Jackie Broon

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.

Yet none of those ten most expensive transfers are from this year.

And he had flopped at Coventry before we signed him.

True, but he's shown he has the ability to at Leipzig. Obviously it's a bit of a risk the fact that he hasn't found that form a Chelsea, but if we're after him our management clearly think he can find that form here and I trust our management's judgement on that.

The current two best players in the PL, arguably the world, both flopped at Chelsea. For whatever reason there is a long history of great players just not finding form at Chelsea.

Although he actually comes across as quite likable in sunderland 'til I die, in an awkward Adam Pearson kind of way.

We have 28 senior players and only 25 places for our PL squad, Shortstaff, Fernandez and Lewis are the obvious three to miss out at the moment but if we bring in any more players someone will have to make way.

Love the change in tone of that thread, from trying to rewrite history that Bilbao's colours were inspired by them rather than Southampton (as Bilbao themselves claim) to full salty fyewm in just a few posts

They're going to come back and win this on away goals now.

But I thought they were the mackem's football friend?

Also you will need to clear your cookies or watch in an incognito window because it appears to check cookies for location.

Only if you have a VPN to make it think you're not in the UK.

And their top scorer with 18 goals, from midfield.