There is a scene in Family Guy where, in a meeting with a shady timeshare salesman, Peter Griffin is offered a choice between taking home a free boat or a ‘mystery box’.
His wife Lois makes it very clear she favours the safe option, to no avail. “A boat’s a boat, but the mystery box could be anything,” he reasons. “It could even be a boat! You know how much we’ve wanted one of those.” He chooses the box which, on this occasion, turns out to contain two free tickets to a comedy club.
This scene comes to mind a lot when covering Chelsea’s recruitment under Clearlake Capital and Todd Boehly. Their long list of signings over the last two years includes a startling number of mystery boxes: often unknown, often exciting young footballers brimming with theoretical potential, lacking the reassurance provided by a more substantive professional body of work.
It also resonates with the events of recent days, and the effective swap of Conor Gallagher and Joao Felix between Chelsea and Atletico Madrid that brings an end to a surreal transfer saga.
Gallagher is the most known of known quantities: a good — if not great — central midfielder with an exceptional engine, who never seems to get injured and had a natural preference to play for Chelsea. Joao Felix, even at 24 and on the cusp of his seventh professional season, remains something of a mystery box.
What exactly is he? A No 10? A wide forward? A false nine? A goalscorer who can pass, or a passer with an eye for goal? An attacker with game-breaking skill, or a human highlight generator who does not drive winning to the degree his best moments suggest he should?
Gallagher is a known quantity at Chelsea (Ryan Pierse/Getty Images)
None of these questions are intended to cast doubt on Joao Felix’s undisputed talent, which has beguiled Atletico and Barcelona as well as Chelsea. He produced some truly dazzling sequences during his six-month loan spell at Stamford Bridge and provided one of the few reasons to watch a miserable mess of a team in the second half of the 2022-23 campaign. Given opportunities to spread his wings within Enzo Maresca’s system, he will surely offer more.
Joao Felix is also significantly less of a punt on potential than Spain youth international striker Samu Omorodion, the player Chelsea initially wanted to sign from Atletico for €40million on the strength of nine goals in one La Liga season for Granada and Alaves.
But now the dust has settled, Chelsea have sold one of their most consistently helpful players in 2023-24 for below his peak market value and brought in a footballer who long ago became a problem for Atletico — as much due to his gargantuan wages as his poor fit with Diego Simeone, who has already made it very clear he adores everything about Gallagher.
Joao Felix will not be earning anywhere near as much at Chelsea. Nor will he arrive at Stamford Bridge burdened by the pressure of a nine-figure transfer fee, as was the case when Atletico paid Benfica an eye-watering €126million to acquire him in July 2019. Clearlake and Boehly did not bite on what it would have taken to sign the Portugal international permanently a year ago, and only returned to the table this time around when more favourable terms were presented.
But while Chelsea’s liking of Joao Felix is legitimate and long-standing, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that this deal is happening in large part because it enables them to sell Gallagher to Atletico, locking in a chunk of pure profit to offset amortised transfer spending in this year’s accounts while avoiding the possibility of losing him for nothing next summer.
No one can credibly deny the inextricable links between these transactions. The staring contest sparked by the surprise collapse of Omorodion’s move to Stamford Bridge raised tensions but also exposed that these two clubs needed each other. Atletico could not buy Gallagher without a significant sale after committing up to €95million (£81.8m; $104m) on Julian Alvarez. Chelsea could not be sure he would accept a move anywhere else and could not allow his situation to go beyond this transfer window, given their reluctance to offer him a long-term contract extension.
Joao Felix on loan at Chelsea (Steve Bardens/Getty Images)
Neither club emerges with any credit from the several days Gallagher spent in limbo in Madrid or training alone at Cobham, and the cold accounting calculations involved on both sides reflect Big Football in 2024 in a way that understandably repulses many people.
Aside from the business justification, Chelsea will argue they have sold a player they believe is a bad fit for Maresca’s possession-focused, positional style of play, and acquired another with a much more agreeable skill set. They may have a point, though Gallagher did as much as he reasonably could in 2023-24 to silence the critics who claimed his value diminishes in a team that dominates the ball.
Yet even that is a form of doubling down on a bigger mystery box choice. Maresca may prove himself to be a transformative figure at Chelsea, the best and brightest of a new generation of Pep Guardiola-influenced coaches. But one promotion season in charge of Leicester City and an impressive showing in Chelsea’s interview process is a perilously small body of evidence on which to sanction a five-year contract and a club-wide investment in his style of play.
Mutually parting ways with Mauricio Pochettino — a very competent, very experienced top-level coach who accumulated points at a top-four rate in his final 31 Premier League games in charge of Chelsea, but jarred with the club leadership — was a bold enough decision. The hiring of Maresca to succeed him is the clearest indication yet that whenever results are less than optimal, this ownership’s instinct is invariably to twist rather than stick.
This instinct also creates a disorienting churn at squad level, necessitating brutal choices between players. Mindful of the fact that the transfer market rarely provides ideal sequencing of incomings and outgoings, Chelsea have consciously bought themselves into a position where they must sell in bulk in the remainder of August.
Their £51.4million signing of Pedro Neto, coupled with the expected arrival of Joao Felix, informed Maresca’s “technical decision” late last week to leave Raheem Sterling out of his plans to face Manchester City, plunging Chelsea into an ugly public standoff with their highest-paid player that could dominate the last two weeks of this window.
Sterling was left out of the Chelsea squad for the game against Manchester City (Eddie Keogh/Getty Images)
It will be interesting to track whether Sterling ends up training with a growing group of exiles at Cobham that includes Trevoh Chalobah, who has more legitimate grievances about his treatment than most. Signed to a long-term contract by this ownership in November 2022, his only fault has been to turn down numerous offers to leave in favour of competing for a Chelsea future against the defenders signed to displace him in the four transfer windows since.
The curious case of Carney Chukwuemeka is also instructive. On his rare appearances in an injury-blighted 2023-24 he flashed tantalising Premier League talent. Maresca’s contention after the City game that regular game time this season would best serve his development is logical, but as detailed in this week’s Transfer DealSheet, Chelsea will only consider a loan with an obligation to buy or a sale if the release clause in his contract is met.
Chelsea’s appetite for change stands apart from the broad continuity at Manchester City under Pep Guardiola, Liverpool under Jurgen Klopp and Arsenal under Mikel Arteta, the clubs whose sustained success Clearlake and Boehly aim to replicate at Stamford Bridge. This is no longer a concern for Gallagher, who is joining an established Champions League club where he projects to be an important player under one of Europe’s most decorated and respected coaches.
His career continues to trend upward. Chelsea’s direction of travel is much harder to define.
(Top photos: Getty Images)
