Todd Boehly breaks silence as Gary Neville hits out at Chelsea’s nightmare season

Todd Boehly breaks silence as Gary Neville hits out at Chelsea’s nightmare season following the game at Arsenal in midweek.

Chelsea’s performance during their loss at the Emirates was labelled “pathetic”, but pundits blamed Todd Boehly for its “nightmare season”, saying that he should “stop meddling”.

Chelsea found themselves three down after 34 minutes on Tuesday. Their 3-1 loss is their sixth in a line of defeats across all competitions, and they are now 12th in Premier League.

At the end of a season, which has seen the club break transfer spending records but sack Thomas Tuchel and Graham Potter, Neville says the application from the players hasn’t been good enough but it is Boehly who must take the blame.

Neville also took aim at the American for making major changes in the Chelsea staffing and taking on major football decisions by himself.

🗣 “Disgusting. That’s the worst performance I’ve ever seen.”@GNev2 not holding back on another Chelsea loss pic.twitter.com/eMXyEslhNd

— Football Daily (@footballdaily) May 4, 2023

🗣 “Boehly’s had a nightmare. He’s completely misread this league.”

– Gary Neville on Todd Boehly. @GNev2 pic.twitter.com/IBMbtd1NHl

— CFC-Blues (@CFCBlues_com) May 4, 2023

“Disgusting,” said, Neville when asked about Chelsea’s performance at Arsenal. “It was the best team on paper I’ve ever seen play as badly as that. It was a shambles in the first half. Pathetic.

“There were World Cup winners, internationals, so expensive – I can’t believe it. Frank Lampard will be thinking the same. They were as bad as I’ve seen. When you interpret a manager’s language on television you can times that by 100 on what they were saying in the dressing room.

“With the quality and pride these players have you can’t stoop to that level. They played really well against Liverpool and I thought there was promise. Yes, they haven’t got a centre forward or can score goals but they played well. But what we’ve seen since is nothing short of a disgrace.

“It all comes from the top. It’s been chaotic, a mess since day one. Boehly has had a nightmare and misread this league. I’m sure he’ll learn quickly. What has happened this season is purely down to him.

“He needed to keep the footballing department together. He’s the non-footballing department. You’re the owner. You’re not a player or a coach. You’ve got no experience in this league so stay where you are and allow the people to run the football club [who have done so] successfully over the last 10 years.

“Try and get a year out of them to learn the ropes and keep the stability and consistency of Chelsea. Petr Cech left, Marina Granovskaia left, Thomas Tuchel was gone after a few games and all of a sudden you’re in complete turmoil. Then they flipped it to a model giving players eight-year contracts to 22-year-olds!

“When you start sacking groundsmen, physios, sports scientists, directors, managers, then you are throwing everyone under a bus saying, ‘it’s their fault not mine’. Chelsea had a successful way of running the club. This is now what Boehly has created. He created this mess. Like playing football manager, it’s been terrible.”

Neville, however, thinks that despite Chelsea’s struggles this season, they can return to competing at the top end of the league in 2023/24.

He believes that the team has great potential if it is coached properly, displays the right attitude, and Boehly leaves football decisions to the specialists.

“I do think someone will mould them into a decent team and challenge for top four and trophies,” said Neville. “I think they are capable of challenging the top three.

“That makes the Arsenal performance even worse. People will think I’m mad after what we saw on Tuesday but that makes it worse that players have stooped to that level.

“We saw it with Manchester United last season when they chucked the towel in under Ralf Rangnick. Those Chelsea players have chucked the towel in, they’re not bothered at all. They may as well have not turned up. If they were on 42 points and mathematically safe, you’d leave them all out and play the kids.

“I think Chelsea can have a decent season. It’s never as bad as you think and it’s never as good as you think – unless you are Man City.

“They’ve had a shocker but it can be resurrected with an appointment of a strong manager who can control a group of players and stop the meddling from the ownership.”

Chelsea chairman Todd Boehly says he is committed to the long-term goals of the Premier League club in light of their disappointing run this season.

Chelsea’s remaining fixtures
May 6: Bournemouth (A) – Premier League, kick-off 3pm
May 13: Nottingham Forest (H) – Premier League, kick-off 3pm
May 21: Manchester City (A) – Premier League, kick-off 4pm
May 25: Man Utd (A) – Premier League, kick-off 8pm, live on Sky Sports
May 28: Newcastle (H) – Premier League, kick-off 4.30pm

Only a total of 30 goals for Chelsea this season 📊🔵 pic.twitter.com/R4ZqMLPuZF

— Football Daily (@footballdaily) May 2, 2023

Carragher slammed the performance of Chelsea’s players in north London and criticised Todd Boehly’s decisions since completing his takeover of the club last May.

“Absolutely superb from Arsenal and absolutely shocking from Chelsea,” said Carragher. “This club is an absolute mess.

Speaking at the Milken Institute’s Global Conference, Boehly said: “It’s such a global sport. Unlike in the US, there are no unions so there’s a market for top players in every country in the world.

“Each one of those markets is different. You’ve got the Portuguese market, the French market, the English market.

“The ability to go to these markets and you have to build a team and your coach is the conductor of the team.

“There’s a lot we’ve learnt about the different markets and the global aspect of it all.

“The fans are demanding and they want to win, we get that. We want to win.

“Our view is that this is a long-term project and we’re committed to the long term. We very much believe we are going to figure it out.

“We’ve got the best league in the world, what I think is the top city in the world and we’ve got an unbelievable location in the top city in the world.”

🗣 “We very much believe that we’re going to figure it out.”

Todd Boehly has promised Chelsea fans that the club will get it right and fix their problems pic.twitter.com/QCBJ8CLqi6

— Football Daily (@footballdaily) May 4, 2023

This is what fans are saying as Todd Boehly breaks his silence after Gary Neville hits out at Chelsea’s nightmare season…

@Zeadwing: You can see from Kai Havertz’ comments what the bizarre sacking of Tuchel did to the squad’s mentality. Arrogant billionaire thought he could just roll in, buy some players and get richer.

@23Nate: why did they bother with super frankie lampard? The interim bloke they had before him could lose all the matches just as easily.

@levibarrow: “We knew this was a long term project” … appoints a new manager and then sacks him a couple of months later.

@OhPleaseBeQuiet: When you’re stuck next to a bloke at a wedding who says he follows football but 30 secs in you realise he’s just being polite and your Nan knows more…

@Mark121559: If Chelsea is a long-term project, why didn’t he stick with Graham Potter? Frank Lampard has lost all six matches in charge of why not just let Potter stay in charge and at least put some foundations in. He panicked pressure from other board members and fans.

@RobbieHandley1: What does long term project actually mean? Surely club ownership is always a long term project, you don’t spend that amount of money for a 2 year tenure, but that doesn’t mean you blindly appoint managers/sign players on long term deals.

@JRT0809: Well his first season has been shambolic to say the least but let’s see if he has learnt from previous mistakes, like they say you have to make them to learn and improve and tbf our January window was a lot better then the summer. Need to get Poch in asap and start the clearout

@tradu81: A long-term project is not gauranteed to be successfull. If this is about the EPL. Look at Man U (10 years so far, still going), Arsenal (~20 years, still going), Tottenham (lets not go there🤣), Liverpool (took 30 years) long-term projects. 🤦‍♂️ We cant wait that long!

@matthew_slates: I believe in him and the other owners. That’s not too say they have been perfect, or ever will be, but this will be a learning experience for the future. And the amount of money they’ve invested shows they want to win. We’ll get it together in a few years time.

@hannahchelseafc: @todd_boehly everyone is seeing how much you’ve failed so far change the project fast because its clearly not working everyone can see it drop your ego and change. This is England football not soccer whatever works over there does not work over here in England.

@AndrewTurmer: Is that why he destroyed the winning culture at the club by sacking anyone connected to the old regime, hiring a substitute teacher and then relentlessly briefing against everything that made us successful in the past?

@CarefreeBrad: We’re demanding because that’s what the previous ownership made us, we have ZERO standards now.

@CfcAnts: Should have thought about that before taking over ya yank

@CFC_T9: So why are u destroying the winning culture at chelsea? And hire 2 managers of which 1 has been in multiple relegation battles and other relegated a club this season and has 3 wins in their last 23

@Irishmantravel: Breaking a winning club into a million pieces then telling the supporters to trust some invisible process is not what I call wanting to win. If I was to say anything I think you are trying to turn us into RBL