Chelsea will likely need to sell a whole host of players this summer if they are to sign Brighton midfielder Moises Caicedo. This comes as the Blues reported substantial losses for the second season in a row, leading to concerns over whether the club could breach the Premier League's financial fair play regulations this time next year.
The west London outfit were heavily linked with Caicedo in January, along with Arsenal who saw two bids for the 21-year-old rejected. Chelsea themselves bid £55million for the Ecuador international, and would likely have used the accounting practice of amortisation, aka spreading the cost of transfer fees over long contracts, as they have done with big-money deals for Enzo Fernandez and Mykhailo Mudryk over the past year.
Their efforts to revive any potential deal may well have suffered a setback due to this latest revelation. Football finance expert Kieran Maguire has warned that Chelsea could be in trouble with FFP if Graham Potter's side fail to qualify for the Champions League next season, as is looking increasingly likely.
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He claimed the substantial drop in prize money, coupled with the £600million splurged in the past two transfer windows, would likely have put more pressure on them to meet FFP stipulations. The rules allow maximum losses of £105million over a rolling three-year period.
As Chelsea have experienced losses of £121million and £153.4million for the past two seasons, the club find themselves in a sticky situation if they record another set of hefty losses this time next year. At the moment, the three-year span includes 2019/20, when the club notched up a profit of £32.5million. However, that will have been removed when the next financial figures for this campaign get released.
As a result, Boehly and Co. may be forced into a huge summer fire sale in an effort to balance the books. They will have to act quickly to make the appropriate impact though, as this season's financial accounts are recorded up until June 30, otherwise a charge could be in the offing.
"Failing to qualify for the Champions League would put Chelsea in a really challenging position. The one thing you can say about Chelsea is that they have lots of players they can sell and lots have come through the academy. If you look at Conor Gallagher, Ruben Loftus-Cheek, and Callum Hudson-Odoi, they could sell them and make a big profit on them," Maguire told Sussex Live.
"So they would have to get involved in a bit of a sell-to-buy but if they bought Caicedo on an eight-and-a-half-year contract, as they have been doing, and paid £80million for him, for example, the way that it works you take a transfer fee and you divide it by the length of the contract and it works out as £10million a year.
"People see the headlines but they don't see the implications for FFP, which is based over the life of the contract. It looks like UEFA will limit it to spreading it over five years, so if you sign an eight-year contract it would be spread over five years but that's not coming in until July 1, in all probability.
"They would have been able to recruit in the summer, certainly. They have got far too many players. The challenge for them, [Romelu] Lukaku is on a quarter of a million a week, and his contract doesn't expire until 2026. Some of the players that have come in are on big contracts. They are effectively locking themselves into a £100k-£150k a week on these players for many, many years.
"If the player doesn't do well, who is going to take them off Chelsea's hands? That is when the problems really start to crystalise. Winston Bogarde spent many years at Chelsea, running down his wages."
While it does represent a concern, there's no denying Chelsea have the resources in their playing staff to suitably recoup fees that will enable the club to make further additions this summer. According to CIES Football Observatory, the following players could see the Blues receive a combined figure of £182million to raise some much-needed funds.
- Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang - £5.2million
- Baba Rahman - £1.5million
- Ruben Loftus-Cheek - £13.2million
- Edouard Mendy - £22million
- Hakim Ziyech - £17.6million
- Christian Pulisic - £35.2million
- Mason Mount - £61.7million
- Romelu Lukaku - £17.6million
- Malang Sarr - £7million
- Tiemoue Bakayoko - £800k
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