UK Edition
Chelsea's talent factory cashes in again - how they became the best 'selling club' in the Premier League
When Chelsea made their move for Demba Ba in December 2012, ahead of the transfer window opening, the agents involved thought it would be a simple, lucrative deal. After all, there was a clause in Ba’s contract at Newcastle United – a £7 million release fee – and they would collect a reputed £2 million in fees, with the striker receiving a pay rise to £80,000 a week.
Yet, despite knowing that other clubs – including Arsenal – were interested, Chelsea said no. Yes, they would pay the transfer fee – but they would not pay that much to the agents, who would get a standard five per cent, and Ba could have £60,000 a week.
The agents – and there were a few of them involved, complicating matters – were stunned and believed Chelsea, who had just sold Daniel Sturridge to Liverpool for up to £12 million, and desperately needed a striker, would cave in. But what was interesting is that it was the agents who backed down. And they did so quickly.
The transfer did not drag on. Ba was announced as a Chelsea player on Jan 4 and Marina Granovskaia, who took charge of negotiations, in a further confirmation of her growing importance at Chelsea, did the deal. Whether or not Ba was a success at Chelsea is another matter.
Six months later Chelsea announced that Granovskaia, one of Roman Abramovich’s closest associates, stretching back two decades, was officially a director of the club – she had been running things for some time– and she has been central to player negotiations, contracts and transfers, and takes a hard-headed approach to such business. She is, according to those who have dealt with her, very good at “chipping away at the deal” in Chelsea’s favour.
It tallied with what Abramovich wanted and the approach can be evidenced again in the deal selling Patrick Bamford to Middlesbrough for up to £10 million – an initial £6 million plus significant add-ons for a 23-year-old who moved to Stamford Bridge from Nottingham Forest in 2012 for a fee of £1.5 million but never played for the first team.
Bamford had his most successful season at Boro in 2014-15, when he was the Championship Player of the Year, and is talented, but he has struggled in recent loan spells at Crystal Palace, Norwich City and Burnley. The fee appears another good one for Chelsea.
The striker had also followed the model of signing a new contract before leaving, as he did before his loan at Palace in 2015. In his case it was a three-year deal, allowing Chelsea to protect the ‘asset’ and the club have insisted on similar arrangements with the likes of the next ‘big’ player who will either break into the first-team or be sold – Danish defender Andreas Christensen who returns from a two-year loan at Borussia Mönchengladbach next summer with the intention of being in the first-team squad.
They also tied down Nathan Ake – a new five-year contract in 2015 while on loan at Watford and now recalled by Chelsea from Bournemouth – and are in negotiations with Nathaniel Chalobah, who made his Chelsea debut earlier this season after no fewer than six loan spells over six years since he was an unused substitute aged just 15.
Chelsea balk at suggestions they are running some kind of football factory, an economic model to generate income and help them comply with Financial Fair Play but what they have developed is not, yet, a clear path into the first team – although that is changing under manager Antonio Conte, it seems – but rather an astute business model.
An important part of that is gathering talent, developing it and selling it on efficiently if it is deemed the player will not make the first-team grade. A moot point is whether or not a number of those players were ever thought good enough or were simply bought to sell in the first place. Chelsea reject this theory.
The club has also created the most successful academy in English football – successful in relation to the number of trophies won but also, now, revenue generated. For this Granovskaia works closely with technical director Michael Emenalo who oversees a loan department which includes two coaches, a physiotherapist and a fitness coach, who are exclusively dedicated to monitoring the progress of loan players.
Chelsea also send the club psychologist to track the players’ mental wellbeing and, given they currently have 36 players registered on loan, he and the rest of the team are busy dealing with clubs ranging from Alanyaspor in Turkey to Bristol City to Vitesse Arnhem, the Dutch partner club that has extremely close ties with the Chelsea hierarchy including Granovskaia.
The loan network stretches from Juventus in Serie A (Juan Cuadrado) to Solihull Moors in the National League (Nathan Baxter) and elsewhere around the world. In the last summer transfer window no fewer than 10 of the 72 Football League clubs borrowed players from Chelsea.
They have sold a number of young stars and sold well – Thorgan Hazard to Borussia Mönchengladbach (£7 million), Papy Djilobodji to Sunderland (£8 million) – but also extracted big fees for more established players such as Oscar, £57 million from Shanghai SIPG, and Juan Mata, £37 million from Manchester United. Regardless of whether selling these players – and the likes of Kevin De Bruyne (£18.7 million) and Romelu Lukaku (£30 million) – was right, no-one could dispute the fees were impressive at the time.
The ideal scenario, in terms of trading, for this model is not selling and buying back either Nemanja Matic or David Luiz – as Chelsea have ended up doing – or trying to bring back Lukaku, but the way in which they acquired Thibaut Courtois from Genk for just under £8 million, loaned him out for three seasons to Atletico Madrid so that the loan payments covered his transfer fee and then brought him back as their first-choice goalkeeper.
Or in the way they sold Petr Cech, a decade older than Courtois, at a profit.
It takes huge resources and planning to be able to do this, of course, and Chelsea have them at their disposal, as do other big clubs. It also takes a very clear, business-like approach. And, with Granovskaia, and the staff at Chelsea and the agents used and trusted by Abramovich, they have that also.