25 minutes ago, SydneyChelsea said:

Player registration and agent rules are matters for national associations, not the league. These are administrative breaches not necessarily competitive ones and that's probably why the club is confident there will no sporting sanctions. Paying inducements to agents or intermediaries is unethical, but it's not a competitive issue.

This is where you may be able to explain to me the difference between what we are supposed to have done then and what agents do, isn't it their every day's work to try to get their highest commission from their players? In other words, what Mendes has done with Felix stinks to "favours" here and there, through the backhand, to get the highest commission he can get. In what form is it different to what we were supposed to have done in 2011/12, for example?

1 hour ago, SydneyChelsea said:

Player registration and agent rules are matters for national associations, not the league. These are administrative breaches not necessarily competitive ones and that's probably why the club is confident there will no sporting sanctions. Paying inducements to agents or intermediaries is unethical, but it's not a competitive issue.

Payments/ Benefits in football paid outside( illegal) of a contract aren’t unusual . What’s unusual with Chelseas case isn’t that money has not gone through the books as it were but that there was an trail within the clubs records.

Keeping core accounting information is one thing , and now I am only guessing, the details are within documents that mentions these additional payments and then those payments simply don’t appear anywhere in terms of payments made via club accounts.

The deep dive clearly was far more detailed than the annual audits and the scale of the charges clearly reveals that this wasn’t a one off.

The reports now seem to suggest that BlueCo have revisited all the submitted accounts and FFP/PSR submissions and even had these payments been properly recorded the thresholds or limits if you like would not have been an issue. (Find that hard to believe but time will tell on that one)

If all that’s correct you then have to question why were these payments weren’t put through the books.

Funding them wouldn’t have been an issue so it comes down to the recipients getting monies without the correct levels of tax being applied. It seems that the club and HMRC have already agreed a settlement.

As I said yesterday I found the clubs statement too gushing. Why thank the FA for instance ? And why leak that the club isn’t expecting a meaningful, if any sporting sanction ?

I do wonder if the process from charge to sanction has already been mapped out with the key part being the expectation that the IC will in effect rubber stamp the FAs recommendations.

The third group of charges around third party is interesting and perhaps key to all this in that the acknowledgment is that all the monies were paid by RAs companies by pointing the finger to a banned individual it’s likely that the FA acknowledge where the bulk of the blame lies yet there has to be a finding of guilt against the club simply due to the entity running the club hasn’t changed.

1 hour ago, terraloon said:

Payments/ Benefits in football paid outside( illegal) of a contract aren’t unusual . What’s unusual with Chelseas case isn’t that money has not gone through the books as it were but that there was an trail within the clubs records.

Keeping core accounting information is one thing , and now I am only guessing, the details are within documents that mentions these additional payments and then those payments simply don’t appear anywhere in terms of payments made via club accounts.

The deep dive clearly was far more detailed than the annual audits and the scale of the charges clearly reveals that this wasn’t a one off.

The reports now seem to suggest that BlueCo have revisited all the submitted accounts and FFP/PSR submissions and even had these payments been properly recorded the thresholds or limits if you like would not have been an issue. (Find that hard to believe but time will tell on that one)

If all that’s correct you then have to question why were these payments weren’t put through the books.

Funding them wouldn’t have been an issue so it comes down to the recipients getting monies without the correct levels of tax being applied. It seems that the club and HMRC have already agreed a settlement.

As I said yesterday I found the clubs statement too gushing. Why thank the FA for instance ? And why leak that the club isn’t expecting a meaningful, if any sporting sanction ?

I do wonder if the process from charge to sanction has already been mapped out with the key part being the expectation that the IC will in effect rubber stamp the FAs recommendations.

The third group of charges around third party is interesting and perhaps key to all this in that the acknowledgment is that all the monies were paid by RAs companies by pointing the finger to a banned individual it’s likely that the FA acknowledge where the bulk of the blame lies yet there has to be a finding of guilt against the club simply due to the entity running the club hasn’t changed.

The main 'culprit' here was the "Cyprus leaks", which revealed the club was funnelling money to Hazard and Christensen's parents (among others I assume) via Abramovich shell corporations. Were it not for this, nothing would have been discovered, and I suspect most of the 'trail' is evidenced by those leaks.

UEFA and the PL would see these as evidence of a failure-to-disclose offence, regarding FFP/PSR, but there's nothing to suggest the club actually breached FFP or PSR even with the additional payments. All in all, the competition rule breaches seem relatively minor.

2 hours ago, RMH said:

This is where you may be able to explain to me the difference between what we are supposed to have done then and what agents do, isn't it their every day's work to try to get their highest commission from their players? In other words, what Mendes has done with Felix stinks to "favours" here and there, through the backhand, to get the highest commission he can get. In what form is it different to what we were supposed to have done in 2011/12, for example?

The charges suggest that we've made off-the-books payments to agents and also non-agent parties (ie. family members), ostensibly to induce their clients to sign with us. So for example, we may have told the FA officially that we paid an agent £2m for a transfer, but then secretly wired them an additional, undisclosed £2m. Basically it means we under-reported the cost of a transfer.

We know from 'Cyprus leaks' that the club allegedly paid extra commission to Hazard's agent via a shell company, and also made undisclosed payments to Andreas Christensen's dad via a bogus job. The extent of the charges probably mean we were routinely doing this to induce youth/young players to sign with us.

14 minutes ago, SydneyChelsea said:

The main 'culprit' here was the "Cyprus leaks", which revealed the club was funnelling money to Hazard and Christensen's parents (among others I assume) via Abramovich shell corporations. Were it not for this, nothing would have been discovered, and I suspect most of the 'trail' is evidenced by those leaks.

UEFA and the PL would see these as evidence of a failure-to-disclose offence, regarding FFP/PSR, but there's nothing to suggest the club actually breached FFP or PSR even with the additional payments. All in all, the competition rule breaches seem relatively minor.

My reading is that the club , under our” diabolical directors “ tasked an independent accountants/ auditor to carry out an exercise whereby they conducted an exercise whereby to our published accounts the sums that were paid by third parties were then factored in . The outcome of that exercise is thought to have revealed that there weren’t any issues in terms of exceeding the allowable numbers. That might explain why UEFAs settlement in terms of quantum want that large.

If that’s correct then the issue remains that we likely failed to provide the PL with information that was correct so from a PSR point of I believe that there will PSR charges which, as you suggest, will be around failure to disclose.

The FA charges suggest the issues are mainly focused between 2009& 2016 .Bear in mind Hazard signed in 2012 and PSR wasn’t introduced until after that date .

I make mention of the phrase “ diabolical directors” because we are now starting to see some of the issues that they are having to clear up. Most of these matters pre date RAs sanctions and hopefully we will see over the coming months these issues resolved

Welcome to the club next season Emanuel Emegha - announced today.

Sorry if this has already been mentioned elsewhere. https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/articles/c98d49ngj4do

Reading through this article, the players going and leaving on loan - nah cant keep up.

After that sh*t show I need something to lift the spirits. So when the hell is the open top bus parade to celebrate selling £250 million quids worth of players?

Why do we still not have a shirt sponsor? I thought going two seasons without one was because we could sign a mythical giant deal once we had champions league football? Have these dickheads finally realised it was a load of bo**ocks?

'From Forbes...A bit of socialism! Welfare for the Wealthy isn't wrong !

In an organization as valuable as the NFL, it is little surprise that nearly every owner of the league’s 32 teams are billionaires. Still, despite the NFL’s profitability — and the financial resources of team owners — many of the league’s largest expenses are subsidized by taxpayers. Over the last decade and in the coming years, nearly $4.7 billion — or more than $6.4 billion, adjusting for inflation — in public funding has been used or slated for use, to finance football stadium renovations and construction."

I'm just so tired of the same mistakes in the transfer market. We could literally have spend hundreds of millions of pounds less and just invested in a few quality players in the areas we need, but instead it's 40m here, 50m there on pretty raw youngsters, and about 200 wingers. A top quality CB and GK and we'd be so much stronger than we are right now.

2 hours ago, Zeta said:

I'm just so tired of the same mistakes in the transfer market. We could literally have spend hundreds of millions of pounds less and just invested in a few quality players in the areas we need, but instead it's 40m here, 50m there on pretty raw youngsters, and about 200 wingers. A top quality CB and GK and we'd be so much stronger than we are right now.

Donnarummas fee was pretty cheap. Wages though...

The days of such signings are behind us now. It does not line up with the project and them being stuck with Sterling on huge wages unwilling to move was all they ever needed to point and say this will never happen again.

6 hours ago, axman2526 said:

Donnarummas fee was pretty cheap. Wages though...

But for The Accounts, which is all certain fans care about these days, it doesn't really matter. It's why mega-money free transfers are all the rage with Real Madrid.

A 50m fee on a five-year contract and 5m/year salary (100k/week) = book cost of 15m a year + you have to sell the player at "book value" to recoup money
A free transfer and 15m/year salary (300k/week) = book cost of 15m a year + any sale amount is 'pure profit'

On 12/09/2025 at 20:40, terraloon said:

My reading is that the club , under our” diabolical directors “ tasked an independent accountants/ auditor to carry out an exercise whereby they conducted an exercise whereby to our published accounts the sums that were paid by third parties were then factored in . The outcome of that exercise is thought to have revealed that there weren’t any issues in terms of exceeding the allowable numbers. That might explain why UEFAs settlement in terms of quantum want that large.

If that’s correct then the issue remains that we likely failed to provide the PL with information that was correct so from a PSR point of I believe that there will PSR charges which, as you suggest, will be around failure to disclose.

The FA charges suggest the issues are mainly focused between 2009& 2016 .Bear in mind Hazard signed in 2012 and PSR wasn’t introduced until after that date .

I make mention of the phrase “ diabolical directors” because we are now starting to see some of the issues that they are having to clear up. Most of these matters pre date RAs sanctions and hopefully we will see over the coming months these issues resolved

They would have picked this up during the due diligence stage, probably the final 3 parties would have identified it as it has been widely reported the ownership group set aside money to pay associated fines.

Hazard (2012), Christensen (2012), Willian & Eto'o (2013) are the most publicly alleged cases. With 74 charges I expect there to be a few youth/young players involved like the Hazard and Musonda brothers.

These were likely non-issues, as the matter was widely reported in 2018 by The Guardian following "Football Leaks" and "Cyprus Leaks" and neither UEFA nor the FA sought to do anything about it because the evidence wasn't there until we self-reported.

Edited September 15, 2025Sep 15 by SydneyChelsea

17 minutes ago, SydneyChelsea said:

But for The Accounts, which is all certain fans care about these days, it doesn't really matter. It's why mega-money free transfers are all the rage with Real Madrid.

A 50m fee on a five-year contract and 5m/year salary (100k/week) = book cost of 15m a year + you have to sell the player at "book value" to recoup money
A free transfer and 15m/year salary (300k/week) = book cost of 15m a year + any sale amount is 'pure profit'

The problem is, and it’s something I have mentioned a couple of times, it’s no longer as simple as just the fee it’s the amortisation +wages + agent fees.

Of course people like me look at how transfer fees impact as a major component of player costs/ income but let’s look for instance at Harland. He was a very affordable £50 million meaning £10 million ish a year amortisation he is said to be on around £500k a week add to that the rumour was his agent/s were paid around £8 million . Put all that together and we are talking about £35+ million a year for one player.

Had he been on a free transfer I very much doubt the wages would have been as low at £500k a week. Indeed there is talk that his new deal is worth around £750k a week

Of course if he were to be sold for his rumoured £85 m release clause there would almost certainly be a massive profit it’s why City have him on such a long contract they, city, like us in this context are protecting values.

By my back of the fag calculations Haaland would be the equivalent of around 8%-10% of our overall squad costs and when you consider the wages and additional costs of every male player at the club on a contract including academy players and certain coaching staff is factored into squad costs that’s prohibitive for just about every club.

For perspective my guess is that Sterling would be around 5% and Fernandez 4%.

What I think we are witnessing is very much a move to younger players attracting big fees and just like we see at Chelsea longer contracts but smaller wages. Far more experienced and top players simply are going to have far more limited opportunities going forward

Edited September 15, 2025Sep 15 by terraloon

18 hours ago, axman2526 said:

Donnarummas fee was pretty cheap. Wages though...

The days of such signings are behind us now. It does not line up with the project and them being stuck with Sterling on huge wages unwilling to move was all they ever needed to point and say this will never happen again.

The wages being reduced is good for the finances , but despite selling loads of players I believe our transfer debt under the new owners is above £600 million ?? And at the start of every season we start off by hampering ourselves with new, young players from abroad with no PL experience being foisted on the manager. I'm resigned to the fact that we are not building a stable team for managers , we are merely a player trading enterprise, Maresca now having to shoehorn new young "raw" inexperienced players into the side that recently were outstanding in the CWC .

The first half against Brentford was the same old slow motion style we've been tortured with for years. But I reckon this team is set up to actually do well against the likes of Bayern , well, that's my hope.

Now, I want ALL the English sides ( apart from Newcastle maybe) to get battered in Europe, ESPECIALLY Tottenham.

Come on you BLUES !!

18 hours ago, terraloon said:

The problem is, and it’s something I have mentioned a couple of times, it’s no longer as simple as just the fee it’s the amortisation +wages + agent fees.

Of course people like me look at how transfer fees impact as a major component of player costs/ income but let’s look for instance at Harland. He was a very affordable £50 million meaning £10 million ish a year amortisation he is said to be on around £500k a week add to that the rumour was his agent/s were paid around £8 million . Put all that together and we are talking about £35+ million a year for one player.

Had he been on a free transfer I very much doubt the wages would have been as low at £500k a week. Indeed there is talk that his new deal is worth around £750k a week

Of course if he were to be sold for his rumoured £85 m release clause there would almost certainly be a massive profit it’s why City have him on such a long contract they, city, like us in this context are protecting values.

By my back of the fag calculations Haaland would be the equivalent of around 8%-10% of our overall squad costs and when you consider the wages and additional costs of every male player at the club on a contract including academy players and certain coaching staff is factored into squad costs that’s prohibitive for just about every club.

For perspective my guess is that Sterling would be around 5% and Fernandez 4%.

What I think we are witnessing is very much a move to younger players attracting big fees and just like we see at Chelsea longer contracts but smaller wages. Far more experienced and top players simply are going to have far more limited opportunities going forward

My post was getting long so I deleted a similar point but I agree with this, the main benefit of high fee, low wage policy is that you can reset the wage ceiling, and have the top performers like James, Palmer and Caicedo capped at 200-250k. The downside, of course, is that they come off-contract right at their peak ages, where clubs like Real Madrid, PSG and City would happily double their wage.

Suppose we do sign Donnarumma on a free at 300k/week - when Palmer, James and Caicedo come knocking for the same, do we give it to them and raise the cap, or turn it down?

I don't think there is any clearly "better" strategy, all have pros and cons because as you say, you need to account for transfer fees and wages and agent fees.

2 minutes ago, SydneyChelsea said:

My post was getting long so I deleted a similar point but I agree with this, the main benefit of high fee, low wage policy is that you can reset the wage ceiling, and have the top performers like James, Palmer and Caicedo capped at 200-250k. The downside, of course, is that they come off-contract right at their peak ages, where clubs like Real Madrid, PSG and City would happily double their wage.

Suppose we do sign Donnarumma on a free at 300k/week - when Palmer, James and Caicedo come knocking for the same, do we give it to them and raise the cap, or turn it down?

I don't think there is any clearly "better" strategy, all have pros and cons because as you say, you need to account for transfer fees and wages and agent fees.

Imo High fee and lower wages is definitely better. The biggest hurdle of moving player is usually wages. Once a player hit certain wages only certain team is willing to pay that wages.

Furthermore as you said if we gave Caicedo 300k,Palmer will demand at least 400.

Of course we are talking strictly financial 😂😂😂

Edited September 16, 2025Sep 16 by Bob stark

2 hours ago, Bob stark said:

Imo High fee and lower wages is definitely better. The biggest hurdle of moving player is usually wages. Once a player hit certain wages only certain team is willing to pay that wages.

Furthermore as you said if we gave Caicedo 300k,Palmer will demand at least 400.

Of course we are talking strictly financial 😂😂😂

That's a good point. Of course the downside still applies because that means there will always be another team will to pay those wages, and with the age and contracts we give our signings, that will almost always be just as they hit their peak years. The flipside to this strategy means we will always be a revolving door for players, and realistically everyone will be a saleable asset after 24.

As long as Saudi Arabia keeps buying, it will be profitable, but at the cost of being able to retain our best players.

6 minutes ago, SydneyChelsea said:

That's a good point. Of course the downside still applies because that means there will always be another team will to pay those wages, and with the age and contracts we give our signings, that will almost always be just as they hit their peak years. The flipside to this strategy means we will always be a revolving door for players, and realistically everyone will be a saleable asset after 24.

As long as Saudi Arabia keeps buying, it will be profitable, but at the cost of being able to retain our best players.

Brighton has proven that this strategy work.

They are a stable mid table club while paying lower salary and being profitable.

We want to do the same but as top 5 team

Edited September 16, 2025Sep 16 by Bob stark

What happens when the Suadi Cash tap is turned off? Outside of the EPL, there is no money. That in part is due to the collective bargaining of the Premier League over TV rights and how they're distributed... But only Bayern Munich and PSG have money but have stopped dropping cash as they used to... Real Madrid are using their name to get freebie players and Barcelona are broke. Serie A is a fun league but has no money and UK clubs are finding loopholes to beat regulation as most are run at loss.

IMO The reason our owners believe we've increased in value will be in part/ mostly due to the land the club sit on.

Anyhow, have a lovely day peeps...

1 hour ago, bluelightening said:

What happens when the Suadi Cash tap is turned off? Outside of the EPL, there is no money. That in part is due to the collective bargaining of the Premier League over TV rights and how they're distributed... But only Bayern Munich and PSG have money but have stopped dropping cash as they used to... Real Madrid are using their name to get freebie players and Barcelona are broke. Serie A is a fun league but has no money and UK clubs are finding loopholes to beat regulation as most are run at loss.

IMO The reason our owners believe we've increased in value will be in part/ mostly due to the land the club sit on.

Anyhow, have a lovely day peeps...

How many players have we sold to Saudi? All I remember are Angelo and Felix. I'm not really sure what relevance Saudi has when we haven't really benefited from them.

There's enough money outside of the EPL to make this strategy viable. Aletico Madrid spent almost 200m, Inter Milan around 100m, AC Milan and Napoli have been spending over 100m for the past 3 years. I don't really want to have to look through every league so you get the point. It's not just Bayern and PSG.

Kante, Mendy, Koulibaly, Felix, Gabriel = roughly 100 million in sales. If Felix wasnt signed by them, who would have bought him for what we were selling? Yes we have benefited from that league.

Ceiling for largest transfers this summer was Bayern for Diaz from Liverpool, 70 Million euros, Other players moving to Germany topped out at 30/40 million Euros. (Our own Carney to Dortmun the league's second largest transfer, I think - 40 Million euros) No clubs in Italy or Spain made the top transfers this summer. The Bundesliga is the only other league spending large sums.

Ligue 1 france, Strasbourg cant afford the wage bill... ticking time bomb for them and they hate the owners...

Spain's largest transfer this summer was Anthony for 25 million euros. edit old info

Was Real Madrid Dean Huijsen 50 million

But only real signed a few players for 120 Million. outside that very lackluster

Edited September 16, 2025Sep 16 by bluelightening

14 minutes ago, bluelightening said:

Kante, Mendy, Koulibaly, Felix, Gabriel = roughly 100 million in sales. If Felix wasnt signed by them, who would have bought him for what we were selling? Yes we have benefited from that league.

Ceiling for largest transfers this summer was Bayern for Diaz from Liverpool, 70 Million euros, Other players moving to Germany topped out at 30/40 million Euros. (Our own Carney to Dortmun the league's second largest transfer, I think - 40 Million euros) No clubs in Italy or Spain made the top transfers this summer. The Bundesliga is the only other league spending large sums.

Ligue 1 france, Strasbourg cant afford the wage bill... ticking time bomb for them and they hate the owners...

Spain's largest transfer this summer was Anthony for 25 million euros.

I'm pretty sure Kante was a free transfer and we made a loss on Mendy and Koulibaly. Maybe a small profit on book value, someone who cares about that can do the maths. So 4 players, at best, we have benefited from with Saudi and none of the deals outside of Felix were anything outrageous.

I've just given you a list of teams that spend loads of money, half of which aren't even the top 2 teams financially in their respective leagues. Judging by top transfers is a bit strange, not really sure the point? We have players that can be sold on for £30m-£40m (a conservative estimate) if they develop well, we don't need each sale to be the top transfer.

Edited September 16, 2025Sep 16 by Remodez

12 minutes ago, Remodez said:

I'm pretty sure Kante was a free transfer and we made a loss on Mendy and Koulibaly. Maybe a small profit on book value, someone who cares about that can do the maths. So 4 players, at best, we have benefited from with Saudi and none of the deals outside of Felix were anything outrageous.

I've just given you a list of teams that spend loads of money, half of which aren't even the top 2 teams financially in their respective leagues. Judging by top transfers is a bit strange, not really sure the point? We have players that can be sold on for £30m-£40m (a conservative estimate) if they develop well, we don't need each sale to be the top transfer.

The devil in the detail is that all those Serie A clubs relied on massive sales to finance their spending (and Inter's CL revenue), and Atletico spent €176m aggregate but on 9 players!

There really isn't the cash out there any more and funding deals are collapsing around the world. European leagues are beholden to Middle East broadcast revenue, dubious sponsorships, and American (multi-club) private equity investment.

18 minutes ago, SydneyChelsea said:

The devil in the detail is that all those Serie A clubs relied on massive sales to finance their spending (and Inter's CL revenue), and Atletico spent €176m aggregate but on 9 players!

There really isn't the cash out there any more and funding deals are collapsing around the world. European leagues are beholden to Middle East broadcast revenue, dubious sponsorships, and American (multi-club) private equity investment.

The only massive sale AC Milan had before this summer was Tonali back in 23/24. They have been spending over 100m+ ever since. Yes, Atletico bought lots of players but it's still a lot of money regardless? Why can't one of ours we sell be one of those 9 players as an example?

I am not suggesting other leagues are as rich as the prem, I am simply saying this model is sustainable as there are still clubs out there willing to spend 30m-50m which is the range majority of the players we have will be going. In the case of the very best ones, teams like Bayern, Madrid, etc will buy them. If they don't then that's good for us, surely?