Dear @ebehdad RE: The Conflict of Perverse Incentives I want to be fair to you. You had less than a month to structure a complex billion pound transaction, so some mistakes were always going to happen. But the mistake I’m describing isn’t an execution error. It’s a conceptual flaw baked into the deal from day one, and it has permanently poisoned your strategic position. You built a structure with three stakeholder groups, and you only have a fiduciary duty to one of them. That was always going to end badly. Let me explain why. A man came to you and said he had £300m and wanted to buy a business for £4.2bn. Two of his mates would chip in £300m each. You lent him the rest. To their credit, they’ve been matching cash calls ever since. But here is what you actually agreed to: you needed Boehly’s money, which meant Boehly got something in return. What he got was influence over the sporting operation. And the first thing he did with it was sack Thomas Tuchel so he could have his dressing room access. That decision, made to protect your financial relationship with a co-investor who couldn’t actually afford the asset, is what set everything else in motion. Roman left you a blueprint. He won trophies, built a global brand, and maintained a fair value that always exceeded his cost basis. Central to that was Cobham. Fans across England sing “he’s one of our own” for a reason. That bond between a club and its homegrown players is not sentiment. It is enterprise value. You dismantled it. You sold the graduates and killed the pipeline, not because it made sporting sense, but because your financial model required short term asset monetisation over long term brand construction. You have now spent more on transfers than any ownership group in the history of football. Chelsea are currently 9th. Below Brentford. Below Brighton. That is the sporting output of your model, and those fans who sang “he’s one of our own” have noticed. Here is where your conceptual flaw becomes permanent. Boehly has £100m of interest accrued and payable to Ares. You have at least £600m sitting in the Cayman Islands, accruing and payable to COP III. Across the group the interest bill is approaching £400m this year. That means you have no choice but to run this club for one purpose: to make debt service payments. Managing a football club to pay interest has never worked in the history of this game unless you’re Manchester United. Your problem is that you don’t have their revenues. So you are flipping players to fund cash flow. There will be no properly experienced signings. No manager with real authority. No trophies. You’re caught in a sell-to-buy death spiral and fans have worked out exactly what is happening. If you’ve made it this far in my letter, this is the part I’d encourage you to sit up and focus on. You need the fans more than they need you. Every day more of them are learning what this structure actually means for the club they love, and they are making a rational decision: do not buy the brand of an owner who is just here to pay interest. Your perverse incentive is to balance the books, manage the asset, and extract the best possible valuation before the debt matures. Their perverse incentive is to make sure you never get there, because the only exit that actually serves their interests is Ares foreclosing and forcing a sale to someone who can run this club properly. Think about what that means. The fans who generate the revenue you need to service your debt are now rationally incentivised to undermine that revenue. You created a structure where your key stakeholder group is rooting for your creditor to take the club from you. That is not a communication problem or a PR problem. It is a structural conflict with no resolution inside your current ownership model. I’m not sure what the long term prognosis is for a business in that position. But I think you already know. Yours truly, bf

As we all expected. More spite, xenophobia and retribution

Can someone explain the phenomena of obsessing over seeing “young talent” on the pitch? Are these people perverts? Real talk….what’s the point otherwise? I don’t get it

I hear it, but she also thought Delap would be good.

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No! Like how many times must we do this?

Carlo made some very strange decisions

When a government is this corrupt, no one believes anything you say. Not to mention the sanctions to ban foreigners from using the model is itself unserious, and just the usual xenophobia.

Among the worst man-managers to ever be allowed in a Chelsea dugout

I don’t get Deschamps’ obsession with Rabiot. I’d go with Zaïre-Emery instead. I’d also let Mbappe attack from his natural position on the left, with Demebele and Cherki stacked in the middle. That allows Olise to be on the right, also in his natural position.

It’s not obvious to me what Igor Thiago offers compared to Joao Pedro. To me Joao can do what Igor can plus more. It will be interesting to see what he does today, but I think Endrick eventually takes his place.

👇🏽🎯

How do the people that voted for that moron actually feel today? Real talk, how could so many people be that fucking stupid?

No club with a half-decent sporting director will pay Blueco’s asking price for players who have the right to leave. This brain dead flip-for-profit model is screwed on several levels.

So has he withdrawn his notice that he intends to leave?

It’s only a matter of time for this kid. The things he gets ridiculed for actually show he’s mentally mature beyond his years. I’m betting on Jose to turn him into a monster like he did with Didier Drogba. Different profile but signs of the same mentality are obvious.

How long will it take for this Bobby Vincent fella to do some research and smarten up? Blueco exploits the ignorance of these lazy journalists to pacify this fanbase.

Remember the shit they leaked about Cherki to make sure they would sign players from one particular catalogue