How Chelsea & Forest are ripping up the script of how to run a football club… just don’t try to make sense of it
IT’S time to forget everything we thought we knew about how to run a football club.Forget stability, forget continuity, forget financial prudence, forget carefully-targeted player recruitment, forget inspirational managerial appointments.Chelsea chief Todd Boehly has splashed out over £1billion on signingsCredit: RexEvangelos Marinakis has turned Nottingham Forest into top-four contendersCredit: GettyJust tear everything to shreds, sell everyone, then max out the credit card by buying footballers.Dozens and dozens of footballers. Not just one new squad of players but two or three squads’ worth.Buy so many footballers that they can’t all fit into the dressing room at your training ground.Already got seven elite wingers? If another one becomes available, go and buy an eighth. You only live once.Read More on FootballBecause Chelsea and Nottingham Forest are the two great overachievers of this Premier League season — the Blues just two points off the summit and Forest in the Champions League places, above Manchester City.Both clubs have spent like sailors piddling it up on shore leave.If you have previously received the impressions from this column — or pretty much anywhere else in the media — that Chelsea’s Todd Boehly is a clueless American muppet, your mind must be playing tricks on you. Boehly always was a football genius.The nine-year contracts for unproven players. The knifing of more managers than Roman Abramovich. The transfer-window trolley dashes. Genius, all of it.Most read in FootballBEST FREE BET SIGN UP OFFERS FOR UK BOOKMAKERSAnd any ideas you had that Forest’s Evangelos Marinakis was a panic-buying shopaholic — a wild conspiracy theorist who hired that bloke off Gladiators to rumble referees — must have been the product of your own overactive imagination.Here is a big cuddly Greek Santa, laden with gifts and leading Forest into the promised land.Chelsea player ratings vs BrentfordSince Boehly and his Clearlake crew purchased Chelsea in the summer of 2022, the club has signed 45 players for a total of £1.3billion.Since Forest won promotion to the Premier League that same summer, they have got more than 40 players for a combined total in the region of £300million.And at both clubs, somehow, it’s working.At the age of 33, Forest’s Kiwi striker Chris Wood is the new Erling Haaland. Chelsea star Cole Palmer was Pep Guardiola’s blind spot.Anthony Elanga and Jadon Sancho are more effective than any winger currently on Manchester United’s books.The Premier League is a madhouse. To succeed, join the stark-raving lunatics, as Chelsea and Forest have done.Understated managersWhat both clubs needed, it turns out, was an understated, unheralded manager to sift through the shopping, to settle on a core squad, to play ball with eccentric owners and coach a bloody good football team.Neither Enzo Maresca nor Nuno Espirito Santo were wildly popular appointments.Maresca had led Leicester to the Championship title but was nobody’s first choice to succeed Mauricio Pochettino this summer.Yet the Italian was 20/20 in his vision of Chelsea’s best team, ruthless in his pre-season squad-slashing and he is now presiding over a premature vindication of Boehly’s seemingly-unhinged regime.Nuno, after his car-crash reign at Tottenham, replaced Forest’s promotion-winning Messiah Steve Cooper to a chorus of shrugs, just before the club would be deducted four points for breaching PSR last season. The Portuguese boss with the charisma bypass is the polar opposite of Brian Clough. Yet he is threatening to become the best of Forest’s 29 managers since the exit of Old Big ’Ead.Enzo Maresca is proving his doubters wrong alreadyCredit: GettyDon’t make sense of itSimilarly to Maresca, it’s been a case of clearing dead wood from the Forest, seeing the Chris Wood for the Tricky Trees.Of course, this is a snapshot in time. Nobody expects Forest to play in the Champions League next season and nobody expects Chelsea to win the title this term.There are still PSR concerns at both clubs, still plenty of unwanted players on long, lucrative contracts.For every Palmer at Chelsea, there’s a Mykhailo Mudryk. Boehly’s mob are still paying Raheem Sterling £200,000 a week not to play for Arsenal.And at Forest, for every Morgan Gibbs-White, there’s a Jonjo Shelvey.But, at present, these two clubs — who seemed to be giving us a crash course in how not to run a football club — are doing exactly the bleeding opposite.Whatever you do, just don’t try to make sense of any of it.Andy’s AwfulLIVERPOOL’S exhilarating 2-2 draw with Fulham will be a contender for the Premier League’s match of the season.Which suggests that, to make things more interesting for everyone, the Reds should always be reduced to ten men for no apparent reason inside 20 minutes.One troubling aspect for Arne Slot is that his side were better AFTER Andy Robertson’s harsh early dismissal than they had been with the Scot, 30, on the pitch.Full-backs don’t tend to go over the hill, they fall off cliffs — as Robbo and his fellow stalwart, 34-year-old Kyle Walker at Manchester City, have done.Cottagers’ Antonee Robinson, 27, man of the match on Saturday, has a Scouse accent despite his USA international allegiance, and would be an ideal replacement.Except that Fulham are loath to do business with Liverpool, after the Kop outfit signed academy products Harvey Elliott and Fabio Carvalho on the cheap.Is Andy Robertson coming to the end of his prowess at Liverpool?Credit: EPABrit Of A ChangeTHERE can rarely have been a more predictable sacking than that of Gary O’Neil at Wolves.It wasn’t just two wins from 16 matches, it was his players’ meltdowns in consecutive defeats by West Ham and Ipswich which turned his side into Wolver-tantrum Wanderers.His exit came just before the equally obvious departure of Russell Martin at Southampton.It means there are only two English bosses — Eddie Howe and Sean Dyche — in the top flight, along with just one other Brit, Kieran McKenna at Ipswich.A complete wipeout of homegrown bosses is on the horizon. Unless the Etihad sheikhs decide it’s time to break the glass on the emergency alarm and call up Fireman Sam Allardyce?He’s A Must PickJORDAN PICKFORD’S heroics in Everton’s 0-0 draw at Arsenal on Saturday suggested that, of all the changes Thomas Tuchel might make as England boss, the goalkeeping position will NOT be one of them.He has as many caps as Gordon Banks and more major final appearances than every other goalkeeper ever to play for England put together.And with the Wembley debacle against Greece in October perhaps his only truly bad performance in a Three Lions shirt, it might soon be time to show Pickford some proper appreciation.Jordan Pickford should continue to be England’s No1 for a while yetCredit: ReutersGive Spoty Men A GoIF the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award were for sporting achievement it would go to Joe Root, who this year confirmed himself as England’s greatest ever batsman.If it were down to force of personality, it would go to 17-year-old darts phenomenon Luke Littler, who has made the Ally Pally arrow-slinging jamboree a global must-watch. But it will go to athletics’ Keely Hodgkinson — not unreasonably, as she’s an Olympic 800 metres gold medallist with a sparkling personality.And note that the previous three winners have all been women. Is it time for separate SPOTY awards for either sex — some positive discrimination just to give the blokes a chance?Not Gund enoughWHILE focus has fallen on Rodri’s injury, Kyle Walker’s terminal decline, Phil Foden’s form crisis and Erling Haaland’s lack of goals, the re-signing of Ilkay Gundogan has escaped much criticism.But Manchester City’s decision to bring back their 34-year-old former captain — a year after he decamped for Barcelona — was an extremely retrograde step from such a forward-thinking boss as Pep Guardiola.READ MORE SUN STORIESIlkay Gundogan has hardly pulled up trees on his return to Man CityCredit: Getty’Statistical anomaly’ TOTTENHAM have lost as many Premier League games as they have won this season, yet after a 5-0 win in the “principles derby” at Southampton, they boast a goal difference of plus-17.This wild statistical anomaly is perfect testimony to the unique wonders of Angeball. More
