The Premier League and its rules have become the focus in the last couple of weeks with the season over and various votes taking place on rule changes ahead of next year.
Alongside that, details have come out from David Ornstein in the Athletic about the financial sleight of hand that Chelsea pulled off last year, selling two hotels and a car park at Stamford Bridge from one company controlled by the ownership to another, magically conjuring some income which could offset their transfer spending and keep us within spending limits in 2022-2023.
The £76.5m deal took a huge chunk out of our losses, and explained some decisions like moving the sale of Lewis Hall to this season’s accounting period. The Premier League attempted a vote to get this loophole closed, but it failed – because the wording of the new proposed rule was too broad, according to Ornstein.
Freedom to operate this summer
For all that we’ve questioned the new Chelsea ownership’s football acumen, we’ve never had any doubts that they were going to find the gaps and weaknesses in the rules and exploit them well – or at least in a way which is defensible legally.
This is another classic example, and explains a lot of the frantic spending of last summer. If it’s true that PSR concerns are really not on the table this summer that opens up a lot of options on the footballing side. Instead of pushing sales to before the June 30th deadline that has been the focus for so long, it may now suit us to have our sales after, helping us get to work on next season’s losses
The wider story also shows a continuing trend of Chelsea joining Man City in pushing back against the trend from teams towards the bottom of the table pushing for more controlled spending. Let’s hope that Chelsea don’t join City in being in open conflict with the league itself.
