EPL TALK: You’ll win nothing with kids, Chelsea

YOU'LL win nothing with kids. You’ll win nothing with Romelu Lukaku. Alan Hansen famously believed the first about Manchester United’s Class of '92. Chelsea owner Todd Boehly believes the latter about the Blues. The only problem is, Boehly’s boys can’t beat West Ham United either.

Chelsea couldn’t beat the Hammers despite a transfer spend of almost £1 billion and a one-man advantage for most of the second-half against opponents relying on a defensive template so retro, it should’ve come with bell-bottoms and a Bee Gees soundtrack.

The Blues are currently emulating the youthful Red Devils of the 1990s in only one regard: they are the team that everyone wants to beat, just for a laugh. The Class of '92 irritated outsiders because they won everything. Boehly’s money-ballers irritate because they buy everyone.

The same could be said of the Saudis, of course, but at least the oligarchs have a plan. The world is a geopolitical chessboard and their walking, talking advertising billboards are their pawns, moving from one Instagram post to another, via private jet, to spread the word for an autocratic regime that murders the odd journalist. And the word is sportswashing.

It’s not a subtle plan, but it is a plan. Boehly’s mission, on the other hand, is much more fun. Like Darth Vader and his minions sitting around the control room and promising that the Death Star will be operational, once they’ve killed off old troops like Lukaku, Boehly’s intentions are not entirely logical.

The Blues’ skittish collapse against the Hammers suggests Boehly’s template was put together after watching Moneyball for the recruitment and then Cobra Kai, where the kids upstage the established names. He probably should’ve watched Escape to Victory, the one where the Allies defeated the Nazis in a football match, thanks to Pele’s overhead kick, Michael Caine’s beer belly and Sylvester Stallone diving around like Animal in The Muppets.

Sometimes, the kids aren’t alright. Sometimes, the old guard retains muscle memory when it comes to putting away the odd goal. Michail Antonio certainly does. The West Ham striker may have a tendency to move across the turf like a tractor being pulled through a muddy field, but his knack for scoring endures.

He had a single chance. He took it. Chelsea had 17 shots, scored only once, missed a penalty and managed only one shot on target after Enzo Fernandez’s penalty miss – and that came in stoppage time. And it was deflected. The Blues are all dressed up with no one to score.

Meanwhile a £97.5m striker with 121 goals in 278 Premier League appearances has no shirt number. Lukaku’s bags are packed to leave, as Chelsea eagerly hope for a space to appear on that Saudi chessboard.

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Lukaku’s abilities have always polarised opinion. He has all the essential attributes. Physicality, athleticism, speed and shooting accuracy, but they are often thrown together like elements on a Salvador Dali painting. Everything is there, just not in the order that we might expect. Even so, there’s a case to be made that he might have put away one of those 17 shots against West Ham.

But he’s a 30-year-old striker with no sell-on value. For Boehly’s investors, the Belgian might as well be crypto stock. Kids are the new gold, with defensive midfielders the new platinum, as seen on TV in the guise of £115 million-signing Moisés Caicedo, who came off the bench and gave away the penalty that confirmed West Ham’s victory.

Listen carefully. That’s the sound of Liverpool fans, still laughing.

Of course, it’s easy to laugh at Chelsea (no, it really is.) We’re the fools. As the corporate wizards who know about such things keep telling us, Boehly is assembling a squad of profitable commodities, in the way that the A-Team used to build a weaponised tank from rusty parts in a cow shed (which has no cultural currency among anyone under 30, I’m just trying to find another group of elite Americans building something equally daft.)

You see, Boehly and Clearlake Capital are signing only young players, on long, incentivised contracts, which means they can spread the outlays across several years and potentially write down – or write off – depreciating assets and then retain the best and flog the rest for an exorbitant profit.

What might such a bold, farsighted plan look like? Well, it looked a lot like an incoherent squad struggling to score against the limited Hammers, despite enjoying almost 75 per cent possession. It looked like a team with too many full-backs, seeking to make passes to forwards who were not there. It looked like an unwieldy, confused mess of long-term investments trying to resemble a short-term football team.

Poor Mauricio Pochettino has inherited a problem that no Chelsea manager has satisfactorily addressed since Antonio Conte had Diego Costa in 2017. That was the last time a Blues forward surpassed 20 goals in the EPL. That was also the last time Chelsea won the title. It’s rather difficult to achieve one without the other.

United’s class of '92 succeeded because they had Eric Cantona. Sir Alex Ferguson lifted his last title because he’d signed a goal guarantee in Robin van Persie. Liverpool won everything because they had an established forward line and old pros like Jordan Henderson and James Milner to mind the gaps. Pep Guardiola advocated and arguably perfected a seamless blend of wily veterans and youthful promise at Manchester city, and they haven’t done too badly.

And yet, Chelsea are going in a different direction.

Lukaku is probably not the solution to their scoring problems, but the relatively inexperienced Nicolas Jackson can’t carry the side either. Promising talents may offer a greater sell-on value, but goals and experience do come in handy against opponents who are quite happy to park a bus behind Antonio and hope for the best.

Fancy accounting might allow the Blues to spend a billion quid and still balance their books, but at some point, they really should have a go at balancing their squad.

Neil Humphreys is an award-winning football writer and a best-selling author, who has covered the English Premier League since 2000 and has written 28 books.

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