FORMER Crystal Palace owner Simon Jordan has explained how Chelsea have spent nearly £1billion and still complied with financial fair play rules.
The Blues are set to take their summer spending to more than £360m after wrapping up a deal for Moises Caicedo, with Romeo Lavia also set to follow.
It comes after Todd Boehly splashed £600m in his first year as owner on the likes of Enzo Fernandez and Mykhailo Mudryk.
Chelsea have offset some of their expenditure by getting rid of 11 first-team players, with the likes of Kai Havertz, Mason Mount and Mateo Kovacic leaving for big sums.
Jordan, 55, explained those sales have helped cover the outgoings on the balance sheet, meaning Chelsea can continue targeting the likes of Michael Olise.
He also pointed out the fact Chelsea have spread the cost of the transfer fees over eight-year contracts in some cases – which the Prem is now set to ban.
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Jordan said on talkSPORT: “They’ve spent £800million on players, they’ve spent £600million last year and capitalised that over eight years because all of those players were on eight-year contracts, so all of a sudden that £600million spend is averaging at £75million per year because you’re dividing £600million by eight.
“He’s [Boehly] now had that change because the football fraternity has said ‘you can’t do that over eight years’, so they’ve rolled it back to five years.
“This year’s spend will be £300million, or round about that, and that’ll be reducing to £60million per year – so he’s now losing £75million each year for last year’s spend, plus £60million this year, but he’s gone and sold £250million worth of players in three transfer windows and all of those players have deduced an outcome that is profitable to Chelsea.
“He sold Kai Havertz for £60-odd-million after he bought him for £60million, but on his balance sheet at the time he sold Havertz he was carrying him at £25million so he sold him at £60million and booked a £35million profit.
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“He sold Mason Mount who is an academy player for £60million, so he’s booked a £60million profit, so over the three windows he’s booked somewhere in the region of £200million worth of transfer gains on his balance sheet and he’s reducing it by £135million every year, so he’s £65million in credit right now on his balance sheet in terms of transfers. That’s how he’s doing it.
“If you’re depreciating that at £135million a year and you’ve just sold £250-£260million worth of players over three transfer windows with most of those players – with the exception of Timo Werner who was sold at breakeven – are booking you a profit, you’ve just covered the last 18 months worth of potential losses and going into next year as well.
“In 18 months’ time if Chelsea are still spending at this level and are still carrying that level of depreciation and haven’t balanced the books by selling more players and haven’t got into the Champions League then they’re going to get caught.”
Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
