Sky Sports’ top man thinks Todd Boehly could blink first and sell up

If you’re following the current drama involving the Chelsea ownership but are a little lost with all the details, Kaveh Solhekol’s long Tweet explaining the situation will do a good job bringing you up to speed.

A lot of it deals with the simple context of last night’s next – but there’s some fresh reporting and interesting new facts in there too.

What is now pretty universally established is that the two groups with the most power – Todd Boehly on one side and Clearlake Capital, headed by Jose E Feliciano and Behdad Eghbali on the other – have fallen out. It looks like it’s going to be a struggle to move forward working together, and there is a risk of a “civil war.”

What’s interesting from the Sky correspondent in his assessment of Todd Boehly’s stance.

“Boehly is committed to Chelsea but he is not in control. He has his own ideas about how a football club should be run but he can never be the ultimate decision maker at Chelsea when someone else owns 61.5% of the club,” Solhekol wrote.

“Eghbali and Clearlake would be interested in buying Boehly’s shares if he wants to walk away. It is difficult to see how Boehly is going to come out on top when Eghbali does not want to sell.”

A tough situation for Boehly

What he’s really saying is that if Boehly can’t win, he might be the one to blink first and sell up. If the options are deadlock or walking away with a profit, you can see why it might be tempting, even

All this relies on the that Clearlake don’t want to sell either. Whatever their real intentions, it suits them to have everyone believing this as things get sorted out behind the scenes. This is just the start of the briefing war.