Chelsea signing ‘worries’ Allardyce as pundit claims Boehly ‘doesn’t know anything about football’ | OneFootball

Ex-Premier League manager Sam Allardyce has explained why he is “worried” about Chelsea signing World Cup winner Enzo Fernandez from Benfica.

The Blues have been busy in the transfer market in the past two windows. They have comfortably been the biggest spenders in world football as around £550m has been splashed out by the club’s owners since the end of the 2021/22 campaign.

Todd Boehly’s consortium completed their takeover of the club last year and they have been quick to throw their weight around in the transfer market.

Their January splurge was topped off by the addition of Fernandez on deadline day. The transfer fee for the Argentina international is a British transfer record of around €121m, according to reports.

Fernandez has enjoyed an extraordinary rise over the past couple of months. He only joined Benfica last summer from River Plate and he shone for Argentina at the World Cup as they won the competition for the third time.

But Allardyce thinks the signing of Fernandez is a “huge risk” for Chelsea.

“Chelsea’s signing of Enzo Fernandez worries me,” Allardyce said on the No Tippy Tappy Football podcast.

“What if it doesn’t work? What a commitment it is for eight years because obviously, the league haven’t shut that loophole down yet.

“It’s £106 million; it’s a huge risk for the club, and particularly for the manager, who will get the blame if it doesn’t work. I don’t think Fernandez was his choice.

“I doubt the player was his first choice, but that’s how the top works now. You are not really the manager anymore, you are just a coach, and you accept these players and try and do your best with them.”

Former Ajax and PSV manager Aad de Mos meanwhile has hit out at Boehly, as he has claimed that the Chelsea owner does not know the basics of football.

“Todd Boehly doesn’t know anything about football. If you want to lose your money, you do it like Todd Boehly did, he has no feeling at all with top sport and certainly not with football, they think they can achieve it that way, but that can also be his downfall,” De Mos told soccernews.nl.

“I think Chelsea’s owner is just looking from America saying; ‘Okay, he’s a good player, I heard that from this one, let’s get that player.’

“He doesn’t know what a defensive midfielder is. Or a number eight, or a ten. Americans don’t know that.

“They come from a different world, they come from a basketball world, and the ice hockey world, and baseball, they think football is the same thing. But football is very different and very special and the new owner of Chelsea will experience that.”