The end of an error for Chelsea: Graham Potter put out of his misery

A few years ago Todd Boehly did a TV interview where he defined his approach to business as “creating value where there are value gaps”, or in other words seeing the picture more clearly, doing it better, being, at every moment, the smartest guy in the room. Although, watching Boehly and his co-controlling owner Behdad Eghbali’s activities at Chelsea over the last year, it is tempting to wonder exactly which room we’re talking about here, exactly how un-smart that room would have to be to make this dynamic work.

Certainly that room isn’t, to date, European club football, which is proving, once again, to be razor sharp in identifying the mark at the table, out there slapping down those chips, top hat askew, loose rolls of cash fluttering gaily from his trouser turn-ups. And least of all on the day Chelsea have finally decided to sack Graham Potter, thus taking the total cost of hiring Graham Potter for seven months to at least £50m.

This total is made up of a £21m release fee to Brighton, a £13m payoff for Champions League winner Thomas Tuchel and something similar for Potter now (this is rarely the full value of a contract, but hey, we’re on Todd time now! Value gaps!). To this must be added the cost of missing out on the Champions League and the procurement of another manager. Add in £550m spent on a laughably random assortment of players, almost all of whom have already depreciated because everyone looks bad in this light. And right now it is hard to think of a more concertedly idiotic spell in charge of an elite football club than the last 12 months of mercurial disruption, a business model so disruptive it seeks, above all, to aggressively disrupt its own product, because, hey, nobody expects that.

At the very