Chelsea’s best director of 2021 Marina Granovskaia leaves after 12 years! Is the club’s management doing the right thing?

Marina Granovskaia has been a long-time mainstay of Chelsea London, especially in the field of transfers and business moves. However, the new consortium of owners is introducing changes, with several more people leaving the board.

Twelve years and out. Granovskaia was a very important link for the London big club. But she is not alone, according to Goal, a number of other people will leave Chelsea’s board of directors.

Granovskaia was one of the most important figures in the club’s transfer policy, she was also always present at the signing of players coming to the club.

As we write above, other members will follow. According to the latest information, the departure of CEO Guy Laurence and Abramovich’s advisor Eugene Tenenbaum is imminent. Thus, the new ownership group led by Todd Boehly is introducing quite a few changes indeed, but it doesn’t always pay off in a sports environment.

Granovskaia, by the way, won the award for the best club director in European football in 2021. She came to Chelsea informally back in 2003, when Abramovich bought the English club. Since then, she has become his advisor as far as the business side is concerned, but she was only officially hired into the organization in 2010.

It is currently unclear what Granovskaia will do after leaving the London outfit. And if she’ll even let it go unanswered.

In fact, no one has anticipated any major changes in the organizational structure, nor has the new owner announced anything of the sort. However, it seems that at one of the briefings various alternative solutions were taken. What then for the future?

Boehly will oversee Chelsea’s transfer activity, just always relying on the expert opinions of others in the Blues organisation. And one of those people was director Granovskaia.

This will leave former club chairman Bruce Buck as the main advisor not only in transfer negotiations, as he has impressed the new owners, according to Goal. In addition, Chelsea can also reportedly rely on David Barnard and technical and performance advisor Petr Cech.

The shape of the new board has not yet been announced by Chelsea, but the key performers in the new consortium of owners will almost certainly have their places secured. The big decision-makers will be private equity firm Clearlake Capital and billionaires Hansjörg Wyss and Mark Walter.

Further changes will be announced by the English big club in the coming weeks, but one question arises from the whole affair. And it’s quite fundamental. In the sports industry, it is never a good sign when an entity is run by more than one person, as is the case at Chelsea.

Disagreements over transfer activity, business moves, marketing processes – there are of course many more factors, but what is clear is that each of the consortium of investors will want to have some say in what happens at the club. And how Chelsea will manage that remains to be seen.

Sources: Chelsea FC, Goal