Jackie Broon

pa-key-ta surely?

Watching his highlights it seems like he has played, or is very capable of playing, as a wide forward on either side. Although, the link is probably bollocks.

Must've been a really tough negotiation between the Red Bull owned FC Red Bull Salzburg and the totally not Red Bull owned RB Leipzig completely coincidentally run by Red Bull's 'Head of Global Soccer'.

I'm relaxed about it, we have a very good squad and all we really need is extra depth at CF and an upgrade at RW, ideally a player who can do both. The club are obviously being patient about it and will only buy the right player/s at the right price who will be a genuine upgrade on what we have. If we don't get that in this window we've got plenty enough talent and depth to have a very good season.

That's irrelevant to their current spending, which is what was being discussed. Also, the new owner paid more for the club than Abramovich paid and put in.

Chelsea don't have £1.5bn in the bank. Even if they did it wouldn't make any difference to how much they could spend under FFP.

I'm not sure I see the relevance again?

Leicester probably don't have an issue with FFP. They had losses of £60m in 19/20 and £31m in 20/21 but they have claimed covid costs of £50m which will be discounted from that for the FFP calculation. So that's a FFP loss of at most £40 for 19/20 and 20/21 (in reality it will be less than that because there are other expenses that can be discounted). PL FFP allows losses of up to £105m over three seasons, so they could have lost up to £65m in 21/22 and still been ok, which they won't have because they only lost £31m in 20/21 when most games were played to empty stadiums. This season they're in an improved position because their £60m loss in 19/20 no longer counts towards FFP and the majority of their covid costs (£36m) are from 20/21, so that wipes out all of their loss from that year and leave them with the full £105 loss allowance for 21/22 and 22/23. I think their need to sell is more to do with the owners wanting to cut costs and reduce a bloated squad.

Yes, but again I don't see the relevance of that to what was being discussed. Which isn't relevant to the thread anyway, so I'll leave it there so as not to derail discussion of all those new James Maddison transfer updates.

I agree with that, I just don't see why it's relevant. We were discussing whether they can afford their current spending.

Chelsea's turnover isn't that much lower than Man U's, they also have the most successful academy in England which has made them hundreds of millions of profit. I'd love to see Chelsea collapse now they haven't got Abramovich's backing, but they're probably not going to.

Maybe, maybe not. Man Utd have similar ownership have managed to absorb missing out on CL qualification a few times. It's not as big of a deal as it used to be with the amount clubs earn from the PL.

The club has just loaned £500m and set up a credit facility of £300m. But the issue isn't that, it's how much they can spend while staying within FFP. PL FFP rules only allow losses of £105m over three years. The loans don't don't count towards profit so they don't affect FFP other than the cost of the interest. Their current spending probably wouldn't be sustainable if they continue like that every season, but it probably is within FFP in the short term due to the revenue and underlying profitability of the club and losses due to covid being written off for FFP.

You said "they've got £1.5bn freefall of Russian money to play with" if they still owed Abramovich the 1.5bn debt how would that be the case? I don't think it's actually been confirmed exactly how the deal was structured, it seems likely from what I can gather that the debt was transferred into equity in the club and was part of the sale price.

If anything it's the opposite, it cost the buyers an extra 1.5bn on the sale price to purchase the debt from Abramovich. The debt was interest free and so didn't affect Chelsea's ability to spend.

Yes, but that doesn't result in them having £1.5bn to spend. That 1.5bn was the money put in by Abramovich, it had already been spent.

No they don't.

It was the same with Chelsea IIRC, the debt was part of the sale cost.

The debt was built up over many years, a big chunk before FFP, since FFP came in I assume the PL and UEFA must have been satisfied that Chelsea have accorded with their rules in terms of the amount of losses that can be covered each season by secure funding. That secure funding can be provided in a variety of ways, including as debt or share issues. I doubt the PL would apply the rules retrospectively to debt from prior to FFP or prevent clubs from transferring debt to a different form of secure funding. Also, if for example the PL counts a debt a as secure funding covering losses one year and then counts it again when it is paid off that would be double counting. The only way I can see that debt affects FFP is in terms of interest payments, but Abramovich's loan was interest free. Although it's definitely not my area of expertise and I may well be completely wrong.

Well if that's the case then the £100m debt we had to Mike Ashley, which was cleared when we were sold to the consortium, would be an issue for us.

Because they run at a profit before player trading, losses during covid have been written off, and transfers aren't included as the full fee at the time of purchase for FFP, the fee is split over the length of the player's contract.

The clearing of the 1.5b debt isn't relevant to FFP, there's nothing for us to take the PL to court about there. At the moment they can spend like they are and stay within FFP rules due to their £1/2b revenue.

Is that being reported anywhere else? Doesn't seem to be anything on Alex Crook's twitter (just about Howe getting a long term contract) or talksport.

Jack Grealish has 18 goals and 19 assists in 122 premier league appearances. James Maddison has 33 goals and 23 assists in 133. It's likely that £50-60m would secure his signing, roughly half what was paid for Grealish, and that wouldn't make that list.