Manchester United legend Gary Neville has fired a warning to Chelsea owner Todd Boehly after a challenging start to his first few months in charge of the club.
The American businessman came to Chelsea’s rescue earlier this year when Roman Abramovich had to put the club up for sale after being sanctioned by the UK government, but the Russian had been a hugely popular and successful figure at Stamford Bridge for many years.
Boehly is struggling so far, and Neville seems far from impressed with some of the decisions made by the 49-year-old, with Chelsea spending a fortune in the summer transfer window but without seeing any return on their investment so far.
Chelsea also changed manager just after the transfer window closed, with Boehly replacing the highly popular Thomas Tuchel with Graham Potter, who looked a slightly risky appointment even if he’d done fine work at previous club Brighton.
Discussing the Boehly era so far, Neville suggested it didn’t currently look like a winning strategy.
2Are we going to speak about Chelsea? Todd Boehly’s project, we have to speak about Chelsea,” Neville said on his podcast.
“I got battered by Chelsea fans at the start of the season but I’m not surprised by what’s happening to Chelsea.
“This has got all the hallmarks of a project that will take time. If you look at what happened at the start of the season, there’s no doubt that was handled with crassness, the way in which the transfer window was being handled.
“That transfer window could take Chelsea a couple of years to recover from, if they don’t get it right.
“Graham Potter is under big pressure, I hope he’s not and they see it through because this is a culmination of the difficulties of Roman Abramovich leaving, the new owner coming in and sticking his chest out and going around Europe thinking he can play Football Manager.
“I’ve seen it before and it doesn’t tend to work. I think Chelsea have always been a really smart, efficient, clinical operation on recruitment so I think Chelsea are one of the big stories right now.
“I think they will improve but there are obviously questions marks because they’re a club like Manchester United where I wonder where’s the £250m has gone.
“It’s a quarter of a billion quid, where’s it gone, how have they enhanced the squad? There’s a lot of questions for Chelsea.”