Champs show big-spending Chelsea how to build a team

Liverpool's title win exposes flaws in Stamford Bridge model

- RICHARD JOLLY

It might be a lesson that looks to have gone unheeded by the biggest spenders in history. Liverpool have won the Premier League title without a single summer signing starting a top flight game. It is a sequel of sorts: in 2019/20, they were champions after a transfer window when they did not buy a senior player.

Meanwhile, some £1.2bn of transfer spending later, Chelsea hover perilously in fifth. With three of the top six to play, their exile from the Champions League could yet extend into a third successive season. Pound for pound, and Chelsea have spent more than anyone else, the alliance of Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital risks being seen as one of the least successful ever in football.

Chelsea's accounts remain a thing of wonder. A £128.1m profit last season came aided by the £200m sale of their women's team. Losses of £90.1m the previous year would have been greater but for the sales of two hotels to themselves.

They can be specialists in finding loopholes. At least a footballing windfall beckons from the Club World Cup, their place secured by a different regime, a manager they sacked, in Thomas Tuchel, and a squad of players who, with the exception of Reece James and the back-up goalkeeper turned coach Willy Caballero, now ply their trade elsewhere. In one sense, the 2021 Champions League winners will compete in the United States this summer. In another, they certainly will not.

Liverpool represent Chelsea's opposites in many respects. A continuity club - five of their 2019 Champions League final starting XI may begin today's match at Stamford Bridge - who take fewer decisions, but are better at them.