Clearlake are taking full control of Chelsea. So what does this mean?
Fans will have questions...but the answer is, not much
So, it seems Todd Boehly and his co-investor Mark Walter, are about to sell their stakes in Chelsea to Clearlake. Boehly and Walter own about 25% of Chelsea combined, so this would take Clearlake’s stay to 86% from its current 61% stake. In essence, Chelsea are about to become solely run by Clearlake Capital. Behdad Eghbali, the co-owner of Clearlake, has been running Chelsea day to day for sometime with his Clearlake co-owner Jose Feliciano in the background, and now he will have more power than ever before.
Naturally, people are going to have questions about what this all means for Chelsea. Because whether we like it or not, the ownership of a football club has an impact as to what happens on the pitch.
The short answer is, nothing much will change. Clearlake have been running the club for some time, Todd has had little influence recently. Behdad Eghbali has been running the club day to day and all the recent decisions have come from him and Clearlake.
But of course, Eghbali and Clearlake taking more ownership control will naturally lead to some questions about Clearlake’s motives, their ambitions, and their capability to achieve them.
So what are Clearlake at Chelsea for? Many think it’s solely to make money, with success on the pitch a firm second place. It’s a reasonable assumption for people to make about Private Equity people who are answerable to investors, who want a return on their investment.
They’ve also made a TON of mistakes in the last few years. Bad signings, bad appointments, not listening to fans at times, a trophy winning year, yes, but also two of our worst seasons for some time, churning through managers who all fell out with the Sporting Directors. They’ve made a mess at times.
So how to address these two questions: Ambition, and competence.
Firstly, ambition. Well, as Behdad Eghbali himself said in 2022, success on the pitch and success off it go hand in hand.
It’s a plain and simple truth that the most profitable clubs in world football are the ones who compete for the biggest trophies regularly. Here’s the list of the clubs with the biggest revenues in 2026:
Real Madrid: €1.16 billion
FC Barcelona: €975 million
Bayern Munich: €861 million
Paris Saint-Germain: €837 million
Liverpool: €836 million (Highest in the Premier League)
Manchester City: €829 million
Arsenal: €822 million
What do all these clubs have in common? They go deep in the Champions League every year. They compete for their respective league titles every year. They have big stadiums. They hire best in class football people, on and off the pitch. As a result, they have the biggest revenues and the biggest profits.
Not one of these clubs settles for top 4 every year, or scraping into Europe. If it gets to that, they often change managers or invest big on the pitch to ensure that doesn’t happen again. They all aim to win, to be the best, to compete every single year.
Jose Feliciano stated back in 2023 that Clearlake wanted to get Chelsea’s revenues up to a billion in the long term. That’s up there with Real Madrid and Barcelona, more than any Premier League club. You won’t do that finishing top 6 or even scrapping around for top 4. You need to be getting to the final stages of the Champions League and PL title races, with all the commercial partnerships which follow.
Behdad Eghbali believes this too. There’s a quote from Behdad from a conversation at a conference earlier this year which shows this.
“Can this be successful without winning? The answer is no. We’ve got to win. Ultimately the objective, and especially the objective that a club like Chelsea is, you’ve got to win, you’ve got to win trophies, and you’ve got to win consistently again.”
- Behdad Eghbali, 2026
I believe Behdad has backed this with his actions. In the last four years Chelsea have spent over £1.8b on players, a net spend of around £900m. There’ve been a lot of failures, a lot of mistakes, but they’ve not been afraid to spend big on top players.
In 2023 we broke the British transfer record twice for Enzo Fernandez and Moises Caicedo. Only a month ago we broke our own club record by paying £117m for Morgan Rogers.
He’s backed it with some of his appointments too. Although we know the ones which maybe didn’t work out, that’s changed in the last year. This summer, we appointed one of the best managers in the game, Xabi Alonso, backed him in the market and gave him more power and influence at the club than any manager since Jose Mourinho in 2004. Last November, we appointed Dave Fallows, one of the best recruiters and users of data in the game, who had a great track record at Manchester City and Liverpool, and he has been heavily involved in recruitment this summer.
We’ve also rejected offers for our biggest players, or any players we don’t want to sell. Enzo Fernandez, to me, is an exception, as he seems to want to leave and pushing strongly to leave regardless of us showing ambition. But overall, we keep our best players. We’ve resisted offers for the likes of Levi Colwill and are close to extending his contract. In the last 6 months we extended the contracts of two key players in Reece James and Moises Caicedo, even though we finished 10th. So to me, they’ve shown ambition.
Second, competence. Now everyone knows my criticisms of the Sporting Directors, their awful squad building, some poor managerial appointments and wasting club money, along with this policy to ignore experience in favour of building entirely around youth. I do believe that set us back a year or two on the pitch.
Again though, I go back to a quote from Behdad Eghbali from the same interview earlier this year:
“There is a plan. We reflect on the plan. We try to improve the plan and tweak the plan if it’s not working. The message is we’re committed.”
Behdad Eghbali
Again, this has been backed up with actions. We had an absolutely disastrous season last year. Enzo Marescas’ behaviour, undermining the team, the club and the squad and walking out mid season certainly didn’t help. But subsequent decisions and the poor recruitment really bit hard, and it was embarrassing. A new low point.
It was clear the plan wasn’t working. So Chelsea’s response? Hiring Xabi Alonso, giving him that power and influence and then backing him fully in the market with the players he wanted. Above all, breaking their own rule, ditching the youth only plan, and signing, on Xabi’s request, 4 players 26 or over, 3 of them who were proven in the Premier League, with incredible leadership qualities and 2 with experience of winning the biggest trophies.
Si has also reported there could be changes to the football structure above the manager in the next 12 months too, with Xabi making his own recommendations, which you’d expect to be an elite sporting director. Xabi is being given the power to shape the club in his image, very much as Jurgen Klopp was at Liverpool, Pep Guardiola at Manchester City and Mikel Arteta at Arsenal. They were all given that power, and time, and they’ve all won the Premier League and got to Champions League finals.
This again, is Behdad Eghbali keeping his word. He wasn’t bullshitting when he made these commitments, he saw the plan wasn’t working and changed it. He followed through his promises with his actions, and he was heavily involved in signing many of these more proven players.
Indeed, its important to note that Behdad Egbhali was key to all these decisions. Todd Boehly has barely been involved for quite some time. So none of this is going to disappear with Todd Boehly. In fact, with less obstacles or conflicts within the ownership, it may well accelerate. My feeling is Behdad believes he’s found his Luis Enrique, Pep Guardiola, Jurgen Klopp figure who he can build the club around for long term, sustained success.
To reiterate, this is NOT to say Behdad Eghbali and Clearlake haven’t made mistakes. Anyone who’s read my articles knows how much I’ve criticised them and called them out for the multiple bad decisions, bad signings, bad appointments they’ve made and how they’ve at times treated fans.
They’ll never get a free pass with me, they have to keep on doing a good job. Keep making good decisions, good signings, good appointments and doing things the right way and they’ll have my support. Keep following though on their promises. If they mess up again, I’ll be one of the first calling them out, without question.
I’ve criticised them a lot and asked for a lot of what is happening, so I can’t now not give them credit for it. That would be hypocritical. Owners will always be accountable to fans for how they steward the club, they are merely the custodians, clubs in truth always belong to the fans.
So far from being concerned that Todd Boehly is selling up, I’m fairly optimistic about the future of Chelsea. We’ve finally got an elite manager, we’ve had our best summer window for several years, we have a squad I believe can achieve top 3 or 4 and win a domestic trophy this season. Behdad Eghbali has stayed true to his commitment to reflect on the plan and make tweaks, he’s shown he’s ambitious and wants to win with the quality of level of investment in players. In my view we’ve seen those weren’t empty words.
Of course there is still a long way to go, but I think we’re at the beginning of something special with Xabi Alonso. I don’t see that being influenced at all by the ownership change. But as with all things, only time will tell.
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