To understand the scale of Chelsea owner Todd Boehly’s confidence in rewriting the rules of the transfer market — splashing out £320million last month to add to the £250m spent in the summer — it is worth relating a conversation with someone close to the project.
When it was put to them that this had all been tried before — see the Venky brothers’ demise at Blackburn, Peter Ridsdale living the dream at Leeds or Farhad Moshiri’s scattergun Everton spending — and that you cannot reinvent the wheel in football, there was an indignant response.