How Chelsea are becoming a power house in modern football

By grvadmin

Chelsea are excellent. There I said it, there’s no point me alluding to the fact of they are excellent in both a footballing term and a business term. I could go on and say that they are slowing the pace and reaching a Jose at Madrid breakdown given his recent antics but I’d rather point by thumbs up in the direction of their youth and the overall strategic purchases and sales over the years have made them a self-sufficient power house.

Fernando Torres’ transfer will have to go down as, if not the biggest flop in history, a very close second. His £50 million price tag was obviously going to be a burden for any player (unless you’re Cristiano Ronaldo) but if he kept to his ways that pulled up trees like at Liverpool, then things would have progressed swimmingly. Long story short, he didn’t, even though that goal against Barcelona (mainly for the Neville commentary) was an excellent high-point in what turned out to be a marred and depressing time for all involved.

To use an unbridled comparison the transfer felt like a fresh-faced yuppies at a Spearmint Rhino’s, but since then, this has been a hefty wake-up call for one of the Premiership’s leading sides. I suspect they’ve probably benchmarked at some point and had a word with Deloitte about how Arsenal are doing and how they keep doing it in regards to self-sustainment, wondering if it’s actually a possibility for a renowned money-rich club to do the same?

Purchasing a little known player in 2009 called Daniel Sturridge for £4 million wouldn’t have set alarm bells off at the time, but since then, Chelsea have make excellent choices in their purchases.  Blooding younger, rawer players such as Daniel Sturridge via Bolton and Kevin De Bruyne at Werder Bremen and then selling them on for a nice little mark-up has made the footballing world take notice. De Bruyne and Lukaku proved brilliant successes at Bremen and West Brom that it almost felt like they’d eventually get into that distinguished Chelsea side. Unfortunately they didn’t, deemed fringe players and sold to ambitious clubs in Wolfsburg and Everton, Chelsea went to make up a comfy £20 million profit on. With this money, they could, theoretically, spend it on a new batch of up and coming talent to blood and sell on. Thus the cycle being created.

One colleague had an interesting point of that it’s mainly attacking players that are being bought and sold on. De Bruyne, Schurrle, Lukaku and most recently the “other” Hazard has been sold to Borussia Mochengladbach with a buy back clause which shows you the club aren’t acting naively in the transfer market and if you think about it, every club that is under-performing or in need of a star player will more likely go for an attacking player rather than a defensive minded player.

Not every player can be sold for profit though. Give the curious case of Marko Marin and more so Nemanja Matic. Matic was largely overlooked for a season after being bought and sold in the 2011/12 season for an undisclosed fee to Benfica. Only for Chelsea to see him performing admirably at a fairly prestigious club and for them to realise that they needed him drastically to sure up that midfield given the absence of a hard-tackling midfielder in which they’d been lacking since Makelele. Marko Marin, was unfortunately marred from the beginning, being bought at the same time as Hazard, Oscar and Moses and competing alongside Lampard and Mata in the line-up. Marin was once well regarded in the Bundesliga, even featuring in the Germany side 16 times, but now finds himself on his third loan in three seasons and I don’t think anyone would be surprised if he was sold for less than what they paid for him fairly soon.

From the current batch of players that are on the books at Chelsea, there is a big possibility that they may be getting a few big profit-based transfers in the future given that Courtois was signed for only £6 million, Azpilicueta for £7million which are steals at that price and other less renowned players like Bamford who’s been lighting up the Championship for the last two years and the injury-tastic Van Ginkel who’s still perceived highly in Holland.

Now not many people know of a woman called Marina Granovskaias, but she is pivotal to this New World Order at Stamford Bridge and how the club is dealing at the minute, being the main component of Chelsea’s dealings with their sister club Vitesse Arnham. Gone are the days of spending a small fortune on Tom Taiwo and Matthew Woods from Leeds, this partnership allows key exposure to highly-thought of youngsters at a decent level. Players developed like Gael Kakuta, Lucas Piazon and Bertrand Traore have all showed quality whilst serving their time there and hold hope for the future.

Given the strength in which Chelsea find themselves currently with the portfolio of players from endorsed teams across Europe, the youth developments and the pragmatic transfer realisation that’s overcome the side makes you wonder if it’ll be a growing trend in the near future. As I write just half hour away from Arsenal playing Monaco, people are writing about the large wealth of Monaco given the “star-studded team” of the likes of Moutinho, Carvahlo and Berbatov, but recently and most evidently in the sales of Falcao and James Rodriguez, there has been a sharp realisation of the club that need to look at what teams like Chelsea are doing in being self-sufficient given the strict rules of FFP in football. Chelsea are becoming a refreshingly ingenious power house in modern football.