A report on Friday claimed the relationship between Todd Boehly and Behdad Eghbali, who heads up Clearlake, has become strained to the point that they can no longer work with each other. Clearlake want to buy out Boehly, Boehly wants to buy out Clearlake and neither party is willing to sell their shares.
A speedy resolution therefore looks unlikely, which clearly isn’t great for Chelsea, but at least grants time for the boardroom ‘civil war’ to branch out onto social media, where everyone’s asking the question: Are you Team Boehly or Team Eghbali?
There are no half measures among the social media Chelsea fans. One of them is a pathogen dead set on destroying the club as they’ve been making great strides towards doing in their time at the helm thus far, while the other is responsible for everything good that’s happened in the last year and a bit (Cole Palmer, mainly) and will guide Chelsea back to the top table through their savvy business strategies and genuine love of the club.
Such praise and admonishment have been dealt to both in seemingly equal measure, because opinions on player recruitment, managerial dismissals and the club’s general direction are formed largely through conjecture, and those that have some basis in fact – or have at least been reported as such – allow space for fans to side with one owner and aim hate at the other.
Todd Boehly is said to want more experience in the squad, which any reasonable Chelsea fan would suggest is A Good Idea, but after appointing himself as sporting director (an insane decision that has us leaning very much towards Behdad Eghbali), that desired experience came through the signings of Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Kalidou Koulibaly and Raheem Sterling, none of whom remain at the club having been almost entirely terrible.
Apparently Boehly wanted to retain Mauricio Pochettino at the end of last season and it was Eghbali who made the call to let him go. A harsh decision most would say given the uptick in form at the end of the campaign, but no one yet knows – or ever will – whether that was the right decision.
Eghbali is now the more hands on of the two, watching Chelsea home and away, and making frequent trips to the dressing room. Some will see that as a sign of affection and hunger to get the club back on its feet, others will wish he would p*ss off up to the boardroom as what he’s done thus far isn’t working and he should leave the day-to-day to whichever manager happens to be in charge that week and the various ex-Brighton employees they’ve poached at great expense.
Boehly wants to make progress on building a new stadium and Eghbali doesn’t, which is thought to be a key reason for The Civil War. While only a very small minority would be against that idea given the plan is now to build on the same site, focus on the stadium would inevitably lead to less money in the coffers for new signings. Not necessarily a bad thing, but the rate with which they’re flying through managers suggests fresh faces for fresh tactics and ideas will be a necessity.
MORE ON THE CHELSEA ‘CIVIL WAR’
👉 Chelsea owners ‘exploring’ sale as Boehly, Eghbali ‘relationship deteriorates’ for three reasons
👉 Chelsea ‘on brink of civil war’ with Boehly, Clearlake ownership ‘at breaking point’
The Eghbali-Boehly partnership is now ‘untenable’ as their views on what the club should and shouldn’t be doing are contradictory. But having either one in sole charge doesn’t sound great either, because while we don’t know the intricacies of who’s done what and when, so little of what’s happened in the last two years has any merit that neither one of them can have made more positive contributions than negative ones.
READ MORE: Chelsea ‘bomb squad’, Enzo Fernandez and Joao Felix in ranking of 22 Todd Boehly mistakes
‘Boehly has a 20 to 30-year vision for Chelsea’ compared to Eghbali and Clearlake’s ‘decade-plus commitment’. Doesn’t mean anything really, and although Boehly’s stance sounds better – bigger numbers; ‘vision’s’ a good word – if Chelsea fans were offered what they’ve experienced over the last two years for ten or 30 years they would ask if there was a third and much lower option before plumping for ten.
And that’s the crux of it – this is a Sophie’s choice but with Sophie never having met her children, deciding which one lives or dies based on third or fourth hand accounts which report both as being little twerps whose supposed redeeming features could easily be mistaken for further flaws in their characters.
Are you Team Boehly or Team Eghbali? Neither. Next.
