19 minutes ago, Sexyfootball said:

In true Orwellian fashion, I guess your world of black and white is superior to UB's !

The irony of every post he makes is hilarious

11 minutes ago, terraloon said:

We all ( well you would think but at times I wonder) enjoyed the RA era but the reality is that some of the transfers during that period seems to have passed some by.

If we want to talk about transfer mistakes or losses how about some of these

Lukaku

Kepa

Batshuayi

Rahman

Bakayoko

Veron

Mutu

Torres

Shevchenko

Drinkwater

SWP

Parker

Bourahrouz

Those names were without any research and yes we’re over a longer period than the current owners but I am pretty sure that others will easily fall into the category of providing terrible value for money

But on your simplistic linear assessment method he was a transfer fee loss.

He was a great signing and probably one of the very best in the PL era and that only goes to prove a point in that there’s far more to determining the value of a player .

The trick is when you know that a player isn’t going to work is to minimise your losses not just on the fee but do everything you can to get wages off the payroll.

Ironically it seems BlueCo to date have been better at that whereas RAs tenure saw player after player who cost a fortune put out on loan.

Most of the ones I list above and indeed 3 of the four you mentioned have been costly mistakes but the narrative that the situation is unique to the stewardship of BlueCo ignores the millions lost on poor signings over the RA years in an era where our turnover wasn’t even a third of what it is now ( 2003/04 £153.65 million )

That list of 13 transfer mistakes is in a period of what, 20 years? The present mob has managed to have about 20-25 surplus players in the team within 3 years. I think that the difference is crystal clear. We don't criticise the one or two transfers that don't work, we criticise the lack of knowledge of how to build a team (in reality we just needed some tweaks to keep up the league, not a complete turnover), the constant buying of average potential, the lack of skills to sell surplus, ultimately, not having a clue about how to run a football club, not being humble enough to acknowledge it. I'm starting to worry about the future of Chelsea FC, this lot are going to leave it an empty shell.

41 minutes ago, terraloon said:

But on your simplistic linear assessment method he was a transfer fee loss.

He was a great signing and probably one of the very best in the PL era and that only goes to prove a point in that there’s far more to determining the value of a player .

The trick is when you know that a player isn’t going to work is to minimise your losses not just on the fee but do everything you can to get wages off the payroll.

Ironically it seems BlueCo to date have been better at that whereas RAs tenure saw player after player who cost a fortune put out on loan.

Most of the ones I list above and indeed 3 of the four you mentioned have been costly mistakes but the narrative that the situation is unique to the stewardship of BlueCo ignores the millions lost on poor signings over the RA years in an era where our turnover wasn’t even a third of what it is now ( 2003/04 £153.65 million )

There are two ways a transfer is successful.

1. We sell for maximum profit (See Mount, Maatsen, Omari etc.) Big clubs don't often achieve this with transferred players as they tend to keep the good ones.

2. They contribute heavily to the clubs success (Azpi, Cahill, Drogba etc.)

3. Both (Hazard, Oscar, D.Costa)

Everyone makes transfer mistakes, i agree. BlueCo make a hell of a lot more due to the volume of signings they make that aren't needed. You're talking about turnover from '03 then listing players we signed in 2020? BlueCo spent 630.25M in a single season and arguably only two of the players (Enzo/Cucurella) are good enough to start for us.

While Chelsea have agreed to a loss in 2024-25 in line with their current projections, for next season’s reporting period, covering 2023-24 to 2025-26, they’ve committed to losing just €65m. After removing those asset sales, their pre-tax loss across the three years to the end of 2023-24 was around €330m. Avoiding another UEFA breach will likely require plenty of outgoing transfers.

Good luck selling those duds

13 minutes ago, markpitts said:

While Chelsea have agreed to a loss in 2024-25 in line with their current projections, for next season’s reporting period, covering 2023-24 to 2025-26, they’ve committed to losing just €65m. After removing those asset sales, their pre-tax loss across the three years to the end of 2023-24 was around €330m. Avoiding another UEFA breach will likely require plenty of outgoing transfers.

Good luck selling those duds

I’m glad to see the metric of what a player brings to the club in terms of success, experience, service etc is being considered as valuable here.

The only metric being considered by those doing the buying seems to be age and resale.

This is what I have a problem with because as discussed there is more to it than that.

If of course you care.

While there's no doubt we've messed up the finances hence the fine, I do wonder if they knew it was going to happen and carried on regardless. I mean what's £27 million, a 17 year old Brazilian wonderkids leg?

Footballs a very very rich mans game and the constant UEFA/FA restrictions are probably rubbing these guys up the wrong way. With more and more teams falling foul to the regulations it seems like it more of a rebellion from the billionaire owners that don't like being told what to do with their investments. Or UEFA are constantly tightening the rules to increase their bank balance.

I do confess this A list sales part is confusing. If we're being fined for financial reasons due to pointless signings like Joao Felix then why would selling them not contribute to the overall reduction in over spending. It doesn't make sense. I mean how can a £45 million pound player we bought the seasons prior count towards the overall budget but not the sale?

Just my opinion but I think in a desire to sound important and smart the media have got their wires crossed with the wording and got the whole thing wrong.

1 hour ago, DarkMata said:

While there's no doubt we've messed up the finances hence the fine, I do wonder if they knew it was going to happen and carried on regardless. I mean what's £27 million, a 17 year old Brazilian wonderkids leg?

Footballs a very very rich mans game and the constant UEFA/FA restrictions are probably rubbing these guys up the wrong way. With more and more teams falling foul to the regulations it seems like it more of a rebellion from the billionaire owners that don't like being told what to do with their investments. Or UEFA are constantly tightening the rules to increase their bank balance.

I do confess this A list sales part is confusing. If we're being fined for financial reasons due to pointless signings like Joao Felix then why would selling them not contribute to the overall reduction in over spending. It doesn't make sense. I mean how can a £45 million pound player we bought the seasons prior count towards the overall budget but not the sale?

Just my opinion but I think in a desire to sound important and smart the media have got their wires crossed with the wording and got the whole thing wrong.

I read somewhere else the A list thing was nonsense and we could sell who we wanted to cover it. Noni and Nkunku should be more than enough.

Like you I thought it was ridiculous uefa telling us what players we could or couldn’t use.

Saw this post, quite interesting.

“Just been crunching the numbers for Chelsea… despite Uefa being pretty lenient with their sanction, Chelsea’s current levels of breach are so high that I think they’re in actual trouble.

Chelsea’s current owners piss money away for fun so I don’t think they care about the ratchet fines. But the sporting sanctions look really tricky.

Chelsea cannot add players to its Uefa A list without selling players first. The A list as it stands is below.

Chelsea will want to add Lavia, Fofana, Santos and the players acquired this summer (Gittens, Pedro, Delap, Estevao, Essugo Sarr, Paez).

Those additions alone would mean over £130m a year in annualised cost.

Sancho and Mudryk’s wages will come out and maybe Mudryk’s registration fee amortisation too. Let’s be generous and assume Uefa permit this - that would save £30m of annualised cost.

So that’s £100m per annum which Chelsea still needs to save/generate from their Uefa A list in order to add the players it wants to add.

They make savings from reduced wages / amortised fees and generate from profits on player disposal.

An example… let’s assume they can sell Madueke for €50m. NBV currently €22.5m. Annualised cost of €8.5m.

So… that would provide €36m of mitigation against that €100m for next season (more than a third of the way there)… but only €8.5m of mitigation for the season after! (the sporting sanctions apply for 2 seasons minimum).

The model that Chelsea has forced itself into is now large volumes of sales every window in order to fund lots of new acquisitions. They’ve put themselves in a position where they NEED constant squad turnover, whether they want it or not.

The problem will come if they can’t. i.e.,

1) If they can’t sell for profit (most of their player valuations are lower than fees paid);

2) Players refuse to move; or

3) Other clubs won’t acquire their players.

Chelsea are spinning faaaaarrr too many plates here. No chance they don’t all come crashing down.”

27 minutes ago, JM7 said:

Saw this post, quite interesting.

“Just been crunching the numbers for Chelsea… despite Uefa being pretty lenient with their sanction, Chelsea’s current levels of breach are so high that I think they’re in actual trouble.

Chelsea’s current owners piss money away for fun so I don’t think they care about the ratchet fines. But the sporting sanctions look really tricky.

Chelsea cannot add players to its Uefa A list without selling players first. The A list as it stands is below.

Chelsea will want to add Lavia, Fofana, Santos and the players acquired this summer (Gittens, Pedro, Delap, Estevao, Essugo Sarr, Paez).

Those additions alone would mean over £130m a year in annualised cost.

Sancho and Mudryk’s wages will come out and maybe Mudryk’s registration fee amortisation too. Let’s be generous and assume Uefa permit this - that would save £30m of annualised cost.

So that’s £100m per annum which Chelsea still needs to save/generate from their Uefa A list in order to add the players it wants to add.

They make savings from reduced wages / amortised fees and generate from profits on player disposal.

An example… let’s assume they can sell Madueke for €50m. NBV currently €22.5m. Annualised cost of €8.5m.

So… that would provide €36m of mitigation against that €100m for next season (more than a third of the way there)… but only €8.5m of mitigation for the season after! (the sporting sanctions apply for 2 seasons minimum).

The model that Chelsea has forced itself into is now large volumes of sales every window in order to fund lots of new acquisitions. They’ve put themselves in a position where they NEED constant squad turnover, whether they want it or not.

The problem will come if they can’t. i.e.,

1) If they can’t sell for profit (most of their player valuations are lower than fees paid);

2) Players refuse to move; or

3) Other clubs won’t acquire their players.

Chelsea are spinning faaaaarrr too many plates here. No chance they don’t all come crashing down.”

hence players being forced out, Petrrovic, Noni, Chalobah to name three, i still think one of Josh, Tyrique or Santos could go

Let’s keep the manager for continuity….. but we’ll change the squad every season.

👍

15 hours ago, DarkMata said:

While there's no doubt we've messed up the finances hence the fine, I do wonder if they knew it was going to happen and carried on regardless. I mean what's £27 million, a 17 year old Brazilian wonderkids leg?

Footballs a very very rich mans game and the constant UEFA/FA restrictions are probably rubbing these guys up the wrong way. With more and more teams falling foul to the regulations it seems like it more of a rebellion from the billionaire owners that don't like being told what to do with their investments. Or UEFA are constantly tightening the rules to increase their bank balance.

I do confess this A list sales part is confusing. If we're being fined for financial reasons due to pointless signings like Joao Felix then why would selling them not contribute to the overall reduction in over spending. It doesn't make sense. I mean how can a £45 million pound player we bought the seasons prior count towards the overall budget but not the sale?

Just my opinion but I think in a desire to sound important and smart the media have got their wires crossed with the wording and got the whole thing wrong.

I also can't really fathom the rationale. Is it that the results of our financial are determined solely by the players that are incoming and outgoing from our A list. Is this deficit a result of comparing our latest A list to the one previous to that. If all player trading results in a deficit then surely the sale of such players should also be taken into account. So if the purchase of Carney for instance is taken into our deficit then should we sell him we should get the benefit as well

Please can we get a new goalkeeper Santa??

4 hours ago, Ukraine Bolt said:

Saw this post, quite interesting.

“Just been crunching the numbers for Chelsea… despite Uefa being pretty lenient with their sanction, Chelsea’s current levels of breach are so high that I think they’re in actual trouble.

Chelsea’s current owners piss money away for fun so I don’t think they care about the ratchet fines. But the sporting sanctions look really tricky.

Chelsea cannot add players to its Uefa A list without selling players first. The A list as it stands is below.

Chelsea will want to add Lavia, Fofana, Santos and the players acquired this summer (Gittens, Pedro, Delap, Estevao, Essugo Sarr, Paez).

13 hours ago, JM7 said:

Saw this post, quite interesting.

“Just been crunching the numbers for Chelsea… despite Uefa being pretty lenient with their sanction, Chelsea’s current levels of breach are so high that I think they’re in actual trouble.

Chelsea’s current owners piss money away for fun so I don’t think they care about the ratchet fines. But the sporting sanctions look really tricky.

Chelsea cannot add players to its Uefa A list without selling players first. The A list as it stands is below.

Chelsea will want to add Lavia, Fofana, Santos and the players acquired this summer (Gittens, Pedro, Delap, Estevao, Essugo Sarr, Paez).

Those additions alone would mean over £130m a year in annualised cost.

Sancho and Mudryk’s wages will come out and maybe Mudryk’s registration fee amortisation too. Let’s be generous and assume Uefa permit this - that would save £30m of annualised cost.

So that’s £100m per annum which Chelsea still needs to save/generate from their Uefa A list in order to add the players it wants to add.

They make savings from reduced wages / amortised fees and generate from profits on player disposal.

An example… let’s assume they can sell Madueke for €50m. NBV currently €22.5m. Annualised cost of €8.5m.

So… that would provide €36m of mitigation against that €100m for next season (more than a third of the way there)… but only €8.5m of mitigation for the season after! (the sporting sanctions apply for 2 seasons minimum).

The model that Chelsea has forced itself into is now large volumes of sales every window in order to fund lots of new acquisitions. They’ve put themselves in a position where they NEED constant squad turnover, whether they want it or not.

The problem will come if they can’t. i.e.,

1) If they can’t sell for profit (most of their player valuations are lower than fees paid);

2) Players refuse to move; or

3) Other clubs won’t acquire their players.

Chelsea are spinning faaaaarrr too many plates here. No chance they don’t all come crashing down.”

You know that this is written by someone without even a basic level of understanding of FRS ( accounting) knowledge and you need to look no further than when he says in effect the definition of a player profit will be in excess of the fee paid. I know the debate on here but love it or hate it when it comes to submissions the asset is depreciated

There’s quite a few things that also are subjective in the extreme and for what it’s worth I will put together some very raw numbers for but underpinning all of my numbers indeed anyone’s numbers that are drawn from the accounts will be that both PSR and indeed FFP numbers are a county mile away from those shown in the accounts and ours are doubly complicated because we have no idea what, if any, exceptions were granted by both of the regulatory bodies.

36 minutes ago, terraloon said:

You know that this is written by someone without even a basic level of understanding of FRS ( accounting) knowledge and you need to look no further than when he says in effect the definition of a player profit will be in excess of the fee paid. I know the debate on here but love it or hate it when it comes to submissions the asset is depreciated

There’s quite a few things that also are subjective in the extreme and for what it’s worth I will put together some very raw numbers for but underpinning all of my numbers indeed anyone’s numbers that are drawn from the accounts will be that both PSR and indeed FFP numbers are a county mile away from those shown in the accounts and ours are doubly complicated because we have no idea what, if any, exceptions were granted by both of the regulatory bodies.

Not sure why i've been quoted somehow because i didn't post that haha

31 minutes ago, Ukraine Bolt said:

Not sure why i've been quoted somehow because i didn't post that haha

Sorry about that.

It’s because I started to respond to a post yesterday of yours. And then to my horror found out I actually agreed to it! So thought I had deleted it all but clearly hadn’t

Therapy starts tomorrow!

6 minutes ago, terraloon said:

Sorry about that.

It’s because I started to respond to a post yesterday of yours. And then to my horror found out I actually agreed to it! So thought I had deleted it all but clearly hadn’t

Therapy starts tomorrow!

2 hours ago, terraloon said:

You know that this is written by someone without even a basic level of understanding of FRS ( accounting) knowledge and you need to look no further than when he says in effect the definition of a player profit will be in excess of the fee paid. I know the debate on here but love it or hate it when it comes to submissions the asset is depreciated

There’s quite a few things that also are subjective in the extreme and for what it’s worth I will put together some very raw numbers for but underpinning all of my numbers indeed anyone’s numbers that are drawn from the accounts will be that both PSR and indeed FFP numbers are a county mile away from those shown in the accounts and ours are doubly complicated because we have no idea what, if any, exceptions were granted by both of the regulatory bodies.

Past couple years we all should be experts on book value profit by now. That post screams fear mongering.

16 hours ago, JM7 said:

Saw this post, quite interesting.

“Just been crunching the numbers for Chelsea… despite Uefa being pretty lenient with their sanction, Chelsea’s current levels of breach are so high that I think they’re in actual trouble.

Chelsea’s current owners piss money away for fun so I don’t think they care about the ratchet fines. But the sporting sanctions look really tricky.

Chelsea cannot add players to its Uefa A list without selling players first. The A list as it stands is below.

Chelsea will want to add Lavia, Fofana, Santos and the players acquired this summer (Gittens, Pedro, Delap, Estevao, Essugo Sarr, Paez).

Those additions alone would mean over £130m a year in annualised cost.

Sancho and Mudryk’s wages will come out and maybe Mudryk’s registration fee amortisation too. Let’s be generous and assume Uefa permit this - that would save £30m of annualised cost.

So that’s £100m per annum which Chelsea still needs to save/generate from their Uefa A list in order to add the players it wants to add.

They make savings from reduced wages / amortised fees and generate from profits on player disposal.

An example… let’s assume they can sell Madueke for €50m. NBV currently €22.5m. Annualised cost of €8.5m.

So… that would provide €36m of mitigation against that €100m for next season (more than a third of the way there)… but only €8.5m of mitigation for the season after! (the sporting sanctions apply for 2 seasons minimum).

The model that Chelsea has forced itself into is now large volumes of sales every window in order to fund lots of new acquisitions. They’ve put themselves in a position where they NEED constant squad turnover, whether they want it or not.

The problem will come if they can’t. i.e.,

1) If they can’t sell for profit (most of their player valuations are lower than fees paid);

2) Players refuse to move; or

3) Other clubs won’t acquire their players.

Chelsea are spinning faaaaarrr too many plates here. No chance they don’t all come crashing down.”

I'm no expert but that sounds like bo**ocks. Next they'll be saying because Palmer was only on the A list for the 2nd part of the season we need to pay half Palmers value too.

But selling the Women's team was pointless in the end if it doesn't count towards UEFA. We have to make the money up anyway.

On 08/07/2025 at 08:33, terraloon said:

We all ( well you would think but at times I wonder) enjoyed the RA era but the reality is that some of the transfers during that period seems to have passed some by.

If we want to talk about transfer mistakes or losses how about some of these

Lukaku

Kepa

Batshuayi

Rahman

Bakayoko

Veron

Mutu

Torres

Shevchenko

Drinkwater

SWP

Parker

Bourahrouz

Those names were without any research and yes we’re over a longer period than the current owners but I am pretty sure that others will easily fall into the category of providing terrible value for money

But on your simplistic linear assessment method he was a transfer fee loss.

He was a great signing and probably one of the very best in the PL era and that only goes to prove a point in that there’s far more to determining the value of a player .

The trick is when you know that a player isn’t going to work is to minimise your losses not just on the fee but do everything you can to get wages off the payroll.

Ironically it seems BlueCo to date have been better at that whereas RAs tenure saw player after player who cost a fortune put out on loan.

Most of the ones I list above and indeed 3 of the four you mentioned have been costly mistakes but the narrative that the situation is unique to the stewardship of BlueCo ignores the millions lost on poor signings over the RA years in an era where our turnover wasn’t even a third of what it is now ( 2003/04 £153.65 million )

Forget profit and loss for a minute , and the failed transfers during the most successful era in our history.

I would have that near 20 years. Roman era back in a heartbeat. We've racked up over half the Roman era debt in 3 seasons, despite selling hotels and women's teams to ourselves , record spending, and with our former elite status nowhere near returning..

Yes, our owners decided to buy a successful business with NO debt and with no experience in the business, sacked those running that business, tore up the successful business model and tried a different approach.

Football success is irrelevant to their investment The value of the club has increased even without success. That's what Boehly confirmed recently..

I'm happy that we've reached the final. . If we could stabilise the transfers in and out every season, a bit of stability would benefit the team. But the plan requires constant player trading, to the detriment of the football team

2 hours ago, The Rising Sun said:

Forget profit and loss for a minute , and the failed transfers during the most successful era in our history.

I would have that near 20 years. Roman era back in a heartbeat. We've racked up over half the Roman era debt in 3 seasons, despite selling hotels and women's teams to ourselves , record spending, and with our former elite status nowhere near returning..

Yes, our owners decided to buy a successful business with NO debt and with no experience in the business, sacked those running that business, tore up the successful business model and tried a different approach.

Football success is irrelevant to their investment The value of the club has increased even without success. That's what Boehly confirmed recently..

I'm happy that we've reached the final. . If we could stabilise the transfers in and out every season, a bit of stability would benefit the team. But the plan requires constant player trading, to the detriment of the football team

EDIT

I should like to add to the above..

RA also built us a magnificent facility at Cobham and had designs and planning permissions granted for us to go ahead and build a new fantastic stadium ..

Todd on the other hand, after promising in the bid to address the stadium issues, now tells us we've got 16 to 20 years just to " figure it out "

And yet even Roman with all his money and influence couldn't get the stadium going either and had given up on it.

1 hour ago, dkw said:

And yet even Roman with all his money and influence couldn't get the stadium going either and had given up on it.

Every thing was ready to go, there were no obstacles to it being built. .It had gone through all the planning, and overcome all the objections. Then his visa renewal ran into problems after the Salisbury poisonings and wasn't renewed . That's when I think he decided not to proceed, or he had doubts about proceeding. Then his club was sold.

Without that, there was nothing at all preventing the new stadium being built. .

I've already posted this in the Digital Tickets thread but thought it would be good to post in here as well.

"I'm going to Stamford Bridge this coming Friday for a meeting about the digital tickets. I'm a member of the Chelsea Supporters Trust (CST) and the club offered a number of tickets to CST members. Hopefully there will be an announcement about how we can transfer tickets to someone else if we can't attend a game. I also hope to find out what the future is for season tickets at Kingsmeadow. As most of you will know I'm a ST holder for both the men's and women's teams. I'll let you know how the meeting goes."

1 hour ago, dkw said:

And yet even Roman with all his money and influence couldn't get the stadium going either and had given up on it.

Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich yesterday shelved the £1bn redevelopment of the club’s stadium following delays to the renewal of his UK visa.

The west London club had been expected to press on with the construction of its new 60,000 seat stadium after a series of hold ups, with a completion date set for the start of the 2023/24 season.

But in a dramatic move, the Russian billionaire has put the plans on ice after he was caught up in a visa crackdown by the UK authorities in the wake of the Sergei Skripal nerve agent attack in Salisbury.