24 hours ago, Sky Sports were reporting that Chelsea were one of the teams who were going to need to sell players before the 30th June cutoff in order to comply with this season’s Profit and Sustainability Rules and avoid punishments.
Now, they’re just released an article saying that we will not need to sell players to comply with this season’s limits. They will need to sell players for next season’s accounts, but that can happen at any time this summer, or indeed January, or indeed anytime up until the 30th of June next year.
“Sky Sports understands Chelsea will need to make sales to keep in line with PSR for the 2024/2025 season, and the cut off for that is next summer, but they are under no pressure to sell this month,” their piece (run without a byline) read. That opens up our options for this summer significantly.
Clever financial operations give Blues breathing room
What’s caused this sudden change in opinion from the major broadcaster? One would imagine it all stems from the report from David Ornstein that came out yesterday afternoon about the clever financial chicanery that the Blues ownership have pulled off.
The sales of various bits of land owned by the club last year, from one shell company to another, have created some artificial income which can be used to balance out the heavy spending on players.
That kept us in the green (or at least within the acceptable limits of the red), and means that the sales we make this summer can be used to offset our future purchases, rather than just paying for those we’ve already made.
The Premier League’s attempts to stop clubs doing this sort of thing was defeated in their AGM this week, although some changes are expected to prevent this becoming a totally ubiquitous loophole.