- Why is it that the Premier League uses the same referees with the same clubs over and over again?
- After 100+ charges against them, ManC still march on,
By Tony Attwood
There is all the normal chatter going on at the moment about which clubs can make it into Europe next season, although in the midst of all this, one topic remains curiously unexplored in much (although not all) of the media…. The financial situation of Chelsea.
As I understand things (although of course I could be wrong), Chelsea reached an agreement with Uefa about its financial doings, some ten months ago. The club agreed that it had broken the earnings regulations, and agreed not to re-use any of the get-outs that it had invented to get itself out of jail last time around.
The most notorious of these, you will remember, was the notion of selling the women’s club to another company, which itself was already owned by a member of the Chelsea board. It seems that the Uefa rules at the time didn’t include one that says that any escapade set up primarily to avoid being caught by any other rule cannot be used. Most of us who have been directors of companies will be used to such regulations as they exist within the Companies Act. It seems the Premier League was somewhat naive in not realising just what wacky scheme some company directors might try to use.
But now Chelsea has agreed not to use or invent any more loopholes which are there just to help the club get around regulations (which is exactly what the Companies Act does). They can’t add new players to their Uefa list of players without Chelsea’s transfer balance being in the black.
The current financial year ends on 30 June, and if Chelsea are found to have done anything wrong, that will affect the club next season. They can still lose up to €60m this time around, but after that, it seems that every Euro lost leads to a huge fine and a ban from Europe, which then affects their subsequent income.
Chelsea have put out press releases saying that they can meet all the new requirements, and the general feeling is that they are going to do this in part by not reducing the value of their players year by year, as clubs normally do (another interesting ploy, if true, and one that Uefa again might object to).
But they still have a bigger problem, because there won’t be a Club World Cup to win, this summer, and that will reduce their income considerably.
Now, although I have spent much of my working life as a company director, I’ve never been a finance director, so I may have misunderstood something here, but the way it looks to me is that Chelsea have been forced to accept a deal which won’t immediately get them out of trouble, because the club already has one of the highest wages bill in world football. While other clubs that afford such salaries (like Real Madrid and PSG) do so because they know they will be in the Champions League each year, Chelsea doesn’t. They are currently sixth in the league, seven points behind Liverpool in fifth.
Chelsea can, of course, buy more players, but those players’ wages are included in their costs in these calculations (unlike the calculations of Squad Cost rules). So the only alternative is to sell players at a profit. Except that every other club will know the dire situation Chelsea is in vis-à-vis the Uefa rules, and few will want to be seen to be bailing Chelsea out by paying over the odds for Chelsea players. Indeed, if any players are sold for over the expected price, I would imagine Uefa will come down hard on both clubs.
In fact, the feeling from analysts who have really worked these numbers from top to bottom is that Chelsea needs to be making serious money from player trading in order to qualify for Europe. Indeed, some argue Chelsea can’t actually achieve what Uefa wants even if they finish in the top five! And the loss in income after that will mean they could lose out on the Champions League in subsequent seasons too.
The analysis on which this commentary is based then adds, “ UEFA’s rules are far less forgiving than the Premier League’s, and whilst the sanctions have been lenient to date, UEFA punishes repeated breaches. Chelsea is the relegation story nobody is talking about. Not from the Premier League but from Europe entirely.”
If you want the full picture, I do recommend you follow the link, which explains it in far more detail.
This analysis, if accurate which I think it is but you may disagree, does make the point that financially, Chelsea have backed themselves into a corner, using financial escape clauses that got closed behind them as they went. And so, as a result of some frantic re-arrangements, Chelsea may have forgotten that the League and Uefa, can, and will, change the rules every time a club finds its way around them, after which there is no way back.
I wonder, given the Premier League seemingly won’t take action against ManC, Uefa is now on that case, as well as Chelsea’s/
