Marina Granovskaia’s reign as Chelsea transfer chief clouded by four major mistakes

Express

Marina Granovskaia is set to follow Bruce Buck in leaving Chelsea as Todd Boehly instigates major changes behind the scenes at the club. Boehly’s consortium completed his takeover from Roman Abramovich last month and is now clearing house in the boardroom at Stamford Bridge.

American lawyer Buck is to step down as chairman – a role he’s held since 2003 – to become an advisor at the end of June. Granovskaia, who has been a key player at Chelsea in the latter years of the Abramovich era, is also poised to leave the club she has effectively run for the past few years.

Granovskaia has been a close ally of Abramovich for over 20 years. The 47-year-old Canadian-Russian met Abramovich in 1997 when she worked for a Russian oil company Sibneft. She became a director at Chelsea in 2013 and has gradually become more and more influential in decision-making at the club.

She has developed a reputation for being a shrewd negotiator in transfer negotiations and for not suffering fools in the boardroom. That was officially recognised in December when Granovskaia was named as the best club director in European football at the Golden Boy awards.

However, for all the decent pieces of business and unseen work behind the scenes at Stamford Bridge, there have also been some obvious missteps by Granovskaia, who has led Chelsea’s transfer strategy in recent years. She will therefore depart the club with her overall reputation tainted slightly by some recent poor decisions. Here are four of them from the recent past.

Inter are now in negotiations to take him back on loan, but won’t pay his full £325,000-a-week wages or the £10m loan fee Chelsea want. Granovskaia has to carry the can for this monumental failure of a transfer, while she also signed off on the expensive additions of Kai Havertz and Timo Werner – neither of which are yet to fully pay off…