of the obfuscated structure that pervades the club at all levels. A purported bid of around £3m and wages circa £35k a week were trumped by Tottenham’s £70k per week offer. You might suggest Chelsea is moving towards an actual wage structure, with recent signing Ramires on reportedly less than £40k a week. Looking at the bigger picture though the initial interest in Pienaar seems rather peculiar.

Cast your mind back to the summer and the furore surrounding a rather precocious Brazilian teenager. Chelsea tabled a bid of around £24m and wage packet circa £50k a week for Santos’ young starlet Neymar. Juxtapose that bid with the one for Pienaar – absolutely poles apart in terms of ambition, longevity and financing.

Even the January window has suggested a schism in player recruitment is currently in place. There is an apparent bid for David Luiz, Benfica’s star centre back, in the region of £20m and supposed interest in a £25m deal for Udinese’s Alexis Sanchez in the pipeline. How do these deals align themselves with the bid for Pienaar? The reality is that these three January links coupled with the summer bids for Neymar and Yossi Benayoun (remember him?) indicate two schools of thought within the Chelsea hierarchy.

The removal of Messrs Ballack, Deco, Cole, Carvalho and Belletti were surely contrary to Carlo Ancelotti’s wishes. Given the now salient squad deficiencies, I cannot see how Ancelotti would have sanctioned such an en masse cull without sufficient replenishment. The signing of Benayoun in particular seems in correlation with the school of thought that tried to lure Pienaar to Stamford Bridge for half the wages Tottenham offered. This is arguably the school of thought that has depleted the squad depth that has been the foundation of Chelsea’s strength in the Roman era. The result of all the hypothetical mathematics is that Chelsea, double winners last season and record Premier League goal scorers, presently sit fourth in the table.

Neymar /  Sanchez / Luiz vs Benayoun / Pienaar

In my eyes the above is a tangible illustration of the division within the Chelsea board. The question remains quite simply – who is making the decisions regarding player recruitment and squad management? My initial answer would rule out Ancelotti. A recent spot poll on Twitter laid much of the blame solely at the feet of Ron Gourlay. Reasonable or not (how much autonomy he has under Roman is questionable), he seems to draw feelings of malcontent whenever his name is mentioned.

Fingers point toward Gourlay regarding Ray Wilkins’ acrimonious mid-season departure and also with regards to the purse strings tightening. The latter may prove to be a necessity in the ensuing Financial Fair Play regulations, but there is a lot more to his role than cutting costs. Driving income is going to becoming increasingly important under the new regulations and at present there seems little to suggest Gourlay has any ground-breaking means to supplement the coffers at Stamford Bridge.

Toying with naming rights and flirting with a new stadium are things that happened under Peter Kenyon; there will be no backing for Gourlay if he continues to cut costs without showing any financial nous in generating revenue. I do not believe Gourlay is entirely to blame for the disjointed transfer policy, but as a senior member of the board his ability to unify two schools of thought seems very poor.

Clearly there is an element of newfound frugality concerning Chelsea’s transfer/wage policy. There is also a purposeful effort to bring through players from the Academy. Josh McEachran will particularly fall under the spotlight as an emerging English home grown talent. While of course these all seem sensible suggestions in the modern climate, there are salient issues with such a swift move to “self-sufficiency-ville”. Despite there being a plethora of young talent at the club, there is a chasm between potential and actuality.

The change in squad personnel needed to be gradual and steps should have been implemented two or three seasons back. Cutting the squad of all it’s usable players and then trying to replace them with players of Pienaar’s ability seems peculiar. Either the club drastically overestimated how good some of the Chelsea teenagers are or seriously believed we would go through the season without injury/suspension. Either way, a rather large ball was dropped.

While I am not anticipating a crystal clear structure to be presented to the fans, there is such utter confusion with who does what at the club that some sort of clarification is necessary. If I said the names Buck, Gourlay, Tenenbaum, Alexander, Barnard, Forde and Arnesen could you tell me what each of them specifically did without the use of Google? If Ancelotti is not in charge of recruitment, who is?

There is a committee aspect to the running of Chelsea that is seriously undermining the playing side of the club. There are too many cooks, too many directions, too many ingredients and frankly too little clue as to how to tackle what are rather prominent issues. Ultimately if Chelsea does eventually spend big in January, questions will be asked why it was not done in the summer.

Conversely, if the mooted signing of Luiz (Kjær/Subotic/Cahill) does not materialise and the desperate need for creativity/goals is not addressed, the minor questions being asked now could become a big problem if Champions League football is not secured.

What the board have collectively failed to realise is that the most important aspect of any top tier football club is that it remains competitive on the pitch. That means that you not only have a first class starting XI, but the squad players as well: something which needs to be addressed sooner rather than later.

Joe can usually be found over at highly readable Chelsea blog TheChels.net. Failing that, follow him on Twitter.

(Photo by StewieD on Flickr)

Chelsea, English Premier League, Football and Finance, Transfer News