“I am not here to defend…” – Premier League CEO on Chelsea spending | OneFootball

Premier League CEO Richard Masters has just been speaking at the Financial Times’ “Business of Football” summit, and Chelsea were one of the main topics of conversation.

Masters was one of the key figures in green lighting the Clearlake Consortium’s takeover of Chelsea, and he had to field plenty of questions about how they have run the club so far.

The massive spending they’ve already committed to was never going to go down well with the other clubs in the league – or those who like to see some competitive balance in the sport.

While Todd Boehly and his partners have spent crazy money, we have yet to see the full span of their plan, as Masters pointed out:

“I am not here to defend [Chelsea], the new owners have owned the club for less than a year and had two transfer windows. We need to judge the club over three or four years,” he responded when asked whether the Blues had overspent.

“They might have bought, they would argue probably, having a different transfer policy to the previous regime. They’ve got younger players on longer contracts and with lower wages.

“Within our rules, it is a test over a 12 month period. The question is whether they are going to sell some players in the next window.

“I can’t answer that question [if they have overspent], I am not here to defend them but you have to judge these things over a period of time.”

He’s right – perhaps the owners have just front loaded their spending, and will now be frugal for several years to average things out.

But we fear that they may have overestimated their hit rate – there’s no guarantee all of the players we bought in the last two windows will succeed.