9 months ago
34 Chelsea may be in violation of Financial Fair Play regulations if they don’t raise a minimum of £100 million from the sale of homegrown players.
Since the summer of July 2022, the Blues have spent almost £1 billion under their new owners, and they have twice smashed the British transfer record.
They still risk punishment, though, even after selling Kai Havertz to Arsenal for £65 million, Mason Mount to Manchester United for an initial £55 million and Mateo Kovacic to Manchester City for as much as £30 million.
The Premier League is already looking into Mauricio Pochettino’s team for FFP violations while Roman Abramovich was the team’s owner.
Furthermore, if their recent transfer activity violates Profit and Sustainability rules, they risk receiving even harsher penalties, as the club is not permitted to lose more than £105 million in a three-year period.
FFP expert and financial adviser Stefan Borson, while speaking on Jim White and Alex Crook’s deadline day show, claimed that Reece James and Conor Gallagher might be sold by Chelsea.
He said: “We all know that the pure profits that you get from selling your youngsters off have no book value.
“So fine, but clearly to sell off your captain [James] and near ever-present player [Gallagher] to your local rivals [Tottenham] was an unusual situation.
“When we looked at that at the start of the window, we were thinking, ‘What’s going on there?’
“It’s not a big surprise that of all the people that didn’t bite at £50m-£80m, that [Spurs chairman] Daniel Levy sort of paused and said, ‘I’ll wait and see what happens thank you.’
“Because he knows that within the Premier League – particularly teams like Spurs – they understand Chelsea’s predicament when it comes to PSR Financial Fair Play for this season.
Reece James in action for Chelsea“And they will take advantage of that, and that’s what you’ve seen with [Armando] Broja, they talked about £50m-£60m at the start of the window.
“And he ends up going [to Fulham] for potentially zero – the loan fee might be zero if he plays every game.”
He continued: “In my mind, there’s certainly trouble on the horizon, and they will certainly fail FFP for the current season.
“Unless – and it seems to be very unlikely – that by June 30 this year they sell well over £100m of players.
“But the window they can now do that is going to be very small, because the season is going to finish and we’ve got the Euros.
“So if you look at someone like Gallagher, he’s going to be in the Euros from June 14, so if they want to ship him before June 30, they’ve got to move very quickly.
“And again, the likely buyers are going to know that Chelsea need to sell players.”
