Liverpool expose glaring flaw in Chelsea’s model en route to Premier League title

It might be a lesson that looks to have gone unheeded by the biggest spenders in history. Liverpool have won the Premier League title without a single summer signing starting a top-flight game. It is a sequel of sorts: in 2019-20, they were champions after a transfer window when they did not buy a senior player.

Meanwhile, some £1.2bn of transfer spending later, Chelsea hover perilously in fifth. With three of the top six to play, their exile from the Champions League could yet extend into a third successive season. Pound for pound, and Chelsea have spent more than anyone else, the alliance of Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital risks being seen as one of the least successful ever in football.

Chelsea’s accounts remain a thing of wonder. A £128.1m profit last season came aided by the £200m sale of their women’s team. Losses of £90.1m the previous year would have been greater but for the sales of two hotels to themselves.

They can be specialists in finding loopholes. At least a footballing windfall beckons from the Club World Cup, their place secured by a different regime, a manager they sacked, in Thomas Tuchel, and a squad of players who, with the exception of Reece James and the back-up goalkeeper turned coach Willy Caballero, now ply their trade elsewhere.

In one sense, the 2021 Champions League winners will compete in the United States this summer. In another, they certainly will not.

Liverpool represent Chelsea’s opposites in many respects. A continuity club – five of their 2019 Champions League final starting XI may begin Sunday’s match at Stamford Bridge – who take fewer decisions, but are better at them.

Six men have managed Chelsea, including caretakers, in the three years of Boehly and Clearlake and many a supporter hopes a seventh could displace Enzo Maresca. Liverpool’s returning regime under Fenway Sports CEO of football Michael Edwards have made one appointment. Arne Slot’s success means they are unlikely to need another for quite some time.

For much of his debut year, Liverpool’s sporting director Richard Hughes has been criticised not for what he did but what he didn’t do: sign any players other than Giorgi Mamardashvili, loaned back to Valencia, and Federico Chiesa, who has been granted just 33 minutes in the Premier League. A couple of contract extensions have illustrated that, behind the scenes, he has been busy. Yet Chelsea’s example illustrates it can be better to sign no players than the wrong ones.

They also show the different models at the two clubs. Boehly and Clearlake’s apologists can argue they have reduced the wage bill, with fewer of the old-style big contracts (though owning far too many players surely brings unnecessary costs in itself).

Liverpool have a bigger wage bill, and new deals for Mohamed Salah and Virgil van Dijk will not reduce it (nor, for that matter, will paying out bonuses for winning the Premier League). Their contracts came within weeks of expiring, whereas some of the Chelsea team are tied down until the 2030s. They have an older side, with Salah and Van Dijk bumping up the average age.

Yet there can be flaws in Chelsea’s youthful model. They lack leadership. They have no figure of Van Dijk’s stature, either as a centre-back or captain. Liverpool’s greater consistency could reflect the presence of seasoned winners or, indeed, Salah’s status as a match-winner. Chelsea have signed some 46 players in the last three years – some yet to arrive at Stamford Bridge – but only Cole Palmer has ever come remotely close to assuming a similar status. He is on a 18-game goal drought which has left Chelsea looking over-reliant on one man. Since Palmer last scored, Fulham are the only team in the top 12 they have beaten.

Jurgen Klopp, for one, thought Chelsea had bought some fine players – though for over £1bn, perhaps it would have been more remarkable if they did not – but, somehow, while leaving crucial vacancies. There is no world-class goalkeeper, central defender or striker. In Alisson and Van Dijk, Liverpool have the first two. They may search for a centre-forward this summer, but Luis Diaz has done an impression of one and Salah scored more than any.

Yet Chelsea’s incessant recruitment has not bought a team. If Liverpool have often excelled in the transfer market in the last decade, part of the skill has been in finding complementary players for defined roles, getting footballers who fit together. Chelsea have looked to hoover up young talent, but too many of them have stagnated without a role. Liverpool have got very few signings wrong. A host of Chelsea’s could be called bad buys, but Joao Felix, Christopher Nkunku and Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall could wonder if there was ever a plan for them. Those who are loaned out or forgotten – Lesley Ugochukwu, Omari Kellyman, David Datro Fofana, Deivid Washington, Gabriel Slonina, the now-sold Cesare Casadei – may also wonder if there was ever a strategy for their long-term development. Chelsea seemed to assume that if they bought enough young players, some would reach stratospheric heights.

They recruited them in part by outbidding everyone else. Liverpool can testify to that. Their British record £111m offer for Moises Caicedo felt out of character. Their interest in Romeo Lavia was genuine and sustained but they were reluctant to pay the kind of price they wanted to reserve for a player who was ready to be a first choice straight away. Lavia has still only started nine league games for Chelsea, completing none of them. Caicedo has had a fine season. Liverpool still have few reasons to regret missing out.