When the Todd Boehly-led ownership group officially purchased Chelsea from Roman Abramovich in May 2022, it sure seemed like they were taking over one of the five best clubs in the world.
In the two years prior to Boehly & Co.'s takeover, Chelsea reached four cup finals. They qualified for the Champions League in both seasons, and they'd won the whole thing just a year prior. While they weren't quite on the level of Liverpool and Manchester City in 2022, they lost to Real Madrid in extra time of the Champions League quarterfinals after a dominant second-leg comeback at the Santiago Bernabeu. Along with those three clubs and maybe Bayern Munich, no one else in Europe could make a legit claim to be sitting ahead of Chelsea in Europe's pecking order.
Since then under Boehly, Chelsea have handed out seven-year contracts seemingly for fun and paid more than €1 billion in transfer fees for 28 new players -- a previously unthinkable sum of money for a previously unthinkable number of acquisitions in an 18th-month span. After adding all of that investment to what was already one of the best teams on the planet, they have since finished 12th in the Premier League last year and are 10th this season.
They are, at least, finally back in a cup final, taking on Liverpool in the Carabao Cup on Sunday (stream it live on ESPN+). But, after spending a record amount of money on signing players, Boehly and the rest of the ownership group have clearly fallen short of their ambitions for Chelsea.
So, with the team one game away from winning the first trophy under their new owners, let's take a look back at those 28 signings and ask a simple question: How many of them have actually worked out? Let's go one step further: How many of these deals were actually good?
How have Chelsea spent, and by how much?
According to the site Transfermarkt, Chelsea have spent €1.1 billion on transfer fees since summer 2022.
You don't need me to tell you that's a lot of money, but I will. If you took all of the money that Boehly and the rest of Chelsea's ownership have invested in just the fees necessary to get a player to break his contract with his previous team, turned it into pennies and stacked those pennies on top of each other, the resulting structure would be more than 150 times taller then Mount Everest.
In soccer terms, Chelsea have devoted more than twice as much money to transfer fees than any other club except Paris Saint-Germain, who have spent €537 million on fees since summer 2022 and who are owned by a trillion-dollar sovereign wealth fund.
- Stream FA Cup on ESPN+: Chelsea vs. Leeds (Feb. 28, 2 p.m. ET, U.S. only)
In terms of permanent transfers -- excluding the loans for players such as João Félix last season -- Chelsea have signed 28 players for a fee. The average age of those players is 21.5, and the average transfer fee is €38.9 million. Broken down by position, it looks like this:
• Goalkeepers: three total, average age of 22, average fee of €17.3 million
• Defenders: seven total, average age of 22.6, average fee of €43.1 million
• Midfielders: seven total, average age of 19.4, average fee of €53.1 million
• Forwards: 11 total, average age of 22.1, average fee of €33.1 million
As for where they're acquiring their players:
• England: 11
• France: four
• Brazil: three
• MLS and Italy: two
• Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Ukraine: one each
Those are a couple objective ways to categorize what Chelsea have done so far, but it's time to get subjective. Broadly, these 28 signings, which excludes loans, seem to settle into five categories:
1) It's too early to tell
2) Doesn't look great
3) Bad moves that went badly
4) Players on expensive contracts who play
5) Actually good moves
With that, let's dig into each signing now.