The Premier League club’s American owners have splashed roughly $750 million on new players since last year. Puzzled rivals can’t see a strategy behind the spending.
LONDON — As the last few hours of the January transfer window ticked by, and as a small group of Chelsea executives were painstakingly trying to piece together the $131 million deal that would make Enzo Fernández, the 21-year-old Argentine midfielder, the most expensive player ever signed by an English team, Todd Boehly, the most high-profile of Chelsea’s new owners, was on the phone, trying to sign someone else.