Liverpool will keep a close eye on Chelsea transfer efforts as FSG plan is clear

Over the course of the past 12 months the arrival of Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital as owners of Chelsea has provided great disruption to the transfer market.

Between acquiring the club in May 2022 following the forced sale due to UK sanctions placed upon former owner Roman Abramovich, and the end of the January transfer window, Chelsea have spent more than £500m on acquiring some of the most sought after talents in world football.

Enzo Fernandez, Benoit Badiashile, Mykhailo Mudryk, Wesley Fofana and Noni Madueke, among many others, have all arrived at Stamford Bridge during the past year, although a 12th-placed finish meant that the first year project for the new owners woefully underachieved.

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Chelsea co-owner Behdad Eghbali had spoken of his admiration for Liverpool owners Fenway Sports Group when addressing the Sportico Invest In Sports Conference in New York in October 2022, where the ECHO were present.

“These [Premier League] teams generally, in our view, are not well managed. Fenway Sports Group with Liverpool have done it well but for the most part these opportunities have not been optimised,” said the Clearlake Capital co-founder.

A club owned by an investment fund is one that needs success on the pitch to grow the efforts off it and increase the value of the club for which a £2.5bn premium was paid last year. There will need to be a yield further down the line for investors, although the best chance of that happening is to attempt to grow the value of the club and realise a profit at sale.

But the heavy spend was viewed as being a long-term investment, although missing out on the Champions League for 2023/24 was not part of the plan and will complicate matters from a financial perspective given the liabilities that exist on the clubs balance sheet through both wages and amortisation costs for the acquisition of players.

It is a philosophy that is at odds with the kind that Liverpool have adopted under FSG, where the club has been run on a far stricter business model, spending in line with what it earns and bucking the trend in football of repeated loss-making businesses. The lack of the loosening of purse strings has been cause for much chagrin among some elements of the Reds fan base over time.

The ability for Chelsea to lessen the financial impact on the balance sheet of their spend was borne from the adoption of the tactic of offering extended deals of seven, eight and nine years in some cases, thus spreading the amortisation cost attributed to the transfer fee across a longer period of time, allowing the club more financial flexibility. A £100m transfer fee over a five-year contract, for example, would be amortised as £20m per year in club accounts, but by offering a nine-year deal to a player the amortised cost would be £11.1m on the balance sheet.

The use of such contracts forced UEFA to act and put a block on deals of more than five years being offered to players from this summer, with a number of European clubs understood to have been unhappy at Chelsea’s use of longer contracts.

But it is understood that some clubs remain concerned at potential ways around the five-year rule that was introduced.

Chelsea had been seeking to conclude a deal for Uruguayan midfielder Manuel Ugarte from Portuguese side Sporting CP. Ugarte had been a player heavily linked with Liverpool earlier this year.

It now appears as if Paris Saint-Germain are to win the race for the 22-year-old, with it reported in the Mirror that Chelsea had been ready to offer an eight-year deal to Ugarte and had been looking to circumvent any regulation by including any additional years above and beyond the five-year limit as options in the club’s favour that they would be able to trigger.

Chelsea have had a major impact on the transfer market due to their approach over the last year to the extent where European football’s governing body has had to rewrite the rule book to try and head off a potential problem further down the road.

With new regulations having arrived other European clubs will be keeping a close eye on how any attempts to find a workaround land with UEFA.

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In a sport laced with myths, it is one of the most enduring. But can a team really be too good to go down?

The weight of evidence suggests not, with clubs – in the Premier League at least – given a full 38 games over the course of a season to prove they can at least be 17th best and avoid dropping down a division.

Sure, there have been teams packed with strong reputations that have been relegated in the past. Stellar names such as Manchester United, Manchester City, Tottenham Hotspur and Chelsea have slipped through the trap door in the last 50 years.

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Indeed, three of the seven clubs to have won the title during the Premier League era have been relegated during the same period, some of them more than once. Leicester City were the latest as they joined Leeds United and Southampton in heading for the Championship at the end of the current campaign.

But while there was a collective failure at each club, that doesn’t necessarily equate to individuals no longer being good enough to perform in the top flight.

And Liverpool have shown in the past under Jurgen Klopp the value of snapping up such players. When Newcastle United were relegated from the Premier League in 2016, the Reds snapped up Gini Wijnaldum for £25million to bolster their midfield. The following year left-back Andy Robertson was taken from doomed Hull City in a £10m deal, while 12 months later the Reds triggered a release clause in the contract of Xherdan Shaqiri to sign the attacking midfielder for £13.75m from relegated Stoke City.

All went on to play integral roles in helping Liverpool become champions of Europe, the world and then England, with Robertson still part of a squad that last year won the FA Cup and League Cup.

Liverpool won’t be the only Premier League team scouring the Leicester, Leeds and Southampton squads in the hope of picking up a talent or two. But the specific profile of players they want to sign in the forthcoming transfer window means there are very few realistic options to pursue.

There are some, however. And chief among those is Southampton’s defensive midfielder Romeo Lavia, who is arguably the most in demand of any relegated player with Chelsea and Arsenal believed to have joined Liverpool in having an interest in the 19-year-old Belgium international.

Lavia joined Manchester City’s Academy as a 16-year-old from Anderlecht and was voted Premier League 2’s player of the season in 2021. He made two appearances for the City first team the following term, but moved to Southampton last summer for a potential £14m and made 35 appearances, scoring once. City have a buy-back clause of £40m (which would in practice be less due to a sell-on clause they also placed in the deal) but that only comes into effect next summer, meaning now is the time for Southampton to cash in.

Kyle Walker-Peters, the 26-year-old England international, can play in both full-back roles and would be unlikely to command a huge fee. Southampton skipper James Ward-Prowse is expected to leave, but at 28 is too old for consideration as Liverpool refashion their midfield.

Leicester are also poised to lose several key players, among whom Harvey Barnes would perhaps offer the greatest interest from most clubs. Liverpool, though, are well stocked for left-sided forwards, and their midfield targets would appear to preclude any move for James Maddison. Youri Tielemans has previously been considered a possible engine room option given he will be available on a free transfer, although sights have now moved elsewhere.

Leeds United, meanwhile, appear to have the fewest obvious candidates for signing from the three relegated clubs. Tyler Adams, the United States international midfielder who was sorely missed through injury during the last few months of the season, is one, so too 23-year-old attacking midfielder Luis Sinisterra, who scored against Liverpool in April.

Lavia, though, would appear the prime candidate should the Reds again look to relegated clubs for reinforcements this summer.

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