Well, it turns out the market will do this for you. If you\u2019d predicted then that Chelsea would miss out on the Champions League and go through five permanent managers, but still make a profit from selling Enzo Fern\u00e1ndez<\/a>, would anyone have believed it?<\/p>\n Todd Boehly has overseen big changes on and off the pitch during his time at Chelsea. Photograph: Darren Walsh\/Chelsea FC\/Getty Images<\/p>\n Or that Mykhailo Mudryk could run around briefly like a deranged hamster, get banned for failing a drugs test and still become a potential growth asset<\/a>? This is pre-subprime crash energy. Yes, you can install a solar-powered mega-wetroom that fires sourdough breadsticks directly into your eyes. Whatever. Ownership is all. Money will take care of you.<\/p>\n There are still levels to this. The one Chelsea thing to shift in the window is that the curtain has now been drawn on those initial eight months, the period where Todd Boehly became the world\u2019s worst director of football, a director of football who basically didn\u2019t know what football was.<\/p>\n That period has now been safely capped off. Only two players remain. Rough out the numbers and Chelsea spent something like \u00a3200m in fees, wages, leaks and cuts, with only Malo Gusto and Wesley Fofana to show for it. No real damage. Money comes, money goes. We roll on.<\/p>\n This is the lesson of the latest summer transfer window. Right now it doesn\u2019t really matter what you do in the Premier League<\/a>. Just being in it is the thing. With one caveat, which is that nobody actually knows what\u2019s happening here. We can marvel at a record window. We can see the biggest spenders are Manchester City on \u00a3457.5m, the lowest Crystal Palace on about \u00a350m, the highest net Liverpool on \u00a3216.8m. We can pore over Aston Villa buying the bones of a new squad for \u00a356.7m net gain.<\/p>\n Liverpool\u2019s \u00a3123m signing Bradley Barcola checks out Anfield. Photograph: Liverpool FC\/Getty Images<\/p>\n But we can\u2019t know what it means, at least not financially. This is part of the design of money on this scale. As the then Federal Reserve chair Alan Greenspan put it in a famous speech on the mysteries of big money: \u201cHow do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values, which then become subject to unexpected and prolonged contractions?\u201d<\/p>\n Nobody knew what this meant then. Nobody knows what it means now. \u201cIrrational exuberance\u201d is a good phrase, one Greenspan later said came to him in the bath. It was designed to convey the essential point: opacity, vagueness, invisible flows. If not for those actually riding the tide, because someone is always making money. Someone out there actively wants the Premier League\u2019s financial chaos, and is benefiting from it gloriously.<\/p>\n Otherwise, reading the runes is just a matter of guesswork. Money moves between networked entities. Everyone inside wins. Everyone outside pays for it. But still, this feels new, if only in its extremity.<\/p>\n This was captured by the weirdness of Sky Sports\u2019 transfer deadline programme on Tuesday. At one point a man appeared strumming a guitar, smiling as if he had just filleted a litter of kittens in his basement, and sang a Bradley Barcola Liverpool song to the tune of Don\u2019t Dream It\u2019s Over, like this is all just normal and fine.<\/p>\n Later there was a golden period at about 5.30pm where every deal just seemed wrong and impossible, a fever dream after an over-ripe seafood risotto. Aston Villa have paid \u00a347m for an 18-year-old winger. Gabriel Jesus is going to Barcelona. Jack Grealish is having a medical at Everton, an event that seems to prove the non-linear nature of time, a medical that is always happening, never not happening, a constant time-space event.<\/p>\n Gabriel Jesus at his Barcelona unveiling. Photograph: Javier Borrego\/AFP7\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n Meanwhile two private jets are on the tarmac in Lyon as three clubs try to sign Malick Fofana<\/a>. \u201cWe STILL don\u2019t know what Malick Fofana is thinking,\u201d the man with the microphone concluded, mournfully, and this seemed profoundly true and on point. We don\u2019t. Does Malick Fofana even know this? If so, how can he? Nobody else has a clue what\u2019s going on.<\/p>\n
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