On 25/08/2024 at 09:12, H2SO4aq said:

Ok but unless I’m very wrong, PSR wasn’t in effect at the time of those payments, so surely you can’t run afoul of rules that didn’t yet exist??? None of this makes a lick of sense to me, like pay a fine for “illegal payments” that’s all well and good but anything beyond that seems pretty flimsy on a legal basis if PSR didn’t exist…

PSR was introduced in 2013. The 'concerns' that have been reported just have very tenuous links to transfers. 

https://www.instagram.com/p/C_OeqWvsC-9/?igsh=N2NobXdoamdmMTZp

Not sure if this is credible.

Running out of time to get these outgoings sorted. 

Can't see s striker happening now either.

Very late in the day. Going to be quite a few players that are left in limbo i think.

Also what the hell is going on with sponsorship. 2nd year running, pretty embarrassing they had months to get something in place and yet we are left with no sponsor again. 

 

Is this latest finance thing anything to worry about??? Had trouble keeping up recently as I have been ill

2 minutes ago, AlienX said:

Is this latest finance thing anything to worry about??? Had trouble keeping up recently as I have been ill

Impossible to know 100%. Clearly the owners are still trying to offload a number of players before the window closes. Partially to reduce squad to a reasonable size I imagine. But since a number of those touted (e.g. Chalobah/Broja) are 100% profit then that suggests they need to raise some funds too.

1 hour ago, AlienX said:

Is this latest finance thing anything to worry about??? Had trouble keeping up recently as I have been ill

No, not really. The Twitter journalist (Martyn Ziegler) who 'broke' the story is either being disingenuous or has given BlueCo a massive loophole.

Ziegler broke the story on Twitter by saying that UEFA don't permit clubs to sell assets to their parent company. That isn't strictly true; these transactions are specifically covered in the UEFA FFP rules, and the rules say they are only excluded from income calculations if the transaction is found to be above a 'fair market value'. It is certainly possible for a club to generate revenue by selling assets to a related party. UEFA hasn't assessed whether the hotel sales to BlueCo were 'fair market value' as yet, so at best Ziegler is jumping the gun. 

However, if Ziegler was in fact telling the truth and has a source inside UEFA who already has concluded the sales are not 'fair market value' despite there being no formal assessment, then any lawyer with half a brain would point out that is a pretty clear denial of procedural fairness and would never hold up to appeal - in other words, publishing the story may have given BlueCo a free pass.

Of course, there's also the question of what is 'fair market value'. I'm no real estate expert but I'd imagine that £76.5m for two operating hotels, in prime London real estate, is going to be fairly close to a fair market value - from what I hear, that'd be cheap for a house in London these days!

The worst-case scenario is that we get banned from European competition for a season. This already happened to Milan, but it's worthwhile pointing out that was for several FFP breaches which means a season-long ban is likely the ceiling for punishment and we would expect to get less for a single breach.

Edited August 29, 20241 yr by SydneyChelsea

15 hours ago, SydneyChelsea said:

No, not really. The Twitter journalist (Martyn Ziegler) who 'broke' the story is either being disingenuous or has given BlueCo a massive loophole.

Ziegler broke the story on Twitter by saying that UEFA don't permit clubs to sell assets to their parent company. That isn't strictly true; these transactions are specifically covered in the UEFA FFP rules, and the rules say they are only excluded from income calculations if the transaction is found to be above a 'fair market value'. It is certainly possible for a club to generate revenue by selling assets to a related party. UEFA hasn't assessed whether the hotel sales to BlueCo were 'fair market value' as yet, so at best Ziegler is jumping the gun. 

However, if Ziegler was in fact telling the truth and has a source inside UEFA who already has concluded the sales are not 'fair market value' despite there being no formal assessment, then any lawyer with half a brain would point out that is a pretty clear denial of procedural fairness and would never hold up to appeal - in other words, publishing the story may have given BlueCo a free pass.

Of course, there's also the question of what is 'fair market value'. I'm no real estate expert but I'd imagine that £76.5m for two operating hotels, in prime London real estate, is going to be fairly close to a fair market value - from what I hear, that'd be cheap for a house in London these days!

The worst-case scenario is that we get banned from European competition for a season. This already happened to Milan, but it's worthwhile pointing out that was for several FFP breaches which means a season-long ban is likely the ceiling for punishment and we would expect to get less for a single breach.

Didn't the PL decide it was a fair market value a while back  ? I heard though that the women's football team sale was still being looked at  but really it depends on whoever or whatever we read is true !

There was stuff about our shirt sponsorship being way too high based on formula applying to the  company who sponsored us,  but the PL okayed it.

Edited August 30, 20241 yr by The Rising Sun
Explanation added

2 minutes ago, The Rising Sun said:

Didn't the PL decide it was a fair market value a while back  ? I heard though that the women's football team sale was still being looked at  but really it depends on whoever or whatever we read is true !

You'd imagine UEFA are allowed to make their own ruling though, similarly to how City got off from UEFA but may still get in trouble with the prem. 

That said, the whole concept of getting involved with fair market value seems wild to me. I get its probably mainly there to stop us selling a blade of grass for £1bn but in reality, you'd think they would have a real hard time enforcing anything against reasonable values, otherwise we'll probably fight it to the same extent city are.

57 minutes ago, The Rising Sun said:

Didn't the PL decide it was a fair market value a while back  ? I heard though that the women's football team sale was still being looked at  but really it depends on whoever or whatever we read is true !

There was stuff about our shirt sponsorship being way too high based on formula applying to the  company who sponsored us,  but the PL okayed it.

The issue was with Infinite Athlete. The front-of-shirt sponsorship was worth around £40m for a season. Infinite was a start-up with assets, etc, worth nowhere near £40m. Clearlake also had some financial interest in Infinite from memory. I think Infinite are sleeve sponsors this season.

16 hours ago, SydneyChelsea said:

No, not really. The Twitter journalist (Martyn Ziegler) who 'broke' the story is either being disingenuous or has given BlueCo a massive loophole.

Ziegler broke the story on Twitter by saying that UEFA don't permit clubs to sell assets to their parent company. That isn't strictly true; these transactions are specifically covered in the UEFA FFP rules, and the rules say they are only excluded from income calculations if the transaction is found to be above a 'fair market value'. It is certainly possible for a club to generate revenue by selling assets to a related party. UEFA hasn't assessed whether the hotel sales to BlueCo were 'fair market value' as yet, so at best Ziegler is jumping the gun. 

However, if Ziegler was in fact telling the truth and has a source inside UEFA who already has concluded the sales are not 'fair market value' despite there being no formal assessment, then any lawyer with half a brain would point out that is a pretty clear denial of procedural fairness and would never hold up to appeal - in other words, publishing the story may have given BlueCo a free pass.

Of course, there's also the question of what is 'fair market value'. I'm no real estate expert but I'd imagine that £76.5m for two operating hotels, in prime London real estate, is going to be fairly close to a fair market value - from what I hear, that'd be cheap for a house in London these days!

The worst-case scenario is that we get banned from European competition for a season. This already happened to Milan, but it's worthwhile pointing out that was for several FFP breaches which means a season-long ban is likely the ceiling for punishment and we would expect to get less for a single breach.

UEFA don't allow asset sales between sister companies to count as income/profit. They have confirmed it. Their out is that deals are dealt with on a case-by-case basis. It won't affect Chelsea's involvement in the European comp this season.

3 hours ago, dermott said:

UEFA don't allow asset sales between sister companies to count as income/profit. They have confirmed it. Their out is that deals are dealt with on a case-by-case basis. It won't affect Chelsea's involvement in the European comp this season.

Where are you getting that from?

Related party transactions are permitted in the rule. Only the 'fair market value' will count towards any reporting, though.

UEFA can't come out with a blanket judgement, without first assessing the Chelsea hotel deal. If they did- which is what Martyn Ziegler claims - then it would be prejudice, and would never hold up in CAS.

5 windows they have now had, however I will discount the first one because of the rushed takeover and Todd being defacto sporting director.

So 4 windows where they have had in place not one but two sporting directors of their choosing. And in all 4 windows they have:

1. Failed to sign even a very good striker, never mind a world class one.

2. Signed so many goalkeepers, that range for subpar to garbage.

3. Made our defence worse than what they started with.

4. Overpaid massively for 3 midfielders, the two most expensive ones, who were meant to be "world class" were so outclassed by Gallagher we had to sell him and bring in KDH to make them look decent. The least expensive of the 3 can only play a game before he catches Jamesitus and misses a ton of games.

5. Signed Mudryk for a base of 62mill. Enough said.

6. Take a CL regular to one that barley scrapes the conference league.

 

Hats off to them, if this had happened at one of our rivals we would be dining on it for decades.

Genuinely an absolute disgrace that we've fumbled Oshimen because we tried to cut his wages by 100k

 

We pay Sterling 300k a week ffs

It's genuinely pathetic how they have run this club so far. This transfer window has been a complete mess. The last few weeks, they have used Maresca to get the word out on players that need to leave, and they didn't manage to sell a single one of them other than Lukaku! They got a few out on loan because nobody was stupid enough to buy them when we practically announced that we were desperate.

They failed to get in a quality keeper, again! They just signed a bunch of nobodies for profit later and another mid table goalkeeper as a backup.

Our best defender left on a free, so instead of signing a top class CB to replace him, they signed a mid table CB on free and put faith in injury prone players and two players we got from Monaco that just get worse and worse every time I see them. Our second best CB last season, and academy graduate who has been at Chelsea his whole life was treated like sh*t and basically told to piss off.

Sold a fan favourite and another graduate from our academy, Gallagher, and replaced him with Championship level quality, Dewsbury-Hall.

Maresca tells Chilwell and Chukwuemeka that he doesn't want them (orders from the club) nothing happens there and now we have two very capable players who know they aren't wanted. What are we going to do until January? Tell them to train alone or with the reserves? Oh yeah, this is great for team harmony. Ostracising two players who are more than capable of helping the team and have a good relationship (as far as I know) with their teammates.

Kellyman, Casadei, D.D Fofana, Angelo, Washington, couldn't move any of them on.

Failed miserably at signing a striker, so now we are stuck with Jackson up front for another season, with rookie and very raw Guiu as second striker.  

What was it? a 4 or 5 window plan or something? Well they made a complete f**king mess of it.

 

I’m very near to the point of totally giving up with this club. These absolute c**ts have totally f**ked it up.

Right, transfer window is now shut, the club has decided that it would sell the Champions League-winning team to fund purchases. My reckoning is we only have Reece James left in the first team from that heady night... Chillwell is training with the reserves without a squad number. 

Now that there are no Champions League winners left to sell bar the two mentioned above, we're starting to cash in on the signings made when the new ownership took over.

Stirling is now halfway out of the club and we've sold two Champions League winners to the Arse... 

Just listing this here as anything that now happens to the club is laid firmly at the owners. Maresca has to deliver this season or things could go south quite quickly for the club. We've just witnesed a billion quid gamble.   

 

 

Massive, massive overreactions in here.

Lay the blame at Sterling for not being good enough at all for the past 2 years.

Lay the blame at Chilly for not being able to keep fit and for being happy not to play football anymore.

Lay the blame at the premier league for making it so that academy players sold are pure profit.

Lay the blame at Badiashile for being amazing for 6 months and then looking like a sunday league player from then on.

Lay the blame at Chuk for not being able to keep fit at all.

Lay the blame at Marina for leaving an old, unathletic team for the new owners to clean up.

Have there been some bad signings? Yeah, but what club doesn't do that?

I am a bit confused by the timing. 

If Sterling, Chilwell etc were surplus to requirements and needed to be offloaded, why wait until the last couple of weeks of the window to inform them? I'm sure Maresca knew they were not his type of players long before he ever saw them in training and the board knew they'd be difficult to move due to high wages so the more time is allowed for the situation to be resolved the better. I'm not even going to bother with a lack of respect issue, because this lot has none to begin with.

Then there's a case of certain players who are clearly not good enough, like Sanchez, Mudryk, Disasi, Badiashile etc and yet the club persists with them despite all the evidence to the contrary. It seems there are some people in the hierarchy that put their reputation on the line because of those deals/money involved and they just prefer to burden yet another manager that comes along with the task of making it work instead of accepting the fact they f**ked up and bet on the wrong players.

13 minutes ago, I am a CPA said:

Massive, massive overreactions in here.

Lay the blame at Sterling for not being good enough at all for the past 2 years.

Lay the blame at Chilly for not being able to keep fit and for being happy not to play football anymore.

Lay the blame at the premier league for making it so that academy players sold are pure profit.

Lay the blame at Badiashile for being amazing for 6 months and then looking like a sunday league player from then on.

Lay the blame at Chuk for not being able to keep fit at all.

Lay the blame at Marina for leaving an old, unathletic team for the new owners to clean up.

Have there been some bad signings? Yeah, but what club doesn't do that?

Never had an issue with selling Sterling, but they were the ones that signed him in the first place, something they should never have done.

Chilwell is not at fault for his injuries. How can you blame a player for something completely out of their control?

You can't blame the Premier League for that when we go and spend a billion quid. If we never signed Angelo, Washington, Casadei, Petrovic, Ugochukwu, Fofana, Mudryk, Disasi, Badiashile, Slonina, Moreira (all in the same season) and Wiley, Kellyman, Anselmino and Penders this season, we wouldn't have needed to sell Chalobah, Gallagher, Maatsen or Hall. This is absurd spending on mediocrity like we have never seen before.

Chukwuemeka, again, you can't blame him for injuries.

Marina, she made big mistakes for sure. Her biggest fault was big money flops that were hard to shift. But if you're going to call them unathletic (Champions League winners by the way) then what does it say about the current lot? It's hard to get them to break a sweat most games. Also, why do people keep using the past to try to and protect the present? The past is the past, and it was mostly a very successful time, this current lot have done nothing but damage the club. We're a laughing stock.

 

6 hours ago, Drogba1 said:

 

We pay Sterling 300k a week ffs

And even though he's gone, we're still paying him 150k per week!

1 hour ago, I am a CPA said:

Massive, massive overreactions in here.

Lay the blame at Sterling for not being good enough at all for the past 2 years.

Lay the blame at Chilly for not being able to keep fit and for being happy not to play football anymore.

Lay the blame at the premier league for making it so that academy players sold are pure profit.

Lay the blame at Badiashile for being amazing for 6 months and then looking like a sunday league player from then on.

Lay the blame at Chuk for not being able to keep fit at all.

Lay the blame at Marina for leaving an old, unathletic team for the new owners to clean up.

Have there been some bad signings? Yeah, but what club doesn't do that?

 

1 hour ago, Scott Harris said:

Never had an issue with selling Sterling, but they were the ones that signed him in the first place, something they should never have done.

Chilwell is not at fault for his injuries. How can you blame a player for something completely out of their control?

You can't blame the Premier League for that when we go and spend a billion quid. If we never signed Angelo, Washington, Casadei, Petrovic, Ugochukwu, Fofana, Mudryk, Disasi, Badiashile, Slonina, Moreira (all in the same season) and Wiley, Kellyman, Anselmino and Penders this season, we wouldn't have needed to sell Chalobah, Gallagher, Maatsen or Hall. This is absurd spending on mediocrity like we have never seen before.

Chukwuemeka, again, you can't blame him for injuries.

Marina, she made big mistakes for sure. Her biggest fault was big money flops that were hard to shift. But if you're going to call them unathletic (Champions League winners by the way) then what does it say about the current lot? It's hard to get them to break a sweat most games. Also, why do people keep using the past to try to and protect the present? The past is the past, and it was mostly a very successful time, this current lot have done nothing but damage the club. We're a laughing stock.

 

To add to Scott's answer in rgds to the PL and homegrown. We were also debt free when the muppets took over.

They created the headache we are all suffering from on the belief that they need 4 yrs. 4yrs for us to trust the process! Well...times up. Let's see this process this season and judge them then.

But so far, we still have a bloated squad and they've sold some good players for sh*t ones just to cover their early mistakes. So I'm trying to see how paying our rivals wages to help them win the league makes sense. I'm trying to make sancho make sense*. I'm trying to accept the disaster brothers over trev to make sense. And the season has only just started!

 

*in rgds to sancho...thats 7 players for 3 positions behind Jackson/Guiu! Yet no cover for Lavia and our defensive cover is the Monaco disaster brothers.

Edited August 31, 20241 yr by Simplymo

Well that was another fek up ,   arse are not paying a loan fee and less than half his wages .how the fek does that working our favour . Sancho in for some weird reason 

Chilly and Trev still here only bonus I can see is Lukaku is finally gone ..clowns

 

The Osimhen saga is a disgrace.  How the club and the player can be so far apart and continue on and on is ridiculous.  The communication between them must have been conducted between complete idiots.

Signing Sanchez makes sense from business point of view as he is still young and has alot to prove £25mill is a bargain if he delivers.
My guess is that Mudryk and Madueke will be gone as early as January. Mudryk because he has being very poor and i see very little game time for him now that we have Neto and Felix and Madueke will probably be sold for profit and Sanchez will take his place on the right. 
So, it will take one or two more windows to make this right because i do believe that disasi and badiashile will be gone too at some point. 
I am optimistic because clearly the owners are willing to spend money to improve this team rather than just hiring and firing managers.

We have a good squad but we are missing a key component of that and it's the striker, I'm still pissed off we let that Osimhen saga go on for so long without a contingency plan in place. 

8 hours ago, Drogba1 said:

Genuinely an absolute disgrace that we've fumbled Oshimen because we tried to cut his wages by 100k

 

We pay Sterling 300k a week ffs

We pay him over 150k for him to play for someone else, and then we'll go through the same rubbish next summer.