Todd Boehly and Behdad Egbhali, the two main spearheads of the consortium that bought Chelsea from long time owner Roman Abramovich have been coming under fire from rival fans, clubs and certain pundits recently.

The reason? Chelsea are selling a handful of players to Saudi Arabian clubs as they try to reduce the squad size and help the financial books.

Individuals are arguing that the PIF (Public investment fund of Saudi Arabia) are doing Chelsea a favour by agreeing to invest in a handful of Chelsea’s players on the sell list.

As The Athletic reported, the PIF have bought major stakes in four of the biggest Saudi clubs and have invested with Todd Boehly’s businesses on a hotel chain, as well as investing with Clearlake Capital, Chelsea’s majority shareholder, headed up by Behdad Egbhali and Jose E.Feliciano.

Though, PIF are just one of hundreds of investors in Clearlake Capital, and are in no way involved in the majority of the company.

Sources have dismissed the claim that any dodgy private hand over agreement has taken place between the owners of Chelsea and the PIF.

They describe it as “ridiculous” and argue why the PIF wouldn’t just help Newcastle with their sell list instead, who they majority own.

The incoming sales of Hakim Ziyech, Kalidou Koulibaly and Edouard Mendy to Saudi Arabia are a case of Chelsea’s owners using their pre existing business connections and taking advantage of their previous hard work to apply it into a different industry.

Sources also argue and make the counter point that the owners of Chelsea are still very early into their venture with Chelsea and are actively trying to scale the club upwards in value over a number of years, they wouldn’t want to damage their credibility and put future partnerships at risk which could hurt the value of the club by doing any dodgy business now.

After all, as much as Chelsea are spending right now, the expectation is that it will be tempered in the coming years as the plan is to build a team that can sustainably compete for a number of years.

Boehly himself took a similar route with the LA Dodgers when his group took over many years ago by investing heavily soon after the takeover on a number of players. There was also very similar comparisons with how his group shifted out all of the existing staff for their own.

Another reason the overall argument of wrongdoing by Chelsea doesn’t make any sense is because the agreed fee’s being touted aren’t inflated. Chelsea are still losing money from what they paid.

Kalidou Koulibaly is rumoured to be leaving for £15-20m, Chelsea paid £33m.

Hakim Ziyech is rumoured to be leaving for just £8m, Chelsea paid around £30m in 2020.

Edouard Mendy, former UEFA goalkeeper of the year, is likely to go for as cheap as £10-15m.

If there was any dodgy dealings, considering the vast and almost unlimited wealth that the PIF have at their disposal, you would expect much higher fee’s.

Accusations that Chelsea are selling for cheaper as an arrangement for future inside help or dealings with PIF are just that, accusations, there is no proof that Chelsea selling these players for what looks like “cheap prices” is anything more than Chelsea looking for a quick player clear out.

Conspiracy theorists need to also take into account that Mendy, Ziyech and Koulibaly are all worldwide known Muslim athletes. They fit into the main search pool for Saudi Arabian Football.

Plus, if Chelsea were really engaging in any dodgy activity, the claims might hold more weight if Chelsea had gotten N’Golo Kante to sign a new deal and then sold him, but they didn’t do that, and lost the midfield legend for free to Saudi Arabian club Al Ittihad.

Via The Athletic, It should also be noted that under Premier League rules, all transactions, whether they are between associated parties or not, over the value of £1million are now checked to make sure they do not exceed “market value”. So, if one club were lucky enough to convince another to spend three times as much money on a player as the market thinks he is really worth, they could be told they cannot accept that windfall.

There is so much evidence and logical thinking to explain why Chelsea are not in the wrong, and hardly anything to explain why Chelsea are in the wrong besides the optics of a quick fire sale of players.

Even with the above point, it is already known that Chelsea are looking to quickly sell players before pre season to help Mauricio Pochettino with the squad size.

Media outlets and club sources have briefed this clear out for months, and now everyone who isn’t associated for Chelsea is seemingly jealous of this affective and quick business.

Truthfully, Todd Boehly is just a brilliant businessmen, there is a reason he has a net worth of $5.3BILLION, according to Forbes.

The reason behind his success and every successful businessman on the planet are largely down to relationships. Subject knowledge is vital, but the saying “It is not what you know, it is who you know” is extremely transferable to Todd’s time so far at Chelsea, and this situation with Saudi Arabia.

Todd recently flew out and held a meeting with Al Hilal’s club president, amongst others. A topic of discussion could have been Chelsea’s transfers, but that is not to say that there was some exchange of cash or third party wrongdoing.

As I said before, the PIF are majority owners of Newcastle and it would not be in their best interests in a competitive sense to help Chelsea.

The American also hosted a meeting and a meal in the summer of 2022 with 19 other Premier League executives in order to build relationships and talk.

Do you think Todd knew about Football back then? No, but he used his business acumen and clever thinking. As it turned out, that meeting set up by Boehly, was vital in the signing of Marc Cucurella as he engaged in discussion with Brighton chief Paul Barber whilst at the dinner.

He also spent the summer of 2022 and beyond meeting agents from across the globe as he conducted the transfer business for then coach Thomas Tuchel. From those various talks, Boehly is now well known to be a good partner of super agent Jorge Mendes.

Even if you take away Chelsea, part of the reason Boehly was able to gain part ownership of the LA Dodgers was down to him and his group approaching legend magic Johnson.

From our article in 2022 on the incoming ownership change at Chelsea, writer and lead designer Aranyak Nanda said :

“They (Boehly and his group) had the funds to make a bid, but they lacked local influence. So, in November 2011, they boarded a plane bound for Los Angeles in order to meet Magic Johnson, an LA Lakers legend and lifelong Dodgers fan”

“Each of the preceding parties contended that the Dodgers’ actual worth rested in its advantageous real-estate holdings; indeed, the club played on hundreds of acres of prime undeveloped ground near downtown Los Angeles. Johnson, on the other hand, had become distrustful of these men’s motivations. He wanted an owner that was dedicated to developing a successful squad”

“During his meeting with Guggenheim officials, he challenged Walter, “Are you doing this for the investment or are you doing it to win?” Walter looked right back at Johnson and said, “I’m doing this to win”

In conclusion, there is both evidence and logical thinking as to why Chelsea are NOT cheating, and the conspiracy theorists reasoning consists of false information around the length of the partnership between Clearlake Capital and PIF and potentially damaging accusations surrounding the recent meeting between Todd Boehly and the individuals in Saudi Arabia.