Regrets, big bucks and a toy car: inside year one of the Boehly era at Chelsea

L ast week, as the first anniversary of Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital completing their £2.5bn takeover of Chelsea drew closer, the overriding feeling was relief. The season from hell was almost over.

Around the training ground the talk is of widespread misery and players openly looking to leave, though there is plenty of blame to go around. The coaching staff have been shocked at the apathy in training. Frank Lampard, whose time as interim head coach ended on Sunday, has derided the dip in standards. Some people believe that Mauricio Pochettino, whose appointment is an undeniable positive, will be in for a shock when he gets to work.

There is no dressing it up: Boehly and his fellow co-controlling owner, Behdad Eghbali, have presided over a shambles. They have achieved something fascinating by getting through four managers in a season, spending close to £600m on signings and leading Chelsea to a first bottom-half finish since 1996. There has never been anything like it.

Inside the club, though, there is perspective. There is unease at the unflattering media portrayals of Boehly. Suggestions that he is dialling back his involvement in the running of Chelsea because of their decline are dismissed as a misinterpretation. As one figure says, it was never the plan for Boehly to be so visible. Another points to the influence of Eghbali, the driving force behind several key decisions. It is stressed that Eghbali’s business partner, José E Feliciano, is another crucial presence.

The insistence is that Boehly’s way is always to spend the first year getting under the skin of a new business. The approach is to defer to the experts once they are in situ.

But Chelsea are different and, to understand why it has gone so wrong, it