Chelsea’s accounts were made public today, causing a real stir around the footballing world simply because of the staggering numbers involved.
£747m spent on transfers before June 30th last season, an 18% wage bill rise, a hotel moved from one holding company to another to keep us within the rules. It’s all pretty scary. The £100m of player sales we need to make this summer is becoming less about making budget to improve the squad, and more about simply staying within the rules.
The period between the end of the season and the 30th June accounting deadline for this season is going to have a vast influence on the future of this club.
A few points on Chelsea's 2022/23 accounts.💷
Club maintain they are confident of avoiding PSR breaches. They have been pretty consistent on this point and are in keeping with the £105m allowable losses for the cycle ending 2022/23.
There are some concerning numbers at face… pic.twitter.com/D1eq8Z01C2
— Ben Jacobs (@JacobsBen) April 13, 2024
The case for the defence
As you’d expect, the unofficial mouthpiece of the ownership Ben Jacobs has weighed in with his say too. His role, as ever, is to play down the seriousness of it all, but he does have some interesting points to mitigate the panic that we’re on the verge of being run into the ground.
First up he repeats the mantra that the club are “confident” they can avoid breaching the Premier League’s Profit and Sustainability Rules.
Mason Mount’s £55m sale is on next year’s books, as will Lewis Hall’s £28m move to Newcastle. That’s £83m banked. The fact that we’ve failed to quality for Europe once again will decrease our wage bill next year too. But even that is a cost – we’d have made more money by qualifying than we’re going to save by not qualifying, obviously.
Then, the most pathetic fillip of all – thanks to UEFA’s silly new Club World Cup rules, we’ll be included in the 2025 edition. That will be some extra pocket money, but not the hundreds of millions we need to get back on track. The fact that it’s mentioned at all shows how desperate things have become.
