New Chelsea owner set to splash cash
CHELSEA’S new owner Todd Boehly watched Chelsea slump to a 2-2 draw with Wolves at Stamford Bridge yesterday but will begin planning the club’s summer spending this week, with talks on new deals for Mason Mount and Reece James top of the agenda.
Boehly and his partners agreed a £4.25billion deal to buy the club from Roman Abramovich in the small hours of Saturday morning. Now they are expected to push for A-list signings to announce their arrival, the strategy he pursued with co-owners when they bought the LA Dodgers in 2012.
Chelsea are already playing catch-up in the transfer market, with Antonio Rudiger and Andreas Christensen about to be lost to Real Madrid and Barcelona respectively. A sanctioned period has prevented the Blues from discussing financial deals with prospective signings.
The Premier League has already assessed Boehly and his co-owners, Clearlake Capital, his LA Dodgers partner Mark Walter and Swiss medical device billionaire Hansjorg Wyss, as well as Jonathan
Goldstein and non-executive directors Lord Finkelstein and Barbara Charone. They will all pass the owners’ and directors’ test, but the UK Government still has to amend the terms of the licence under which Chelsea can be sold because of the sanctions imposed on Abramovich.
That is expected to be a complex process, with the disputed £1.6bn loan which Abramovich is writing off to be held in a frozen account while its status is resolved.
But after watching his team blow a 2-0 lead yesterday, Chelsea manager Thomas Tuchel said he was hopeful the mess would be resolved fast.
‘We hope for the best situation,’ he said. ‘(Being sanctioned) is so long now that we need it to be solved.’
Tuchel has not had the chance to meet Boehly yet, but said of the news of the takeover: ‘I heard in the morning. I try to do the best preparation for the match no matter what’s outside.
‘I don’t think it is a reason for a lack of focus. It does not change much for us (at the moment) because the sanctions are not lifted.’