Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital may have completed their £4.25billion from previous Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich in late May but the decisions and overall legacy of the sanctioned Russian oligarch continue to come under fire as a former Blues boss has opened up on certain transfer failings made in the past. So much so that the Portuguese, whose last job was with Marseille, has listed five transfer failings that he believed culminated in his eventual downfall at Chelsea.
Andre Villas-Boas said “Of course, we missed the [Luka] Modric deal at the beginning of the season. If the Modric deal was not to be done there was the [Joao] Moutinho deal to be done. That was the promise of Roman at that time. Moutinho joined the Premier League years and years after I tried – proposing to both Chelsea and Tottenham – and everybody has seen the player that he is. So that denial of him was a failure that you can’t [blame on] a coach. I thought that we had the Modric deal done and he ended up in Real Madrid the season after. Then the Moutinho deal was to be done with Porto but the problem was the deal (for Chelsea) for the left-back of Porto, Alvaro Pereira, fell through. Roman felt p****d off. So, no Modric, no Moutinho…[Radamel] Falcao is another one that was about to come in but then you had [Didier] Drogba who couldn’t decide whether he wanted to leave or not in January. He was about to go to Shanghai, then he isn’t any more and then Marina [Granovskaia, Chelsea’s influential director] she wanted Carlos Tevez and suddenly she doesn’t want Tevez anymore. So, you know, managements and mismanagements that are typical within that organisation. But Marina evolved to one of the greatest CEOs at that time [at Chelsea]. I am nothing compared to what she has achieved. There are a lot of things about that season that deserve one of those shocking autobiographies in England that reaches number one in WH Smith!”
Abramovich’s heirs have just come off the back of splurging upwards of £270million on new recruits to help refresh and revamp the squad. However, the impact of some of the Russian’s decisions remains with a former Blues boss opening up on his experience with Boehly’s predecessor. The man who bought the club on the cheap back in 2003 from Ken Bates, was known for two things- splashing the cash and hiring and firing managers quickly. One person who fell foul of this culture was an exciting prospect at the time Andre Villas-Boas who will be remembered by Chelsea and Tottenham supporters as one of the worst managers at their respective clubs for a very long-time. Villas-Boas, who made his name at FC Porto, made a number of decisions like isolating Didier Drogba and other senior players that didn’t go down the right way at the time. However, fast forward all those years to now, and the 44-year-old has held back no punches with his assessment of his disastrous time in West London which he believes would make for a ‘shocking autobiography.’ As part of his scathing assessment of where he believed things went wrong, instead of his own management and some of the decisions he made which led to the Roberto Di Matteo interim appointment, Villas-Boas shifted blame to off-the-pitch decisions made by Abramovich and right-hand trustee Marina Granovskaia.
Boehly will be hoping Thomas Tuchel or current manager Graham Potter doesn’t come out in the future with these damning statements 20 years or so down the line where who knows, there could be different owners at the helm in West London.
