Chelsea have already accepted £500m Roman Abramovich transfer message to solve Maresca worry

In the three years since Clearlake Capital and Todd Boehly took ownership of Chelsea, almost everything has changed. The path towards removing nearly all remaining ties to Roman Abramovich was sudden and rocky.

Whether or not the methods were right can still be debated. Managers have changed, the backroom staff has been overhauled, there is an entirely new sporting structure, and even Stamford Bridge has been decorated (slightly).

There have been numerous head coaches and developments to the medical team. A new media operation is in place. The directors are fresh. Cobham’s established academy has undergone a seismic transformation.

Again, whether this has all been worthwhile is still very much up in the air. Chelsea have spent vast amounts of money, made plenty of questionable decisions on multiple levels, and needed a mammoth end-of-season run to get back into the Champions League.

There is very little of Abramovich left. His name is still idolised among most for the unprecedented success he brought, and that history of trophies, chaos, and memories cannot be unwritten or undone. He exists in the fabric of Chelsea but is no longer on show in any form.

The one main Abramovich legacy that continues is Chelsea’s ability to sell players. It is why, despite all of the heavy spending in recent years (and beyond that, into the early Abramovich days and throughout the days among the elite) Chelsea have always been able to keep going.

From windows of £120million and more in the early 2000s, consisting of Hernan Crespo, Damien Duff, Adrian Mutu, Juan Sebastian Veron, Claude Makelele, Joe Cole, Scott Parker, Glenn Johnson, Geremi, and Wayne Bridge, to breaking the British transfer record at the time (in 2011), for Fernando Torres. Chelsea have become the daddy of splashing money.

Didier Drogba, Riccardo Carvalho, Paulo Ferreira, Arjen Robben, Petr Cech, Tiago, and Alex. Then there’s 2020 and the revamp of Frank Lampard’s academy-formed team, bolstered by Kai Havertz, Timo Werner, and Hakim Ziyech.

There were so many players it was hard to see how Chelsea could possibly fit them in. That narrative has only been exaggerated under Clearlake-Boehly, where Chelsea really couldn’t actually find a place in the first-team dressing room for everyone in the bloated, dysfunctional, and unmotivated 2022/23 team that went through utter turmoil after the takeover, and played like it.

Last summer, when lists of players ‘on the books’ reached the 80s, Enzo Maresca was quick to downplay it. His group was only 25 or so with the odd youth player added. Anyone else, he was practically ignoring.

By the end, that included Conor Gallagher, Trevoh Chalobah, Raheem Sterling, Ben Chilwell, Armando Broja, and Carney Chukwuemeka. With over £500million spent in the first year of Clearlake-Boehly, and then £400million in the next one, how can this all still be allowed?

Chelsea flirted with financial mortality during the period of Abramovich’s UK government imposed sanctions in 2022 and were close to overstepping the Premier League’s mark shortly after. The threat of breaching Profitability and Sustainability Rules (PSRs) loomed large.

The club had to take their exploitation of loopholes further than long contracts and amortisation (a trick that was freely available for anyone to use before the Premier League and UEFA limited the spread of costs to just five years). They sold hotel buildings to their own holding company and would later strategically move the women’s team to a separate group as well, in order to bank huge sums on the accounts.

These acts have drawn mass criticism but what remains clear is that despite the turnover in players, the logic and efficiency in doing so, and the general squad building and pricing of incoming transfers, Chelsea are still exceptional sellers. They were ahead of the curve thanks to Boehly’s Saudi Arabian excursions, leading to some large payments for Kalidou Koulibaly, Angelo Gabriel, and Edouard Mendy when all were in no-man’s land and a monetary black hole.

They have made mistakes but have managed to flip profits on Omari Hutchinson (£20million after signing for free), Djordje Petrovic (£25million), and Noni Madueke. Bashir Humphreys went to Burnley for £14million off the back of promotion, and they generated a fee for Kepa Arrizabalaga and Romelu Lukaku after being left with their hefty fees and wages from the Abramovich era.

Questions over Sterling and Chilwell (another Abramovich carry over) remain, but in general there has been substantial sales to at least partially offset the insatiable desire to snap up other players. Joao Felix, for example, has been nothing short of a disaster for Chelsea.

After an exciting but ultimately meaningless half-season loan, costing £9million in 2023, Chelsea returned to spend £45million on him last year. Less than six months later and his next dally in European football, searching for a purpose, took him to Milan.

Yet, with the loan fee Milan paid, and the expected figure from Al Nassr to follow, Chelsea will essentially be breaking even on Felix. Regardless of the errors made to even get to this point, that is a positive close to a forgettable and unaffordable chapter which should not be repeated.

If Madueke should have been sold to Arsenal (or at all) is irrelevant for a second, because Chelsea have got a good, but not amazing, deal on him. If they can somehow offload Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall, to accommodate for the waste he has been, then it will also be good enough business.

It does not justify the spending, not when there are prices like £62million for Mykhailo Mudryk or the countless punts on South American talent for higher numbers than is often advisable for stock piling talent, but being able to sell is half of the game, and Chelsea are still good at it.

Under Abramovich, it was his trusty advisor, and the much celebrated Marina Granovskaia who did a lot of the negotiating. They got a hefty return on Diego Costa in 2017 even though he had been cast out of Antonio Conte’s squad. Oscar went to China for big money, and Eden Hazard landed more than £100million even though he would only score seven times for Real Madrid.

Again, there were failures. The Thibaut Courtois exit and signing of Kepa in 2018 was handled badly. That window, in general, was disastrous. Danny Drinkwater, Davide Zappacosta, and Alvaro Morata were paid for when Alisson Becker, Virgil van Dijk, and Lukaku moved in the same summer.

But Chelsea’s use of the academy to raise funds really propped things up. Over £35million for Tammy Abraham, £30million for Fikayo Tomori, and £20million for Marc Guehi at the time were all useful. There is an argument, and a good one, that they could all have been kept rather than sold, and would have been better value that way, which is a thread that runs through all of this.

However, when Chelsea do keep on spending, they have shown that they can mix it with the outgoings at the same time. For £40million from Nemanja Matic, or £50million in 2014 for David Luiz, there is the 2023 window of recouping £65million in the sale of Havertz and £60million for Mason Mount.

Chelsea have sold their squad and bought a new one. They have committed to spending on at least £1.5billion worth of players, but have recouped over £500million in the past three years alone as well. It is a point that no other club can come remotely close to, and is only going to rise this summer.

They have stayed the right side of regulatory lines with loopholes but remain among the best sellers out there. If that is the only thing the same as the Abramovich era, then it’s a good bit to boast.