Chelsea face hierarchy war as opposing voices heard after Todd Boehly spree

Chelsea’s new owners have spent one billion pounds on developing a footballing thoroughbred. But while they thought big when they should have been taking a lesson from the man who invented the Mini. For it was Sir Alec Issigonis who first claimed that a camel was a horse designed by committee. And the way Chelsea’s new owners have approached their first year in charge, he could have predicted the fans would have ended up with the hump. Still no main striker – the £100million spare part of Romelu Lukaku no longer fits the rest of the chassis and was finally sent out on loan to Roma for the year yesterday for an £8m loan fee. No real leaders. Just plenty of eager youngsters willing to give it a go. For the money that should guarantee success, they have dismantled their main engines – such as N’Golo Kante, who actually drives a Mini, ironically enough. Vital components have been replaced by a series of misaligning cogs that whirr randomly around Stamford Bridge in the hope Mauricio Pochettino can nudge them into top gear. Engineered into place by five owners, a chief executive, five more directors, two co-sporting directors, a pair of co-directors of recruitment and talent and a recruitment analyst. Their technical director Christopher Vivell was put on gardening leave during the summer having been appointed seven months earlier. Todd Boehly has spent a huge amount of money since taking over at Chelsea (Image: GETTY) When Chelsea bought the title the first time in 2005 Roman Abramovich provided the vision, Peter Kenyon the know-how and super-agent Pini Zahavi most of the signings. The noise from within the club now is that there is too much noise, most of it cancelling itself out, in the boardroom. Opposing voices trying to pull the club in different directions. Todd Boehly, as chairman, has been heard most outside the club – twice briefing journalists at the club’s training ground on the long-term thinking that is shaping the future of the club. But a billion spent in little more than 12 months is a short-term amount – even by today’s money, enough to buy a title-winning team and a few reserves. The American billionaire’s scatter-gun approach has divided opinion across the Premier League (Image: GETTY) Yet Pochettino is left scratching around trying to make it all fit, with just 54 Premier goals in total ever throughout his bloated squad when you leave aside Raheem Sterling. He built a team at Spurs which reached the Champions League final but that took five years and was guided – and at times misguided – by the single strong voice of Daniel Levy. Chelsea used to be a watchword to the modern Premier League about how easy it was just to ‘buy’ success. The current owners seem to be in a rush to do precisely the opposite. A final busy deadline day could sort some of the expensive wheat out from the chaff, but the shambles so far has been more Tommy Cooper than Mini Cooper. Want the latest Premier League news as we publish it on  Express Sport ? Join our Facebook group by clicking  here .