Other clubs' transfers

[duo]

Hopefully Man U don't get CL 

[janpawel]

32 minutes ago, duo said:

Hopefully Man U don't get CL 

Honestly, after Hope broke the interest I wasn't keen on him, but soon warmed to the idea of him, could cover Joelinton's role, play as a AM, SS, and more importantly for me if he was on the pitch, then he'd be our second player along with Isak who I'd trust to win a big game with a moment of magic. 

 

Then imagine that with a better RW option too. 

 

Oh well, my fault for getting into the rumour hype

[Sibierski]

Cunha is the definition of many more players like him if you trust your scouts and coaching staff. 
 

If we want another Brazilian who will likely in next 12 months be the in name (I.e. starting to play for Brazil) than Muniz as the 2nd striker would be that. 
 

 

[janpawel]

Chelsea, their bottomless pit, and Dean Huijsen then... When will their spending end? 

 

Tbh I thought he'd look elsewhere, seems to be smart/well advised, other than the 7 year contract, I'd have thought he'd be better off at a different top club 

 

Unless they're giving him a release clause 

[alexf]

On 17/04/2025 at 13:22, Mazzy said:

 

Don't see why Chelsea would let Caicedo go. Obviously 100M is ridiculous so that would be why but he's quietly been probably their best player this season (now Palmer has gone off the boil). The fans love him and I've no doubt any new manager coming in would want to keep him.

Wait...didn't they pay £115m or whatever to sign him in the first place?

[Nucasol]

51 minutes ago, janpawel said:

Chelsea, their bottomless pit, and Dean Huijsen then... When will their spending end? 

 

Tbh I thought he'd look elsewhere, seems to be smart/well advised, other than the 7 year contract, I'd have thought he'd be better off at a different top club 

 

Unless they're giving him a release clause 

Cunts are the absolute pits.

[Fak]

Piece in The Athletic on Chelsea's ability to spend:

 

Spoiler

The BookKeeper – Exploring Chelsea’s remarkable finances and why they can keep spending

 

Conjure up memories of Chelsea’s most notable moments over the past couple of years and, chances are, actual football will be thin on the ground. Their first Premier League season in the post-Roman Abramovich era was notable only for how poor it was, a 12th-place finish in 2023 marking their worst league position in 29 years.

 

Last season was improved, with Cole Palmer showing his class and Mauricio Pochettino guiding the club to sixth and a return to European football, even if it came in the guise of the Conference League. A goal two minutes from the end of extra time resigned them to a Carabao Cup runners-up spot. Yet it still seemed a distinctly underwhelming season on the pitch.

More likely to spring to mind are events off the field. Abramovich’s 19 years at the helm came to an abrupt end in the spring of 2022, a consequence of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – with Abramovich sanctioned for his close ties to Russian president Vladimir Putin and Chelsea forced to operate under special measures. The arrival of new owners brought an apparent departure from the past. Out with the oligarch, in with private equity.

 

Into Stamford Bridge came a consortium fronted by Todd Boehly, a minority shareholder in Major League Baseball’s Los Angeles Dodgers, alongside Clearlake Capital Group L.P., a private equity firm also based out of LA. The price for taking Chelsea from Abramovich’s sanctioned hands was a cool £2.536billion — alongside a commitment to invest a further £1.75billion in the club’s infrastructure in the future.

 

Events since have been dizzying. Champions League-winning manager Thomas Tuchel lasted just over three months under the new regime, and Boehly and Clearlake are already onto their third permanent head coach since the German departed. More than £1bn has been spent on assembling the most expensive squad in the history of football.

Creativity in the back office has outshone it on the pitch. Chelsea’s accountants have devised several headline-grabbing ways to (at least try to) circumvent football’s existing financial strictures. Meanwhile, Boehly and Behdad Eghbali, Clearlake’s co-founder, have gone through a well-publicised rift that led to each side of the consortium ‘exploring options’. All of this in less than three years of ownership.

 

The release of the club’s 2023-24 accounts at the beginning of April brought yet more headlines. This time it was confirmation of the sum for which Chelsea’s owners had sold the club’s women’s team to, in effect, themselves. Chelsea Football Club Women Ltd was removed from under the umbrella of the men’s team, bought by fellow group company Blueco 22 Midco Ltd for £200m. The profit that followed (£198.7m) pushed Chelsea from another big loss to a £128.4m pre-tax profit.

 

The paper transaction was widely viewed as a way of swerving around the Premier League’s Profit and Sustainability Rules (PSR), coming on the back of the club selling two hotels and a car park to another group entity in 2023. Once again, Chelsea were making more headlines off the field than on it.

 

What do Chelsea’s recent financials look like – and what’s their PSR position?

 

 

Chelsea’s official line on the women’s team sale was more commendable than a mere PSR swerve. Chelsea Women was to be “repositioned so that it sits alongside, rather than beneath, the men’s team”. The club had, through market analysis and discussions with investors, determined “there is a strong desire for an opportunity to invest solely in the women’s game”.

 

Either way, shifting the women’s team after the £76.5m profit booked on those property sales in 2022-23 meant most ignored the apparently noble aims of the repositioning. In selling it for £200m Chelsea had, accidentally or otherwise, made their women’s team one of the most valuable on Earth. Only Angel City FC, sold for $250m (£190m at the time) in September last year, come anywhere close.

 

In turn, the women’s team sale served to ensure Chelsea complied with Premier League PSR last season. In combination with the previous year’s property sales, the club has now booked £275.2m in profit from selling assets to companies within its wider ownership structure. Each of the transactions took place at the end of their respective Junes, mere days before Chelsea’s accounting deadline, the football finance equivalent of pulling the ripcord just before you’re about to clatter into a tree.

 

Those transactions made for a soft landing and Premier League regulations do nothing to stop clubs including intra-group sales in their PSR calculations. That’s a natural by-product of letting the clubs dictate the rules, with no one wanting to vote against their own self-interest, lest they need to plough such fertile ground in the future.

 

A look at the raw numbers suggests Chelsea didn’t actually need anywhere near the £198.7m profit the women’s team sale enabled them to book. Accepting they’d already been allowed to record the property sales from June 2023, Chelsea’s pre-tax losses in the 2022-24 PSR cycle would have totalled £281.8m without the Chelsea Women sale.

 

That’s some way above their allowed PSR loss of £105m over three years, but the amount doesn’t take into account the deductions Chelsea can make for allowable expenditure. Crucially, for a club of Chelsea’s stature, such deductions are significant. Depreciation and amortisation on non-player fixed assets was £43.5m over the cycle, while they also spent £41.4m on the women’s team in the same period.

 

Expenditure on youth and community development is harder to determine because few clubs release this, but information elsewhere is instructive. Aston Villa spent £19.7m and £7.2m respectively on those areas in 2023-24, and Chelsea’s spending was likely in the same ballpark — in terms of the academy, it’s probable Chelsea spent beyond Villa’s £20m. Even if we only tether Chelsea’s figures to Villa’s, and taper down a little as we go further back in time, we still wind up with deductions of around £74m.

 

Based on a £281.8m pre-tax loss without selling Chelsea Women, the club needed £176.8m in allowable costs to hit their PSR limit. Tot the above four types of expenditure up and you’re at £158m of allowable costs — not the level Chelsea needed, but less than £20m shy. In other words, even if the Premier League decide the £200m valuation of the women’s team doesn’t meet their fair market value assessment, the chance of them downgrading the transaction to the extent it pushes Chelsea into a PSR breach is remote.

 

Chelsea selling assets to fellow group companies didn't just ensure past PSR compliance - it's given them huge headroom going forward

 

 

If Chelsea’s actions to date have done little to bolster the Premier League’s claims it can govern itself responsibly, the bad news for the league is their impact will be felt for a while yet. Because PSR losses are assessed over a three-year cycle, the whopping profit Chelsea booked last season won’t be confined to one moment in time.

 

Consider Chelsea made a £128.4m pre-tax profit before accounting for any allowable expenditure and their PSR result for 2023-24 looks decidedly rosy. By our fairly conservative estimate, Chelsea’s PSR result last season was £191m in the black. That chunky positive result doesn’t just help their 2022-24 PSR cycle. It’ll be included in both this and next season’s calculations too.

 

There is a chance that result will be downgraded. As mentioned, the Premier League is still assessing whether the women’s team sale constituted fair market value, and could reduce the gain Chelsea recognised. Such an impairment has already taken place in respect of 2022-23’s property sales. The Premier League decreed Chelsea should have recognised £6m less in profit on those sales, a deduction the club have been allowed to record in the current 2024-25 season, rather than retrospectively.

 

Even so, the size of the positive swing last season leaves them sitting pretty from a Premier League PSR position. By our estimate, Chelsea could lose £300m this season and remain compliant. They won’t, but it’s just as well they do have that headroom, because the club is expected to make a return to huge losses this year.

 

Such violent fluctuations in (literal) fortunes underline the juggling act the club now have to oversee across PSR cycles. Come 2026-27, last season’s huge profit will drop out of Chelsea’s calculation, swinging their PSR position in the opposite direction.

 

Where Chelsea’s domestic overseers have been largely acquiescent to their accounting ingenuity, the same can’t be said abroad. UEFA’s rules preclude asset sales to sister companies, so that immediately wipes out £275.2m in gains over the past two seasons.

 

UEFA assessed clubs over just two years to the end of last season, allowing a maximum loss in that time of €80m (around £68m). Chelsea’s pre-tax losses without those asset sales came to £236.9m, so even with allowable costs removed their UEFA PSR loss was around £100-120m, some way shy of compliance.

 

UEFA rules are more stringent than the Premier League’s in other respects, too. Where Premier League clubs voted to limit clubs amortising transfer fees to five years for all signings made from December 2023 onwards, ostensibly in response to Chelsea handing out lengthy contracts as they splurged on new players, UEFA’s same rule impacts signings from July 1, 2023.

 

That has a material impact on Chelsea, who spent £454.3m in the summer 2023 transfer window. That sum can be amortised across the full length of player contracts under Premier League rules — Moises Caicedo, for example, signed on an eight-year deal that summer — but only over five years under UEFA rules. In the case of Caicedo, signed for a base £100m from Brighton, the difference amounts to an extra £7.5m being tagged onto the club’s UEFA PSR calculation in each of the next five seasons.

 

What’s more, UEFA takes a dim view of clubs, in effect, swapping players for chunky fees. The Premier League saw a spate of such deals in June last year and Chelsea sold academy product Ian Maatsen for £37.5m to Aston Villa, with Omari Kellyman coming the other way for £19m. Doing it that way allowed Chelsea to book £19m extra in player sale profits than a player-swap-plus-cash deal, and while that contributed to their bottom line and their Premier League PSR calculation, UEFA guidelines indicate they’ll have been required to revise the profit down.

 

UEFA states sale proceeds on ‘player exchange transactions’, a definition the Maatsen-Kellyman deal appears to meet, are to be measured at the value of the player in the selling club’s books (in Maatsen’s case, near enough zero), adjusted for any net cash paid as part of the deal. In other words, Chelsea were likely able to recognise only the difference between the two fees — £18.5m — as profit in their UEFA calculation.

 

While Chelsea are already known to be in talks with UEFA over a financial settlement for breaching spending limits, what the club’s eventual sanction will look like is unclear. UEFA regulations lay out clear guidelines for financial disciplinary measures when clubs exceed their ‘squad cost ratio’ rule (which Chelsea look like they might well do in 2024-25), but the disallowed sale of the women’s team resulted in a breach of the separate ‘football earnings’ rule, which places limits on club losses.

 

There is little guidance on how UEFA arrives at disciplinary measures for breaches of the football earnings rule, though recent misdemeanours by others might be instructive. Barcelona were adjudged to have overstated their UEFA PSR position by €267million in 2022, for which they were fined €500,000 by the European governing body.

 

 

None of the PSR chicanery of recent years would have been necessary were it not for one underlying fact: Chelsea make enormous operating losses.

 

That’s long been the case, dating way back into the Abramovich era, but those losses have increased significantly in recent years. Across the past decade Chelsea have lost £1.291bn at the operating level, the equivalent of £354,000 per day, every single day, for 10 years. Most clubs lose money on the day-to-day, but Chelsea are firmly in a league of their own. The next highest operating losses in the past decade are at Aston Villa and Everton, each of them having lost almost half a billion less than Chelsea.

 

Chelsea's operating loss has now exceeded £200million in each of the last three seasons

 

While operating losses have been a way of life at Stamford Bridge for a long time, they were at least at a level where player sales could potentially turn the bottom line black. In three of Abramovich’s last six years at the helm, Chelsea booked a profit.

 

Yet his final season saw operating losses zoom over £200m, where they’ve remained since. In just three seasons, Chelsea have lost £655.7m, dwarfing player sale profits of £338.6m in that time (including an English record £152.5m last season). It is for that reason they’ve had to turn to selling assets to sister companies to reduce losses.

 

Why do Chelsea lose so much money?

 

The reasons are varied. Sluggish revenue growth is one. Chelsea’s turnover last season was only £25m (six per cent) higher than in 2017-18. That is the lowest growth among the ‘Big Six’, with Manchester City and Arsenal each enjoying over £200m in revenue increases in the same period. As a result, Chelsea’s revenue is now only the Premier League’s sixth highest, down from fourth in 2018. On the international stage, Chelsea’s income is the 10th-highest in world football. A little over a decade ago, they were fifth.

 

Chelsea’s income from Stamford Bridge has been particularly lethargic. Last season’s £80.1m in gate receipts represented a new club record, but the needle has hardly budged in more than a decade. In the 2011-12 Champions League winning season, Chelsea’s matchday income was £77.7m; 12 years on, that figure has grown by just £2.4m (three per cent).

 

Much of that anaemic growth owes to Stamford Bridge’s low capacity. At a shade over 40,000, Chelsea’s home is only the 11th-largest in domestic English football, and will drop a spot further this summer when Everton’s new stadium at Bramley-Moore Dock opens its doors. Moreover, Stamford Bridge actually punches above its weight. Chelsea’s matchday income was England’s fifth-highest last season.

 

That low capacity leaves a lot on the table. Chelsea benefit from playing in one of the most affluent areas of London; without their generous location, gate receipts would be far lower. It stands to reason, then, that increasing capacity would see matchday income zoom upwards.

 

Per a recent UEFA report, Chelsea’s average gate yield per fan (in effect, the per-game revenue they generate from each person that passes through a Stamford Bridge turnstile) stood at £63, third in England and eighth in Europe. That pitted them ahead of not only Liverpool and Manchester City, but Manchester United too. Tellingly, though, they sat a distance behind fellow London clubs Arsenal (£89) and Tottenham Hotspur (£84). That reflects how new stadia can not only improve finances through extra bums on seats, but through eking out greater sums by offering a more premium experience too.

 

Spurs offer a good comparison point for Chelsea’s poor revenue growth. As recently as 2016, Chelsea out-earned their London rivals by £119.4m. Eight years on, Spurs’ turnover last season was £59.7m higher than Chelsea’s, in a season where neither side played in Europe.

 

Spurs’ new stadium has seen them inevitably zip by Chelsea in terms of gate receipts, but of greater concern to Chelsea will be how the clubs now fare commercially. Spurs commercial revenues have topped Chelsea’s in each of the last three seasons, with the gap growing to £19.5m in 2023-24.

 

The likelihood is the gap has widened since. Chelsea have previously sought £60m in annual front-of-shirt sponsorship, a sum not forthcoming without Champions League football. Rather than sell marketing space off for cheaper, they have gone the full season so far without a primary sponsor. Last season saw them belatedly bank £43m from a single-year deal with Infinite Athlete, so 2024-25 has witnessed a sizeable drop on that front. Chelsea currently lead Arsenal commercially, but expect roles to reverse this season.

 

Boosting commercial income is on the hit list of most club owners, and while Chelsea are no different it’s also clear they need to improve on the field too if they are to maximise their earning potential. Broadcasting income fell 28 per cent to £163.1m last season, as the reality of no Champions League football bit. That was scarcely above the £162.4m earned back in 2017.

 

In the past two seasons, Chelsea’s Premier League prize money totals £296.9m. Seven teams have earned more, with Manchester City’s takings £55.2m (19 per cent) higher in that time. Chelsea are hardly paupers domestically — no Premier League team is nowadays — but there’s a clear financial advantage in finishing higher up the table.

 

What’s more, broadcasters’ appetites for showing the club have seemingly waned. Across the last two seasons Chelsea were selected for live broadcast 49 times, the lowest of the ‘Big Six’ and 10 games fewer than Arsenal. For games up to 5 May this season, Chelsea trail five teams in terms of live TV selections.

 

Where’s the wage bill at?

 

 

A common theme since the change of ownership at Stamford Bridge has been a reported nosedive in the club’s wage bill. On the face of it, little has changed. The club’s wage bill was £338.0m in 2023-24, just £2.2m below what it was in 2021-22 and still the Premier League’s fourth highest — as it was in 2021-22. In between, it leapt to £404.0m, making them one of only two English clubs to exceed £400m in staff costs in a single season.

 

That doesn’t quite tell the whole story. That £404m included costs of removing Thomas Tuchel and Graham Potter, along with their assorted staff; Chelsea used to show such costs separately. Similarly, last season’s £338m included the money spent on Pochettino’s departure.

 

Chelsea’s wage bill also accounts for all staff wages, and the club are big employers. Administrative staff leapt from 646 to 773 last season, making them the third-largest employer in English football, only a hair behind Manchester United and Liverpool. Based on some past UEFA reports, Chelsea’s player wages generally made up 80 per cent of their overall wage bill. Given the club’s uptick in non-playing staff we can probably reduce that proportion.

 

Doing so gets you to an estimated playing wage bill of around £250m, which would comprise a fall since the takeover (one of those UEFA reports had the 2021-22 playing wage bill at £274m).

 

Season 2023-24 also saw it reduce relative to revenue, even as revenue fell nine per cent. Chelsea’s wages to turnover was 72 per cent last season, down from 79 per cent a year earlier. Stripping out the estimated costs of removing Pochettino from his post reduces it further to 70 per cent, though that would still only be the 12th-best in the Premier League. What’s more, Chelsea’s wages to revenue is comfortably the worst of the ‘Big Six’, a matter not helped by the lack of Champions League income.

 

Chelsea's wages to revenue ratio improved seven per cent, but is still the worst of the Premier League's 'Big Six'

 

As a related aside, another through line from Abramovich to the current ownership concerns getting rid of managers and incurring high costs to do so. Last season’s removal of Pochettino and staff is believed to have cost in the region of £10m, on the back of a similar amount going to Tuchel in 2022 and a further £13m to Graham Potter in 2023. Sacking Antonio Conte in July 2018 cost Abramovich £26.6m, and in total Chelsea have spent an estimated £129m on removing managers from their dugout since 2008.

 

That’s without including the price of recruiting them in the first place; Potter cost a reported £21m from Brighton, while prising Enzo Maresca from Leicester City last June cost a further £10m.

 

Continued reliance on player trading

 

If Chelsea’s business model under Abramovich was propelled by player trading, it has been turbo-charged since. 

 

In the past two seasons, no club has spent more on new players and no club has received more from player sales. From the beginning of July 2022 to the end of June 2024, Chelsea spent £1.297bn on 32 permanent new signings. Going the other way, they recouped £389.6m through selling 21 players for fees, for a net spend of £908.3m — more than double the next highest net spend in that time, Arsenal’s £419.6m.

 

The hardly surprising byproduct of all this activity is Chelsea now boast the most expensively assembled squad in world football — by far. At the end of last season, their squad cost sat at £1.437bn. The next highest was Manchester City, whose own hardly cheap squad was bought for £1.110bn — over £300m behind Chelsea.

 

The sums put down at Stamford Bridge under Clearlake and Boehly are staggering.

 

In their first year under new ownership, Chelsea spent £745.2m on new players, a new single-season record for one club and more than double the previous high, Manchester City’s £328.1m in 2017-18. Chelsea’s £552.7m spend in 2023-24 was nearly £200m down on that first season under Clearlake and Boehly yet still far beyond what any other club, English or otherwise, has ever dispensed with on players. Even Paris Saint-Germain’s own startling 2017-18 season, when they bought both Neymar and Kylian Mbappé, set them back a comparatively miserly €401.9m (£356.0m) in transfer fees.

 

It is not just transfer fees where Chelsea have spent heavily in recent years. Correspondingly, agents have taken their share of the spoils too. In data released by the FA last week, Chelsea were confirmed as the biggest spenders on agent fees for the second year running, albeit their outlay did drop from £75.1m to £60.4m. Across three seasons of new ownership, Chelsea have spent £178.7m on agent fees alone.

 

To try to offset their huge spend, Chelsea have retained their position as arguably the best selling club in England. That moniker was underlined last season, where the club’s £152.5m profit on player sales set a new English record, eclipsing Chelsea’s own mark of £142.6m in 2019-20. Of course, that did include the almost pure profit earned on the £37.5m sale of Maatsen, but even without that they’d have topped £100m in player profits for the third time in five years.

 

Chelsea's profit from player trading dwarfs all domestic rivals over the last decade

 

Chelsea’s £843.8m in player sale profits soars above all others over the past decade, with only Manchester City otherwise clearing the half-billion pound mark. It’s difficult to see how Chelsea can move away from their player trading model any time soon. For as long as operating losses persist at such high levels, they’ll have to sell strongly to boost the bottom line.

 

How’s the £1.75bn investment coming along?

 

As we’ve seen, Stamford Bridge is restraining matchday income currently, and Chelsea have already identified Earl’s Court as a potential destination if they are to move to a new stadium.

The Lillie Bridge Depot, a little over a mile from the club’s current home, has been earmarked as the spot on which a new ground could be built, with plans for development there already drawn up. But the club are still to submit a formal bid for the site, meaning little progress to date, a point of tension between Boehly and Clearlake.

 

In a recent Bloomberg interview, Boehly was frank in admitting that, without alignment on stadium plans, ‘that’s going to be where… we ultimately decide to go our different ways’.

The matter is made all the more pressing by a competing proposal at Earl’s Court. The Earl’s Court Development Company (ECDC) has already completed a formal public consultation on its proposed £10bn redevelopment — including 4,000 new homes, offices, shops, restaurants and a park, but no football stadium — and submitted planning applications to the two relevant local councils. A decision is expected some time in 2025. Chelsea can still bid for the land but the crux of the matter is clear: if they want to move to Earl’s Court, they need to get a move on with their plans.

 

While the stadium project remains bogged down, there are some signs of life elsewhere. A stated aim of club president and chief operating officer Jason Gannon upon his promotion last September was an upgrade to the club’s Cobham training facility. Chelsea have been based at Cobham for two decades, and an improvement is required to bring club facilities in line with world-class standards found elsewhere.

 

Can Chelsea keep signing players?

 

The answer is a firm yes. In fact, they’re already doing it — £167.8m went on new players last summer, before they recently committed to spending more than £60m on Geovany Quenda and Dario Essugo. As we’ve seen, from a Premier League perspective, Chelsea have no issues whatsoever when it comes to spending even more this coming summer. The UEFA picture is less clear, though a financial penalty is unlikely to bother Chelsea at this stage. That might change if sporting sanctions loomed in the future.

 

In terms of whether any outstanding debts may hinder them, Chelsea, unlike most clubs, don’t disclose their transfer debts and receivables. But there’s little hiding the big sums in play. The club’s trade creditors balance — within which the amounts they owe to other clubs on transfer fees are included — totalled £553.6m at the end of last June. The bulk of that is likely transfer fees; a check against some fellow ‘Big Six’ clubs in 2023-24 showed transfer fees accounted for an average of 92 per cent of those clubs’ trade creditor balances due within a year, while balances owed in over a year tended to relate solely to transfer fees.

 

Applying that as an estimate to Chelsea leaves them owing a whopping £527.7m in outstanding fees — comfortably the most in the Premier League. Spurs trail a long way behind in second, owing £337.4m.

 

That’s of little surprise but perhaps more interesting is the club’s net position on transfer fees. Chelsea’s continued presence as strong sellers means they’re owed a sizeable chunk in transfer fee instalments. Chelsea’s trade receivables were £291.1m at the end of June 2024; based on the proportions seen at Manchester United and Arsenal, we can estimate around £262m of that related to transfer fees owed to Chelsea. That is, again, a league high by a long way.

 

On a net basis, our estimates leave Chelsea with net transfer fee payables of £265.7m. That’s a huge sum, but it’s actually only the third-highest in England. For all Chelsea have spent enormously in recent years, they’ve kept their net transfer liabilities in line with several of their peers, both by spending a significant chunk in up-front cash payments (cash spent on new players was £1.334bn over the past two seasons, with Arsenal the next-highest on £432m, or £902m behind) and by generating strong transfer income.

 

Large up-front payments and strong player sales have kept Chelsea's transfer debt in line with peers

 

Readily available cash has hardly been a problem for Chelsea, with Boehly and Clearlake providing £795.2m in funding across their first two seasons in charge. That is the most of any club by a long way and there really is little sign of the well drying up any time soon.

 

Chelsea make huge losses, and there are elements of those losses the owners would surely likely to improve quickly (Champions League football, a front-of-shirt sponsor). But the excess has not been by accident and, as The Athletic recently explained, there is neither a shortage of funding behind the owners nor is there any sign yet of that funding having to be serviced by the club. If Abramovich was English football’s first ultra-wealthy benefactor, his successors have simply carried on the trend he started.

 

What does the future hold?

 

In the short term, a return to Champions League football is a necessity. England now boasts a glut of clubs whose spending is so large they need the revenue from UEFA’s premier competition to keep day-to-day losses under control; Chelsea are one of them.

 

Even winning the Conference League this season would only earn Chelsea a little over the €18.6m clubs receive just for reaching the Champions League’s 36-team league phase. The club has earned €613.9m (£523.2m) from UEFA competitions in the past decade.

 

One saving grace this season comes in the guise of FIFA’s Club World Cup. Chelsea are expected to bank around £23m just for showing up in the US this June, and could earn about £90m if they win the tournament. That will be split across the current accounting period and next, but progression to the quarter-final stage would book a projected £44m in extra broadcast income in their 2024-25 accounts, though going to America will bring added costs too.

 

Chelsea have shown a desire to buck the trend of wage inflation seen elsewhere, though it’s a fact of life that big clubs still need to pay big money. With a player amortisation bill still not far shy of £200m, expect another huge operating loss this season, even with added income from FIFA’s latest money-spinner. Chelsea’s profit on player sales this season is just £28.0m, over £120m down on a year ago. Combine that with the lack of another women’s team sale and it’s clear, from the current vantage point, Chelsea will be swinging back to a huge pre-tax loss in 2024-25.

 

In the longer run, there’s also a bigger question at stake: what do Chelsea’s owners want out of this?

 

To date, Clearlake and Boehly’s consortium has spent £2.5bn on buying the club and injected a further £795.2m into running it. If we assume the £1.75bn commitment was in respect of infrastructure and not player transfers, and consequently they’ve hardly made a dent in the figure, we’re already at a total commitment over £5bn. The loans they’ve taken on to fund things also exceed that near-£800m injected so far, and all of this is without considering the hefty payment-in-kind interest a chunk of their borrowing is accruing.

 

The desire with private equity funds is usually to make a profit on exit. How Chelsea’s owners might do that if they ever decide to is unclear.

 

One path to profit might come in terms of media rights. More specifically, a shift away from the existing model, where Premier League TV money is shared equitably (at least relative to certain leagues abroad) among the 20 competing teams. Soon after Boehly took a stake in the LA Dodgers, the team announced an $8.35billion, 25-year TV deal with Time Warner, the biggest such deal in the MLB, where teams are able to sell their rights individually. But the parity offered by the Premier League is one of the reasons the league is so popular, and that equitable split is why investors have been keener to invest in English clubs than abroad. Upending that might not be all that beneficial in the long run.

 

Instead of just grabbing a bigger slice of the pie, there’s a good chance the owners believe TV rights still have room to grow. That could come via smaller shifts within the existing model. For example, more kick-off times might be employed to enable more games to be televised. One of the great successes of cricket’s Indian Premier League, where per-game TV rights exceed those of Premier League football, is that only one match takes place at a time, focusing all eyes on one spot.

 

Revenue growth is an undoubted goal of Chelsea’s owners, just as it is elsewhere. There are doubtless various areas they feel the club has yet to tap, not least in terms of a new or improved stadium. Less hyped but of similar importance to increasing club values is controlling costs, a goal which, belatedly, clubs are moving towards. Limiting expenditure is an obvious goal of UEFA’s squad cost ratio rule, and Chelsea have repeatedly spoken of their desire to reduce wages. The NFL’s salary cap is one of the key reasons behind its teams’ lofty valuations; while no such hard cap is imminent in English football, reining in wages — at least relative to income — would boost asset values.

 

While the investment of Chelsea’s new owners might already look huge to many, the likelihood is those in charge don’t agree. More probable is they view Chelsea, and football clubs in general, as still operating at well below their potential even in the existing framework. The English Premier League is a truly global product, and live sport is widely viewed as recession-proof – so long as the product on offer remains entertaining and sufficiently unpredictable.

 

Whatever the future holds, Chelsea’s recent off-field history has been tumultuous. Another busy transfer summer looks likely. Yet without an improvement on the field, the project undertaken since 2022 will struggle.

 

In the 20 years prior to Clearlake and Boehly’s arrival, Chelsea finished outside the top five just twice. They’ve matched that tally already under new ownership. With a Champions League spot at stake and increasingly necessary if club finances are to improve, both fans and owners alike will be hoping they don’t make it three in a row next month.

 

[AyeDubbleYoo]

I assume the short answer is fiddling the books. 

[Keegans Export]

Quote

Barcelona were adjudged to have overstated their UEFA PSR position by €267million in 2022, for which they were fined €500,000 by the European governing body.

🤢

[gbandit]

What’s the fucking point eh?

[AyeDubbleYoo]

I assume if the PL couldn't deduct points then everyone would just go crazy and pay whatever fine they want. 

[The Prophet]

Seems Bournemouth will get picked apart this summer, with Chelsea pushing for Huijsen and Liverpool for Kerkez.

[Astroblack]

19 minutes ago, The Prophet said:

Seems Bournemouth will get picked apart this summer, with Chelsea pushing for Huijsen and Liverpool for Kerkez.

 

Hopefully us for Semenyo 

[Sibierski]

27 minutes ago, The Prophet said:

Seems Bournemouth will get picked apart this summer, with Chelsea pushing for Huijsen and Liverpool for Kerkez.

Iraola will be off too.

 

Spurs should be after him, but wouldn’t be shocked to see Real Madrid make a play if Alonso / Klopp are not viable for them.

[Bunk Moreland]

 

[Elliottman]

Just now, Bunk Moreland said:

 

[SteV]

5 minutes ago, Bunk Moreland said:

 

Yep, can see them having the wage wiggle-room for that…

[The Butcher]

He'll end up in the US.

[nemtizz]

 

[Andy84]

See Romano is fully twerking for Man Utd over Cunha. Probably for the pet hates thread but the bloke grates on me 

[Menace]

Add "twerking" on there too

[AyeDubbleYoo]

1 hour ago, Andy84 said:

See Romano is fully twerking for Man Utd over Cunha. Probably for the pet hates thread but the bloke grates on me 

 

He's a football journo plus he relies heavily on twitter, therefore he should be despised. 

[Poon Raccoon]

On 22/04/2025 at 23:52, duo said:

Hopefully Man U don't get CL 

What, the team that was going to have no money by Christmas ?

 

Protected species.

[Skeletor]

https://www.skysports.com/football/news/11712/13354765/jamie-vardy-leicester-city-striker-to-leave-club-after-13-years-following-premier-league-relegation

 

[SteV]

20 minutes ago, Skeletor said:

https://www.skysports.com/football/news/11712/13354765/jamie-vardy-leicester-city-striker-to-leave-club-after-13-years-following-premier-league-relegation

 

Feels like an absolute perfect MLS fit.