34 minutes ago, dermott said:

The reality is that they're not going to be relegated. Regardless, promoted teams are highly likely to go straight back down again, next season's lot particularly. Sunderland are an outlier, not only a good coach but very shrewd recruiting.

People would have said the same about Tottenham a couple of seasons ago.

40 minutes ago, GarnachoCheese said:

People would have said the same about Tottenham a couple of seasons ago.

Spurs have been on the road to their current situation for about 8 years.

47 minutes ago, dermott said:

Spurs have been on the road to their current situation for about 8 years.

And we're 4 years on that road.

1 hour ago, GarnachoCheese said:

And we're 4 years on that road.

And on page number 666 of this thread.

1 hour ago, axman2526 said:

And on page number 666 of this thread.

The end is near

3 minutes ago, GarnachoCheese said:

The end is near

Of BlueCo hopefully.

Anyone else become irrationally angered when seeing Egbahli's face? He looks like a bond villain.

Edited April 15Apr 15 by Sunspear_88

Just flicked through the first few pages from 7years ago. We thought it could be a car crash back then!!!

17 minutes ago, Sunspear_88 said:

Anyone else become irrationally angered when seeing Egbahli's face? He looks like a bond villain.

I don't have the picture but someone created one of Egbalhis face on the leader of north Korea and labeled it "Egbahli Jong un"

Fans will have to pay higher ticket prices next season to cover their pay rises.

Mental

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DXJsm78E5_3/?igsh=NzFscGx1aWRwaDI1

On 15/04/2026 at 07:27, SydneyChelsea said:

Based on the unreliable data from Capology:

Gittens (amortised) - £17.4m/season

Semenyo (amortised) - £22m/season

Maybe one of BlueCo's 1039 administrative staff should have made that comparison

In fairness, @Bob stark is merely pointing that Gittens makes 'financial sense' only to BlueCo, not by any sane metric. The reality is there is no point in thinking about signings from a football perspective because all they care about having a low wage ceiling.

Of course it's complete bullsh*t because the aggregate wages have exploded under BlueCo. Quantity at the expense of quality.

I won't use capology number, it does not come close to uefa/Deloitte/club report who all usually report similar number.

If you are looking at Semenyo, you are not looking at gittens as alternative. One is a "talent", the other is 26 years old, 2nd top scorer in pl.

For me, as individual signing the only signing that I really didn't like was Neto. Just look at the first few pages of neto thread.

Edited April 16Apr 16 by Bob stark

https://x.com/i/status/2044631937206161791

This is last season number.

Wages bracket is something like:

City, pool

Arse, Chelsea, united

Spuds, villa, Newcastle

Everyone else

Soton

Ipswich

There are few interesting number here.

1. Spuds

   If you want to understand why Spuds has never won anything. Spuds generated more revenue than us and their salary is at Newcastle/Villa salary.

2. Leicester

   153 m for newly promoted team is just insane.

Edited April 16Apr 16 by Bob stark

This is a good read

The Analysis Series: Financial architecture of 22 Holdco...

For anyone wanting an understanding of how Chelsea are funded and how Ares operate this is a must read: Summary and macro-financial context The global sports finance landscape has undergone a profo…

1 hour ago, charierre said:

This is a good read

The Analysis Series: Financial architecture of 22 Holdco...

For anyone wanting an understanding of how Chelsea are funded and how Ares operate this is a must read: Summary and macro-financial context The global sports finance landscape has undergone a profo…

We are f**ked!!

It seems all the money they've spunked on players is gone now, those loans are dried up, and it's all due back in a year or so.

So, I'd expect a very quiet summer window with lots of PR around "looking for the right players" and "won't be rushed into decisions". Followed by some major panicking behind the scenes. I guess they'll have to start selling assets or re-package the loans on even longer/worse deals.

Hard to see how they are going to get themselves out of this financial mess.

3 hours ago, charierre said:

This is a good read

The Analysis Series: Financial architecture of 22 Holdco...

For anyone wanting an understanding of how Chelsea are funded and how Ares operate this is a must read: Summary and macro-financial context The global sports finance landscape has undergone a profo…

As a biologist, I'm not going to pretend to understand all this economic waffle, but the one thing I can identify is leeches...

4 hours ago, charierre said:

This is a good read

The Analysis Series: Financial architecture of 22 Holdco...

For anyone wanting an understanding of how Chelsea are funded and how Ares operate this is a must read: Summary and macro-financial context The global sports finance landscape has undergone a profo…

It's straightforward, the interest are gonna kill BlueCo unless they generate money through sales, stadium ticket prices or the club winning stuff.

If only BlueCo wasn't stupid enough to finance buying sh*t players through loans and stuck to properly running a football club, they would have run a profit. Poor appointment of SDs and being arrogant enough to run the club like this is f**king them and the club. Such a massive opportunity wasted

Quite an interesting listen, with the same conclusion as «the analysis series» above: we’re f**ked.

Not only that, full profit players will need to be sold just to stay afloat. Which means, Josh is as good as gone. Worse still, the bad signings we’ve made can’t be sold as they are likely to generate a net loss on the accounts.

Happy days

The added issue to take into account is that it is highly unlikely there is even a white knight out there anyway.

To recover form this mess would probably take 4bn and the only area that would have been a possibility for that would have bene Saudi. But as has bene reported recently Saudi's global sports appetite is starting to wane. LIV Golf is showing signs and there has been a marked cooling of the Saudi prominence in the running of Newcastle.

Even if they wanted to sell, who could these clowns actually sell to?

26 minutes ago, Deino said:

If only BlueCo wasn't stupid enough to finance buying sh*t players through loans and stuck to properly running a football club, they would have run a profit. Poor appointment of SDs and being arrogant enough to run the club like this is f**king them and the club. Such a massive opportunity wasted

nail. head.

So basically all they are going to do is keep refinancing the loans until the valuation of the club is at a point where they are happy to sell.

Let's say in 10 years time they have about 2 to 3 billion worth of loans to repay but sell for about 10 to 15 billion it all would have been worth it to them in the end.

We are f**ked from a competitive point of view but that's already obvious, the club will be fine financially in long run.

57 minutes ago, Remodez said:

So basically all they are going to do is keep refinancing the loans until the valuation of the club is at a point where they are happy to sell.

Let's say in 10 years time they have about 2 to 3 billion worth of loans to repay but sell for about 10 to 15 billion it all would have been worth it to them in the end.

We are f**ked from a competitive point of view but that's already obvious, the club will be fine financially in long run.

Correct. This sums up the ownerships perspective perfectly.

We are absolutely finished as a Football Club, the ONLY saving grace would be relegation which plummets the clubs value and then the hedge fund shareholders put pressure on Clearlake and we’re sold. Ideally to some ex-Soviet now Israeli businessman with a love for the sport and club.

1 hour ago, Remodez said:

So basically all they are going to do is keep refinancing the loans until the valuation of the club is at a point where they are happy to sell.

Let's say in 10 years time they have about 2 to 3 billion worth of loans to repay but sell for about 10 to 15 billion it all would have been worth it to them in the end.

We are f**ked from a competitive point of view but that's already obvious, the club will be fine financially in long run.

That assumes somebody would be willing to buy the club for the elevated amount. As evidenced by the Saudi's decreasing their investment on sports, there may be less willing to take the risk.

If there is any hope, assuming the Saudi's scaling back is a sign of a general direction change, then all clubs would ultimately have to adopt new operating models in the longer term. Fans are already protesting ticket prices etc. at most clubs and the wage bills are becoming unsustainable.