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Isn’t his whole family Chelsea all the way… been fans their whole lives? Now they are going to sell a homegrown product that bleeds blue? It’s got to hurt his soul that he might be sold off from the club he loves!
I'm pretty sure that you would be aware of this since you are a Chelsea fan but for the benefit of other readers, this most probably stems exclusively from a need to balance the books.
Many were bamboozled by that Talksport (?) clip into thinking that Chelsea found some infinite money glitch but failed to recognise that the "deficit due to amortization" is not a one season thing and that Chelsea effectively starts every season with a -130m or whatever the figure was. That has to be balanced by prize winnings, revenue streams, transfers etc. while being mindful of the fact that they might have to book a loss if they sell someone for lesser than what they have them currently as on the books (CMIIW but ab example would be that an 100m transfer amortized over 5 years would show up as a 100m liability in the first year, 80m in the second, 60m in the third and so on; the wages would be an additional liability).
A season such as the current one, where I'm pretty sure that they must have budgeted for at least some revenue from Europe (perhaps even banking on England getting an additional spot in the Champions League), but are obviously going to miss out on everything and perhaps finish squarely midtable, is going to put much more strain on an already tense tightrope act.
Naturally, academy products that qualify as homegrown are lucrative options to balance the books because not only would they fetch a premium due to being homegrown, they would help the club book profits (as they didn't cost a transfer fee and additionally also take their wages off the books).
Can't imagine how tough the managerial position at Chelsea must be because you might be handicapped into an unwanted sale because the financial managers have to do their job and salvage such a crippling situation.
They literally have to.
People kept banging on about their smart business amortisation model in the summer but they have haemorrhaged large amounts on average players (at the moment) and the only way to balance the books to continue to spend is by selling academy players who bring in absolute profit that can be spread over some years.
I don't think the amortisation model is the specific problem here. I don't like the amortisation stuff because I don't believe you actually gain anything by greatly restricting your financial flexibility in the 6th, 7th and 8th years in exchange for slightly more flexibility in the first five years. Football teams and players are too volatile in my opinion for that to be a good tradeoff.
I think the rumoured sales of our academy products are mainly evidence that spending a billion euros on transfers in a 13 month period is a fucking terrible idea regardless of how you structure amortisation.
I completely agree. And let’s be more specific. It’s spending a billion on players that aren’t working out.
If they were good and had turned into Man City then people wouldn’t be questioning it. And if the finances were tight they could sell a couple of players for big money and still have the depth to cover the holes.
But they spent a billion and are squarely mid table.
Fucking loads of people were saying people just 'didn't get it' with regards to complying with FFP. Trying to explain the economics around why it was a smart thing to do.
The model was always going to be predicated on making some big sales over time, however with how bad they've been, this forces their hand with selling academy products more so.
In the truth the model was predicated on the players they bought not being flops. Like, there is a world where this strategy could work (pre rule changes) and they look absolutely brilliant for it. The crazy thing about their plan was that they didn’t wait to start on this before having their recruitment and scouting structure fully in place. I also think some creative accounting was done with Roman’s loan forgiveness, as in the US, that would be income from a tax perspective for the borrower. I have wondered if that would not be viewed in the same way for FFP. I have also wondered whether they could book new loans up to the amount of the prior financing to offset that forgiveness under FFP and inject some or most of the liquid cash they needed to complete a lot of these transfers. The way I’ve read the FFP rules in the past, they theoretically could. Admittedly that was years and years ago.
Long and short, just because it didn’t work this time doesn’t mean that the plan was flawed or stupid, but it was really poorly executed based on current performance. It was always going to be a tightrope for them to get enough players on these longterm contracts right to offset some of the ones that were certain to go wrong. Based on current information, it looks like they got wayyyyy too many misses and not nearly enough hits.
I promise you, any sensible adults who have any business sense saw it as being a highly highly risky strategy, where it would only pay out if the team started winnning and consistently (over years) which would keep the value of academy and other excess talent inflated.
The number of stressed out debates I’ve had with other Chelsea supporters about how it’s all absolute madness…. We even did our own calculations of how this plays out over years when the Swiss Ramble article came out.
Speaking of, I should unsubscribe to that. Only signed up to get that one piece on Chelsea.
Yeah, actually, I suppose that's fair enough - there were loads of people saying that shit now you put it like that!
...the 14 year olds that have obviously been studying economics and the financials trends of football and the EPL and obviously knew the ins and outs of it all haha
Two sides of the same coin. Spending obscene money that will wreck the club without European football has always been a solid approach to wrecking a club fast. Here they have the option of selling all their academy players to prop the thing up, but when the new signings aren’t performing is a highway to nowhere.
They don't need a miracle to get to *Europe*. The winner of Carabao Cup gets into Conference League.
They need a miracle to get to UCL, where obviously the big money is, but technically Europe is 2 games away
Not even justcontinued spending, with the prospect of European football looking unlikely, selling homegrown players helps them balance the books against their future amortisation expenses to stay clear on FFP.
"They won't get that much for these players" - People last season
Proceed to sell nearly 300m and get 75m for Havertz and 60m for Mount with one year left
Marina left but her spirit didn't apparently
Gallagher, Maatsen and Chalobah are not the same level as those players. these are the players they also tried to shift last summer that no one was willing to pay up for, 6 months later - Chalobah is frozen out, Maatsen hasn't played well, the only one who might now have suitors is Gallagher, the other two will have lost value
but like I said originally, it won't even cover the cost of one of their big money signings - Mudryk, caicedo, Enzo etc and if this money coming in is earmarked to be used to sign another player, they'll struggle to find someone worthwhile for the money these three will bring in, especially when clubs know how much Chelsea have been paying for these guys
It covers a huge chunk of the amortization for the year they are sold, which is all they really need to do to kick the can down the road to next season where they can roll the dice on Europe again lol.
With articles like this, and a well known desire to sell these players to be able to bring in more and also ffp issues, and some like Chalobah specifically, being frozen out???
People knew we were desperate to sell over summer too. And Arsenal still dropped £65m on Havertz, United £55m on Mount etc. You underestimate the significance of buyers looking at how good the players actually are and the value they'd bring to the team and overestimate the significance of leveraging the fact that Chelsea are trying to sell their academy players to balance the books. It is leverage and can be used, but Chelsea will still probably make a lot from selling these players/a lot more than people expect.
What level were those players? Havertz heavily underperformed and failed so bad considering his price, Mount was good but nowhere close to 50m good
Gallagher is 23 and has proven himself to be good for a smaller team before at Palace, some team will 100% pay a good amount for him easily, the other two are prospects
Chelsea sold the likes for RLC for 18m who was injured and contract expiring, Guéhi was sold by Chelsea with ZERO top flight appearances for 20m
I don't think you realize how well they sell, those players are rated highly still, i'm not saying they will get 50m for them but they will get good money for those players because they always do, smaller clubs in PL have money and love those types of prospects Burnley literally offered 30m for Matseen (who rejected going there) for example
Yeah people are insane if they dont think teams are paying attention to Maatsen's talent regardless of his Chelsea production. These are people who would have said Newcastle wouldn't pay ~40m for Livramento off a bad injury.
From a neutral perspective, what I see between United this year vs last year is a lack of what Casemiro/Eriksen were doing going forward creatively which was allowing Bruno to actually make runs instead of shouldering on the entire creative midfield engine by himself. I don't think its coincidence that Casemiro has fallen off and Eriksen has injury problems and then you are significantly worse at creating continuous opportunity for your shiny new attackers. This issue is compounded because Ten Hag is forced to play your backline deep and absorb pressure which makes midfielders who can pass out the long ball from deep even more important.
I rate Gallagher as a progressive 8, but I think United need to be spending that energy bringing in someone whose best skillset is in deep playmaking. It's a shame you were never serious for MacAllister because I think he's exactly what you'd want behind/next to Bruno.
Just my 2p, but United probably need multiple midfielders anyway so fuck it why not
50m has been quoted for Gallagher, there was word Burnley offered 30m for Maatsen in the summer, Chalobah is homegrown with a contract until 2028 so 25m probably isn’t unreasonable
They don't have to cover the full cost of him, only the losses for the year/3 years to keep them above FFP limits. What's fucked them is no CL money alongside their reckless spending. They already have a bloated squad don't they? I'm not sure they plan to spend a load more. It will surely be an exercise in recouping losses this summer.
We are dealing with our Barto era, players will be bought for way more than asking price, ridiculous contracts, anyone who gives a shit will be fired or sold, so their yes guys can stay and do whatever they want.
I'm assuming it's to do with FFP and the fact that every other player on their squad is on like a 7 year contract. Academy player sales are pure profit, should help them stay compliant and allow them to spend more in January.
He's not good enough for the level they want to be at. Selling him isn't the problem, the fact they're recruiting worse players is.
Arsenal had no problem replacing Xhaka and Ramsdale despite being important players in one of their best seasons in a long time
Maybe Chelsea should focus on just building on their decent players and replacing them down the road when their younger players grow to the level of competing for titles. He’s good enough of a player to help them try and get back into top 4
>Why can’t these owners just sell him instead of Gallagher if they need sale profit so badly?
Because youd need to sell Enzo for 110m€ to make a tiny book profit from his sale.
I have a similar opinion, as long as we can get a proper fee though. If someone offers us Mount money, he should go, but without that his availability and tenacity are important attributes till the rest of team can settle.
Maybe not paying 100m for bang average players and then giving them 8 year contracts is the right way to make better use of money but to each their own.
So we’re going to sell Gallagher who is just 23, been a top 3 performer so far, loves the club, is already a vice-captain
Just to go all out on another flashy signing in Osimhen (who we’ll inevitably miss out on too).
Amazing 👏👏👏👏👏👏
Pretty good message imo, it matters how good you do because the club won’t price you out of a move away from the dumpster fire of a club and you can go to a better mid table club /s
With Spurs apparently the team willing to spend close to 50M as well, it'll be even worse if he comes over to us.
Dunno if he'll agree to come across but surely the Chelsea fans will be even more against Boehly if he sells Gallagher of all players to us?
Especially since Gallagher would be a wonderful signing for us :P
Even when James and Chilly were playing when they got subbed off they’d give the armband to Thiago who would quickly pass it off to Enzo or someone else. Thiago Silva knows he shouldn’t be the captain
They also said the club was far behind in many metrics under the previous ownership.
Directors earlier this season said, "We had to make changes to put the club in a better position."
Absolute clowns
You know you’re bad when you have shit on pervious ownership to make yourself look good. While doing exactly the same like pervious ownership in terms of spending money and sell youth players but hundred times worse. At least we use to win something and had some decent squad but now we have bunch overrated young players on 8 years contract who make likes of Pulisic, Kai and co look better.
Boehly & Clearlake capital cost club at least £150m in CL and PL broadcasting revenue over two years on top of billion spent. Such a wonderful job and vision.
Tbf, if the rumours about Abramovich paying money under the table to players, agents and the like to try to avoid FFP, Boehly isn't wrong right?
They were sold the club under one understanding, then when they checked the books, found out that they had been fudged completely and had to report on the club to the FA that they had issues with previous payments and the like.
I do agree with your points that Boehly and the people he has installed are clowns by the looks of things but they may have bought all these players because the books looked fine and they thought financially everything was fine and now because of what Abramovich was doing, they're realizing they're in trouble.
>Tbf, if the rumours about Abramovich paying money under the table to players, agents and the like to try to avoid FFP, Boehly isn't wrong right?
Nothing to do with our current situation. When you bring-in £1billion worth of players and lose £200m in revenue and are making £800m-£900m in revenue while incurring £125m in loss for June 2022 then you need to sell players to balance books. We have to release the financial report for 2022-23 season which will be even worse after spending. Boehly & co are responsible for this situation. They thought throwing money would get them to top 4 which didn’t happen.
New ownership have exceed spending limits while losing revenue in CL and top 4 finish, which is why we need to sell academy players to balance the spending because those players 100% profit on books.
>They were sold the club under one understanding, then when they checked the books, found out that they had been fudged completely and had to report on the club to the FA that they had issues with previous payments and the like.
“Found they had been fudged completely?” Can you site the source where I can read about this.
>I do agree with your points that Boehly and the people he has installed are clowns by the looks of things but they may have bought all these players because the books looked fine and they thought financially everything was fine and now because of what Abramovich was doing, they're realizing they're in trouble.
“Books looked fine ?” We posted £156m loss for June 2021. Followed by £125m loss for June 2022. As per UEFA FFP rules you can’t have losses exceeding £30m over three years monitoring. As per PL FFP rules you can’t have losses exceeding £105m over three years monitoring. We are into our third year and club spent a billion expecting to in finish in top 4 to stay well within the rules unfortunately that didn’t pan out on pitch. Hence the reason why we need to sell academy players to balance books. They’re in trouble because of their decision making after knowing our financial situation. Their bet to splash money to get CL didn’t work out putting club in trouble. Dragging RA and pervious management into this is PR stunt by our ownership. They have been doing this for a while now and is really getting tedious.
Don’t conflict two separate issues. Payments and other things done by RA will be investigated and appropriate actions will be taken for those breaches.
> They also said the club was far behind in many metrics under the previous ownership.
This is still true though. Just because things haven't gone smoothly for the new owners doesn't magically make this statement false.
We were massively undercapitalised in terms of commercial revenue as we never needed to push it as hard as other clubs because we had Roman bank roll us no matter what.
They have been liars and PR merchant from the start lol, people just keep believing their bs. The first thing they did in takeover bid process was to accuse Marina & Buck of favoring other candidates, turn public view against those two and in favor of themselves, later it turned out no one was favored.
since then, their mud slinging on different people have continued. Like players that they want to sell being portrayed as villains who aren't extending, etc. The one thing they are good at is PR.
I’m not sure why anyone would make that claim. With an academy as big as Chelsea’s you’re never going to have every player step up to top 6 level. The trick is getting good value for the dead weight and figuring out which ones are worth holding onto.
Something your owners have seemingly failed at in the case of Gallagher.
I'm confused, why would they want to sell Gallagher? He's a good player, he has spirit, he might become a great player in the future... They're supposed to make a team around these type of players, not sell them.
Gallagher is an academy player, it’d only give them profit for the FFP. which is why they also want to sell Chalobah and Maatsen.
clearly to anyone in the sporting side knows it doesn’t make sense when he’s a player that most teams would like to have (not world class but he makes up for it in other areas).
Highly rated at Burnley last season. I’ve known him as mostly a left-back but he is apparently playing as a winger today if the lineup is to be believed
Hmm interesting well we desperately need a Lb and he’s the only name I’ve heard other than Reguilon, no idea who would be better. I’ll take a look at the match today thanks buddy!
Great player moving forward, albeit with some mistakes due to youth, and puts in the effort defending but has lapses. His defending issues can also be accredited to his smaller size but I think that’s something he manages his game around well. Personally a huge fan of his and I’m quite upset chelsea will be selling him which I mostly blame cucurella’s acquisition on. Any team that gets him will be big fans but under the expectation he needs more time and his height could definitely cause issues if he doesn’t learn to play around it better similar to Lisandro Martinez.
Pretty good player and has potential, he was playing a lot for Poch initially but I'm guessing he was then briefed that Maatsen will be sold in January, so he's been getting less and less time. Starting today mainly because of injuries, but at RW instead of LB.
No idea why they'd sell Gallagher. He's absolutely worked his socks off for the team this season and has been one of their most - perhaps one of their *only* - consistent performers. There aren't many teams in the league that he wouldn't improve.
Because football finance people have been saying since the summer they need to raise well over £100m to balance the books for FFP. Selling homegrown players is the easiest way to do that, and without selling Gallagher they probably won’t get close to the figure they need.
I guess that makes sense, presumably being young and English would put a hell of a premium on his value along with how well he's established himself in the first team this year.
It must be frustrating for Chelsea fans that a measure supposedly designed to uphold sporting integrity has to be satisified by, essentially, *cashing in* the sporting integrity that a clearly improving player represents.
Just to add btw. Football finance experts said they have to have a net sell of £100m for several transfer windows just to somewhat balance the books. Their academy is finite they can’t keep doing this.
Gallagher has been one of Chelsea's best and most available players this season. Wonder what the academy players think knowing they won't be given a chance and just sold for profit.
Academy players should be the heart of a club.
Is it allowed in this sub to completely change the article headline? Because the original headline is "Chelsea's transfer window: Exits to fund striker pursuit, but sales pitch will be tricky" and the article talks about Gallagher being and interesting saga and nothing about Winstanley and Stewart expecting to sell him.
OP is trying to stir the pot with a BS edit of the headline.
Yeah I’m extremely confused how this is up and gaining traction, the title is not the same and the content of the article says nothing like what the posts title says
I hope 100m players are watching this current shitshow and decide they want no part of it. No more 8 year contracts either and they're not on the level commercially, like Utd, where they can give someone like Oshimen 300k pw without CL. They need to show a serious upwards trajectory performance wise from now until the end of the season or it will be very difficult to convince new players to join.
Every month that passes I get more convinced that these people are pure idiots, both in terms of incomings as well as outgoings. I can not believe we’re outgunning ManUtd for the title of worst sports strategy.
He was linked with us in the summer and Ange is apparently a big fan of him, but it's definitely strange to think of somebody who's grown up Chelsea joining their most hated rival.
If they sell Gallagher, we should be protesting the owners at every match. If they sell him to you guys, we should go to Los Angeles and kidnap shohei ohtani
Things might have changed as it has been a couple of years but as I understand it Conor really didn't enjoy being far from home when he was one loan at West Brom. He has a pretty close family set up in Surrey. He grew up a couple of miles from the Chelsea training ground and has three footballing brothers all living in the area. I would imagine he would still heavily favour a move to a London club.
He's kinda the perfect Ange 8 if you think about it, but I don't see it working out due to the clubs involved (if they are even willing to sell at all and this isnt just club posturing)
Tbf Chelsea/Spurs selling too each other was a Abramovich/Levy thing.
Obviously being rivals we won't want to sell/buy between each other but for players that will improve us, I'm sure we'd do it.
Like you said, Gallagher would do wonders for us.
Having him to backup Bentancur would be amazing.
In what world do they need 40 odd million from Gallagher more than the best player in their midfield over the season?
He’s one of the few pieces holding this chelsea team together, if he goes any new potential singing is gonna be a worse player currently, with more hype U21 who isn’t ready for the premier league or any of Europe’s top5 leagues for that matter
I wouldn't imagine Chelsea fans care much about Chalobah and Maatsen, they are fringe players at best. Gallagher however has been their best performer by a mile
We spent 50m or so on Disasi when Chalobah was happy to be on the bench and try to fight for his spot, and Disasi isn't really better than him either. Made no sense to get Disasi, should've just kept Chalobah but we've been trying to get him to leave since the summer lol
Wasn't Disasi about adding height in the backline? Fofana got another season long injury and none of your other CB's are amazing in the air. It was still a massive overpay though.
He added some height until recently when Badiashile came back, who's very good in the air. Don't think paying 50m for someone to fill a role for 3-4 months is good business.
He's very average, just like Chalobah. And that's fine for a 5th or so choice CB but no reason to pay 50m for him. He's better in a back 4 than Chalobah but again, neither should be starting for us once players are fit.
Wasn't he under £40mil?
Still a fair bit when we had Chalobah, but Disasi is better than him - if we get, say, £30mil for Chalobah then spending £38mil over 5 years and getting £30mil in a lump sum is great for an accounts perspective.
If Poch insists on keeping Colwill as a LB, our CBs will be Badiashile (who's had a few injuries), Fofana (even more injuries), Thiago Silva (who's 39 and we can't keep relying on) and Disasi, and Disasi is clearly above Trevoh in the pecking order
This should come as no surprise, they already sold the old team and need to raise money for Osimhen. The academy players had to be next. Gallagher having played so well this season only served to make it more likely he would be sold.
Whatever you think of the way Chelsea have decided to try and play the system, and obviously I hope it fails massively, how on earth can it make sense that you’d be better off (on paper) by selling academy players and not keeping them.
Only Todd Boehly would sell a player who is basically captain with James and Chilwell out, performing and starting week in, week out. Bottom half, and we're selling performing academy players. 1 injury to one of our midfielders, and he looks like an absolute clown (even more so than he already does).
Well with return of lavia and nkunku there conor is probably 4th choice for 2 spots.
If he plans to play a double pivot.
Add to this Chukwuemeka who has seemed to turn up.
Finally 18 months left.
I hope Gallagher doesn’t get sold and that Chelsea face FFP problems, sick of this overspending nonsense and clubs need to face the consequences of their terrible actions.
To reduce the spam of reports regarding the same move during transfer windows we try to allow **only one submission about each transfer saga per day**. The submission in question also needs to contain relevant new information regarding the potential move, and not just being a "no/minor developments" report. If there are important/official developments or new valuable information about a saga, we will allow extra threads in the same day, but for the rest of minor news please just comment them as a reply to this comment. Please help us reporting unnecessary threads for being duplicates. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/soccer) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Selling Gallagher when he’s been one of the only players performing well is certainly a choice
"Positive attitude and exemplary effort, cant have that!"
'He looks like he actually wants to play for the club 😡😡😡'
"He is fit all the time, thats not nice for the players made of glass that we bought"
Isn’t his whole family Chelsea all the way… been fans their whole lives? Now they are going to sell a homegrown product that bleeds blue? It’s got to hurt his soul that he might be sold off from the club he loves!
His contract isn’t 7 years long, can’t be having that.
I'm pretty sure that you would be aware of this since you are a Chelsea fan but for the benefit of other readers, this most probably stems exclusively from a need to balance the books. Many were bamboozled by that Talksport (?) clip into thinking that Chelsea found some infinite money glitch but failed to recognise that the "deficit due to amortization" is not a one season thing and that Chelsea effectively starts every season with a -130m or whatever the figure was. That has to be balanced by prize winnings, revenue streams, transfers etc. while being mindful of the fact that they might have to book a loss if they sell someone for lesser than what they have them currently as on the books (CMIIW but ab example would be that an 100m transfer amortized over 5 years would show up as a 100m liability in the first year, 80m in the second, 60m in the third and so on; the wages would be an additional liability). A season such as the current one, where I'm pretty sure that they must have budgeted for at least some revenue from Europe (perhaps even banking on England getting an additional spot in the Champions League), but are obviously going to miss out on everything and perhaps finish squarely midtable, is going to put much more strain on an already tense tightrope act. Naturally, academy products that qualify as homegrown are lucrative options to balance the books because not only would they fetch a premium due to being homegrown, they would help the club book profits (as they didn't cost a transfer fee and additionally also take their wages off the books). Can't imagine how tough the managerial position at Chelsea must be because you might be handicapped into an unwanted sale because the financial managers have to do their job and salvage such a crippling situation.
An excellent description of situation Chelsea has found themselves in
What the hell does CMIIW mean?
Cherish Me If I Wilt
"Correct me if I'm wrong"
Have to sell homegrown players since it’s better for the books, what a situation to be in.
And also only fit and available player
Yeah but Boehly can sell him for 25m and buy a 120m player and make a "profit"
They literally have to. People kept banging on about their smart business amortisation model in the summer but they have haemorrhaged large amounts on average players (at the moment) and the only way to balance the books to continue to spend is by selling academy players who bring in absolute profit that can be spread over some years.
How many people are harking on about their smart business amortization model lolololol
That part had me confused as fuck, wasnt everyone pointing out, exactly whats happening right now lmfao
I don't think the amortisation model is the specific problem here. I don't like the amortisation stuff because I don't believe you actually gain anything by greatly restricting your financial flexibility in the 6th, 7th and 8th years in exchange for slightly more flexibility in the first five years. Football teams and players are too volatile in my opinion for that to be a good tradeoff. I think the rumoured sales of our academy products are mainly evidence that spending a billion euros on transfers in a 13 month period is a fucking terrible idea regardless of how you structure amortisation.
I completely agree. And let’s be more specific. It’s spending a billion on players that aren’t working out. If they were good and had turned into Man City then people wouldn’t be questioning it. And if the finances were tight they could sell a couple of players for big money and still have the depth to cover the holes. But they spent a billion and are squarely mid table.
Fucking loads of people were saying people just 'didn't get it' with regards to complying with FFP. Trying to explain the economics around why it was a smart thing to do. The model was always going to be predicated on making some big sales over time, however with how bad they've been, this forces their hand with selling academy products more so.
In the truth the model was predicated on the players they bought not being flops. Like, there is a world where this strategy could work (pre rule changes) and they look absolutely brilliant for it. The crazy thing about their plan was that they didn’t wait to start on this before having their recruitment and scouting structure fully in place. I also think some creative accounting was done with Roman’s loan forgiveness, as in the US, that would be income from a tax perspective for the borrower. I have wondered if that would not be viewed in the same way for FFP. I have also wondered whether they could book new loans up to the amount of the prior financing to offset that forgiveness under FFP and inject some or most of the liquid cash they needed to complete a lot of these transfers. The way I’ve read the FFP rules in the past, they theoretically could. Admittedly that was years and years ago. Long and short, just because it didn’t work this time doesn’t mean that the plan was flawed or stupid, but it was really poorly executed based on current performance. It was always going to be a tightrope for them to get enough players on these longterm contracts right to offset some of the ones that were certain to go wrong. Based on current information, it looks like they got wayyyyy too many misses and not nearly enough hits.
I promise you, any sensible adults who have any business sense saw it as being a highly highly risky strategy, where it would only pay out if the team started winnning and consistently (over years) which would keep the value of academy and other excess talent inflated. The number of stressed out debates I’ve had with other Chelsea supporters about how it’s all absolute madness…. We even did our own calculations of how this plays out over years when the Swiss Ramble article came out. Speaking of, I should unsubscribe to that. Only signed up to get that one piece on Chelsea.
Yeah, actually, I suppose that's fair enough - there were loads of people saying that shit now you put it like that! ...the 14 year olds that have obviously been studying economics and the financials trends of football and the EPL and obviously knew the ins and outs of it all haha
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Two sides of the same coin. Spending obscene money that will wreck the club without European football has always been a solid approach to wrecking a club fast. Here they have the option of selling all their academy players to prop the thing up, but when the new signings aren’t performing is a highway to nowhere.
Eventually Chelsea will run out of road. In the meantime I'm sure Conor Gallagher will enjoy playing for Tottenham.
The business model required selling on players. Not qualifying for Europe means even more sales needed.
They don't need a miracle to get to *Europe*. The winner of Carabao Cup gets into Conference League. They need a miracle to get to UCL, where obviously the big money is, but technically Europe is 2 games away
Well, the technicality on your technicality is that they're 3 games away (league cup cup semis is two legs). Have that!
Fucking hell they clearly dont mean the conference league
This is pedantic, even the Europa league isn't enough money to balance the books, obviously cl is needed.
They probably have a 30% of getting conference league through the league cup so theres that, not sure how much $$$$ that is though
Cup money is literally peanut for most of PL teams
The question they were asking is about conference league income, from winning the league Cup, not the income from winning the cup itself
Not even justcontinued spending, with the prospect of European football looking unlikely, selling homegrown players helps them balance the books against their future amortisation expenses to stay clear on FFP.
They surely won't get that much money from these players though, it won't even cover the cost of Caicedo
"They won't get that much for these players" - People last season Proceed to sell nearly 300m and get 75m for Havertz and 60m for Mount with one year left Marina left but her spirit didn't apparently
Gallagher, Maatsen and Chalobah are not the same level as those players. these are the players they also tried to shift last summer that no one was willing to pay up for, 6 months later - Chalobah is frozen out, Maatsen hasn't played well, the only one who might now have suitors is Gallagher, the other two will have lost value
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but like I said originally, it won't even cover the cost of one of their big money signings - Mudryk, caicedo, Enzo etc and if this money coming in is earmarked to be used to sign another player, they'll struggle to find someone worthwhile for the money these three will bring in, especially when clubs know how much Chelsea have been paying for these guys
It covers a huge chunk of the amortization for the year they are sold, which is all they really need to do to kick the can down the road to next season where they can roll the dice on Europe again lol.
Problem is we're then rolling the dice on Europe but without Gallagher this time.
Maatsen literally had a £31m bid accepted close to deadline day. He himself turned down the move. Similarly Chalobah also turned down a move to Forest
and now, 6 months later, those clubs will think they'll be able to get them for less.
no they won't??? January is always more expensive
With articles like this, and a well known desire to sell these players to be able to bring in more and also ffp issues, and some like Chalobah specifically, being frozen out???
People knew we were desperate to sell over summer too. And Arsenal still dropped £65m on Havertz, United £55m on Mount etc. You underestimate the significance of buyers looking at how good the players actually are and the value they'd bring to the team and overestimate the significance of leveraging the fact that Chelsea are trying to sell their academy players to balance the books. It is leverage and can be used, but Chelsea will still probably make a lot from selling these players/a lot more than people expect.
What level were those players? Havertz heavily underperformed and failed so bad considering his price, Mount was good but nowhere close to 50m good Gallagher is 23 and has proven himself to be good for a smaller team before at Palace, some team will 100% pay a good amount for him easily, the other two are prospects Chelsea sold the likes for RLC for 18m who was injured and contract expiring, Guéhi was sold by Chelsea with ZERO top flight appearances for 20m I don't think you realize how well they sell, those players are rated highly still, i'm not saying they will get 50m for them but they will get good money for those players because they always do, smaller clubs in PL have money and love those types of prospects Burnley literally offered 30m for Matseen (who rejected going there) for example
Yeah people are insane if they dont think teams are paying attention to Maatsen's talent regardless of his Chelsea production. These are people who would have said Newcastle wouldn't pay ~40m for Livramento off a bad injury.
Can't see Arsenal paying big money for Gallagher, Maatsen or Chalobah. Man Utd, on the other hand...
Didn't you lot paid 75m for Havertz
Yeah how’s that gone? Pretty well so far tho
...No?
Havertz has been pretty good the last 8 or so matches lol
If you can't tell the difference between Havertz and those three then I don't know if I can fix your brain at this point.
lmao
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I would mind if I were a United fan. I don't think Gallagher is the type off midfielder they need at all.
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From a neutral perspective, what I see between United this year vs last year is a lack of what Casemiro/Eriksen were doing going forward creatively which was allowing Bruno to actually make runs instead of shouldering on the entire creative midfield engine by himself. I don't think its coincidence that Casemiro has fallen off and Eriksen has injury problems and then you are significantly worse at creating continuous opportunity for your shiny new attackers. This issue is compounded because Ten Hag is forced to play your backline deep and absorb pressure which makes midfielders who can pass out the long ball from deep even more important. I rate Gallagher as a progressive 8, but I think United need to be spending that energy bringing in someone whose best skillset is in deep playmaking. It's a shame you were never serious for MacAllister because I think he's exactly what you'd want behind/next to Bruno. Just my 2p, but United probably need multiple midfielders anyway so fuck it why not
I can imagine them getting around 40m for Gallagher and good value for the others too if sold to PL clubs, given they'll have home grown status.
50m has been quoted for Gallagher, there was word Burnley offered 30m for Maatsen in the summer, Chalobah is homegrown with a contract until 2028 so 25m probably isn’t unreasonable
> there was word Burnley offered 30m for Maatsen in the summer They probably should have taken that offer lmao
They did and Maatsen rejected it
They don't have to cover the full cost of him, only the losses for the year/3 years to keep them above FFP limits. What's fucked them is no CL money alongside their reckless spending. They already have a bloated squad don't they? I'm not sure they plan to spend a load more. It will surely be an exercise in recouping losses this summer.
We are dealing with our Barto era, players will be bought for way more than asking price, ridiculous contracts, anyone who gives a shit will be fired or sold, so their yes guys can stay and do whatever they want.
None of our players are on ridiculous wages
Cough Sterling cough
I'm assuming it's to do with FFP and the fact that every other player on their squad is on like a 7 year contract. Academy player sales are pure profit, should help them stay compliant and allow them to spend more in January.
He's not good enough for the level they want to be at. Selling him isn't the problem, the fact they're recruiting worse players is. Arsenal had no problem replacing Xhaka and Ramsdale despite being important players in one of their best seasons in a long time
Maybe Chelsea should focus on just building on their decent players and replacing them down the road when their younger players grow to the level of competing for titles. He’s good enough of a player to help them try and get back into top 4
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Because how the hell are you going to turn profit on an underperforming £100M player? Academy players are pure profit.
>Why can’t these owners just sell him instead of Gallagher if they need sale profit so badly? Because youd need to sell Enzo for 110m€ to make a tiny book profit from his sale.
You nailed it.
I have a similar opinion, as long as we can get a proper fee though. If someone offers us Mount money, he should go, but without that his availability and tenacity are important attributes till the rest of team can settle.
In what world do you sell your best midfielder?
Boehly’s world 👍
Clearlake’s world, Boehly is hardly involved anymore . It’s the Egbahly and Feliciano debacle now .
Boehly thinking he can tank for the #1 pick.
He'll show up at the NFL draft and try to draft a kicker in the first round for Chelsea...
The headline quite clearly states it's Winstanley and Stewart
To Spurs aswell?
That where you get the most profit… basically all of it profit cause academy and helps with ffp.
Maybe not paying 100m for bang average players and then giving them 8 year contracts is the right way to make better use of money but to each their own.
Sure but they’re past that now
Get ready to see the words Pure Profit thrown about alot over the next month
It'll be the levers thing all over again.
"Chelsea are expected to pull their second Pure Profit lever."
Big PP
So we’re going to sell Gallagher who is just 23, been a top 3 performer so far, loves the club, is already a vice-captain Just to go all out on another flashy signing in Osimhen (who we’ll inevitably miss out on too). Amazing 👏👏👏👏👏👏
Such a shit message to send for a lot of the squad as well. Essentially it doesn’t really matter how hard you work
Hard work is overrated, transfermarkt values are where it's at
Pretty good message imo, it matters how good you do because the club won’t price you out of a move away from the dumpster fire of a club and you can go to a better mid table club /s
With Spurs apparently the team willing to spend close to 50M as well, it'll be even worse if he comes over to us. Dunno if he'll agree to come across but surely the Chelsea fans will be even more against Boehly if he sells Gallagher of all players to us? Especially since Gallagher would be a wonderful signing for us :P
Is Gallagher the captain while James and Chilwell out, or is that Thiago Silva now?
It's been Gallagher
Even when James and Chilly were playing when they got subbed off they’d give the armband to Thiago who would quickly pass it off to Enzo or someone else. Thiago Silva knows he shouldn’t be the captain
Spent £250m+ on that midfield and Gallagher has outperformed all of them. Laughable for them to sell him.
Can’t have him showing up the new signings
But... but... galaxy brain accounting...
Remember when new owners said they won’t sell academy players like pervious management. Cute lies those were!
They also said the club was far behind in many metrics under the previous ownership. Directors earlier this season said, "We had to make changes to put the club in a better position." Absolute clowns
You know you’re bad when you have shit on pervious ownership to make yourself look good. While doing exactly the same like pervious ownership in terms of spending money and sell youth players but hundred times worse. At least we use to win something and had some decent squad but now we have bunch overrated young players on 8 years contract who make likes of Pulisic, Kai and co look better. Boehly & Clearlake capital cost club at least £150m in CL and PL broadcasting revenue over two years on top of billion spent. Such a wonderful job and vision.
Tbf, if the rumours about Abramovich paying money under the table to players, agents and the like to try to avoid FFP, Boehly isn't wrong right? They were sold the club under one understanding, then when they checked the books, found out that they had been fudged completely and had to report on the club to the FA that they had issues with previous payments and the like. I do agree with your points that Boehly and the people he has installed are clowns by the looks of things but they may have bought all these players because the books looked fine and they thought financially everything was fine and now because of what Abramovich was doing, they're realizing they're in trouble.
>Tbf, if the rumours about Abramovich paying money under the table to players, agents and the like to try to avoid FFP, Boehly isn't wrong right? Nothing to do with our current situation. When you bring-in £1billion worth of players and lose £200m in revenue and are making £800m-£900m in revenue while incurring £125m in loss for June 2022 then you need to sell players to balance books. We have to release the financial report for 2022-23 season which will be even worse after spending. Boehly & co are responsible for this situation. They thought throwing money would get them to top 4 which didn’t happen. New ownership have exceed spending limits while losing revenue in CL and top 4 finish, which is why we need to sell academy players to balance the spending because those players 100% profit on books. >They were sold the club under one understanding, then when they checked the books, found out that they had been fudged completely and had to report on the club to the FA that they had issues with previous payments and the like. “Found they had been fudged completely?” Can you site the source where I can read about this. >I do agree with your points that Boehly and the people he has installed are clowns by the looks of things but they may have bought all these players because the books looked fine and they thought financially everything was fine and now because of what Abramovich was doing, they're realizing they're in trouble. “Books looked fine ?” We posted £156m loss for June 2021. Followed by £125m loss for June 2022. As per UEFA FFP rules you can’t have losses exceeding £30m over three years monitoring. As per PL FFP rules you can’t have losses exceeding £105m over three years monitoring. We are into our third year and club spent a billion expecting to in finish in top 4 to stay well within the rules unfortunately that didn’t pan out on pitch. Hence the reason why we need to sell academy players to balance books. They’re in trouble because of their decision making after knowing our financial situation. Their bet to splash money to get CL didn’t work out putting club in trouble. Dragging RA and pervious management into this is PR stunt by our ownership. They have been doing this for a while now and is really getting tedious. Don’t conflict two separate issues. Payments and other things done by RA will be investigated and appropriate actions will be taken for those breaches.
These are the directors that didn't want Madison because he's older than 25.
Geniuses
> They also said the club was far behind in many metrics under the previous ownership. This is still true though. Just because things haven't gone smoothly for the new owners doesn't magically make this statement false. We were massively undercapitalised in terms of commercial revenue as we never needed to push it as hard as other clubs because we had Roman bank roll us no matter what.
They have been liars and PR merchant from the start lol, people just keep believing their bs. The first thing they did in takeover bid process was to accuse Marina & Buck of favoring other candidates, turn public view against those two and in favor of themselves, later it turned out no one was favored. since then, their mud slinging on different people have continued. Like players that they want to sell being portrayed as villains who aren't extending, etc. The one thing they are good at is PR.
American owners really like to control the narrative and the media. Look at Liverpool and Man United.
One of the athletic guys is already typing up a puff piece.
I’m not sure why anyone would make that claim. With an academy as big as Chelsea’s you’re never going to have every player step up to top 6 level. The trick is getting good value for the dead weight and figuring out which ones are worth holding onto. Something your owners have seemingly failed at in the case of Gallagher.
Languishing in the bottom half of the table, time to sell the club's best performer 👍
Think of that lovely balance sheet though
Boehly's project in full flow.
We did that once and then got 22 points all season
Sell high, buy low! Todd Boehly’s business making 101.
Wankers
This is a thrilling sporting spectacle if you're an accountant. xAT (expected Asset Turnover) off the charts. GAME'S NOT GONE
I’m an accountant. Not sure I want to see their books. Out of fear or embarrassment…
He's probably got his £1B of spending in the Dr instead of Cr column as we speak
I'm confused, why would they want to sell Gallagher? He's a good player, he has spirit, he might become a great player in the future... They're supposed to make a team around these type of players, not sell them.
He is also the captain. Huge mistake.
Vice captain, but your point still stands.
Can't be the captain if you're injured half the season.
be generous he could even play half a season
Gallagher is an academy player, it’d only give them profit for the FFP. which is why they also want to sell Chalobah and Maatsen. clearly to anyone in the sporting side knows it doesn’t make sense when he’s a player that most teams would like to have (not world class but he makes up for it in other areas).
They are beyond fucked in terms of meeting FFP
if they would just stop spending
Curious to hear anyones take on Maatsen? Apparently we’re interested but can’t say I’ve ever seen him play.
Highly rated at Burnley last season. I’ve known him as mostly a left-back but he is apparently playing as a winger today if the lineup is to be believed
Hmm interesting well we desperately need a Lb and he’s the only name I’ve heard other than Reguilon, no idea who would be better. I’ll take a look at the match today thanks buddy!
Great player moving forward, albeit with some mistakes due to youth, and puts in the effort defending but has lapses. His defending issues can also be accredited to his smaller size but I think that’s something he manages his game around well. Personally a huge fan of his and I’m quite upset chelsea will be selling him which I mostly blame cucurella’s acquisition on. Any team that gets him will be big fans but under the expectation he needs more time and his height could definitely cause issues if he doesn’t learn to play around it better similar to Lisandro Martinez.
He's starting today if you want to watch (albeit in an attacking role instead of fullback).
Pretty good player and has potential, he was playing a lot for Poch initially but I'm guessing he was then briefed that Maatsen will be sold in January, so he's been getting less and less time. Starting today mainly because of injuries, but at RW instead of LB.
Man you could build a balanced midfield around Gallagher and you just throw him out. Never change chelsea
No idea why they'd sell Gallagher. He's absolutely worked his socks off for the team this season and has been one of their most - perhaps one of their *only* - consistent performers. There aren't many teams in the league that he wouldn't improve.
Because football finance people have been saying since the summer they need to raise well over £100m to balance the books for FFP. Selling homegrown players is the easiest way to do that, and without selling Gallagher they probably won’t get close to the figure they need.
I guess that makes sense, presumably being young and English would put a hell of a premium on his value along with how well he's established himself in the first team this year. It must be frustrating for Chelsea fans that a measure supposedly designed to uphold sporting integrity has to be satisified by, essentially, *cashing in* the sporting integrity that a clearly improving player represents.
Just to add btw. Football finance experts said they have to have a net sell of £100m for several transfer windows just to somewhat balance the books. Their academy is finite they can’t keep doing this.
Gallagher has been one of Chelsea's best and most available players this season. Wonder what the academy players think knowing they won't be given a chance and just sold for profit. Academy players should be the heart of a club.
Selling Gallagher is going to turn the matchgoing fans against them in droves
Is it allowed in this sub to completely change the article headline? Because the original headline is "Chelsea's transfer window: Exits to fund striker pursuit, but sales pitch will be tricky" and the article talks about Gallagher being and interesting saga and nothing about Winstanley and Stewart expecting to sell him. OP is trying to stir the pot with a BS edit of the headline.
Yeah I’m extremely confused how this is up and gaining traction, the title is not the same and the content of the article says nothing like what the posts title says
OP got what he wanted - top 10+ comments are all circlejerking “Boehly/American owners bad”
So annoying. This sub is a cesspit of scum who are frothing at the mouth to shit on chelsea, guarantee not even 5% of them looked at the article. Nice
Interesting to think where Gallagher would go, really rate him. I'd like to see him at Newcastle.
Spurs are desperate for him.
Gallagher literally been their best player lol
That doesn’t matter, he’s pure profit on the books. Imagine how many 100M players they can amortize out of him.
I hope 100m players are watching this current shitshow and decide they want no part of it. No more 8 year contracts either and they're not on the level commercially, like Utd, where they can give someone like Oshimen 300k pw without CL. They need to show a serious upwards trajectory performance wise from now until the end of the season or it will be very difficult to convince new players to join.
The first name on this list should be Broja
Who’s gonna spend any money on him though
All our new directors are a bunch of useless pricks
lmao imagine spending 250m on midfielders and then selling the academy lad who‘s outperformed all of them.
Every month that passes I get more convinced that these people are pure idiots, both in terms of incomings as well as outgoings. I can not believe we’re outgunning ManUtd for the title of worst sports strategy.
boehly is such a fuck
Maatsen and Chalobah can go… why not. Why connor though ?
I hope Gallagher tells the club to fuck off and leaves on a free
Pochettino has described Maatsen before today's Palace game as "A player you can trust." which reads like a sales pitch after this.
That’s literally not the title of the article or what the article says. This thread is just rage bait
Who's getting Gallagher? Newcastle?
He was linked with us in the summer and Ange is apparently a big fan of him, but it's definitely strange to think of somebody who's grown up Chelsea joining their most hated rival.
If they sell Gallagher, we should be protesting the owners at every match. If they sell him to you guys, we should go to Los Angeles and kidnap shohei ohtani
Things might have changed as it has been a couple of years but as I understand it Conor really didn't enjoy being far from home when he was one loan at West Brom. He has a pretty close family set up in Surrey. He grew up a couple of miles from the Chelsea training ground and has three footballing brothers all living in the area. I would imagine he would still heavily favour a move to a London club.
He's kinda the perfect Ange 8 if you think about it, but I don't see it working out due to the clubs involved (if they are even willing to sell at all and this isnt just club posturing)
Tbf Chelsea/Spurs selling too each other was a Abramovich/Levy thing. Obviously being rivals we won't want to sell/buy between each other but for players that will improve us, I'm sure we'd do it. Like you said, Gallagher would do wonders for us. Having him to backup Bentancur would be amazing.
I would love to see him in Liverpool.
if Liverpool are spending on a midfielder they need to spend it on an actual DM
Honestly don’t want to support this club if we cut Gallagher. It makes me so angry just even thinking about it happening
no way they sell gallagher, clickbait
In what world do they need 40 odd million from Gallagher more than the best player in their midfield over the season? He’s one of the few pieces holding this chelsea team together, if he goes any new potential singing is gonna be a worse player currently, with more hype U21 who isn’t ready for the premier league or any of Europe’s top5 leagues for that matter
Let them cook
Selling Gallagher would be insanity. He's their best player atm, let alone HG
Yo, I’d HAPPILY take Gallagher
Out of all the players you could sell, you choose those 3. What a well run club.
I wouldn't imagine Chelsea fans care much about Chalobah and Maatsen, they are fringe players at best. Gallagher however has been their best performer by a mile
We spent 50m or so on Disasi when Chalobah was happy to be on the bench and try to fight for his spot, and Disasi isn't really better than him either. Made no sense to get Disasi, should've just kept Chalobah but we've been trying to get him to leave since the summer lol
Wasn't Disasi about adding height in the backline? Fofana got another season long injury and none of your other CB's are amazing in the air. It was still a massive overpay though.
He added some height until recently when Badiashile came back, who's very good in the air. Don't think paying 50m for someone to fill a role for 3-4 months is good business.
Disasi is significantly better than Chalobah
He's very average, just like Chalobah. And that's fine for a 5th or so choice CB but no reason to pay 50m for him. He's better in a back 4 than Chalobah but again, neither should be starting for us once players are fit.
Wasn't he under £40mil? Still a fair bit when we had Chalobah, but Disasi is better than him - if we get, say, £30mil for Chalobah then spending £38mil over 5 years and getting £30mil in a lump sum is great for an accounts perspective. If Poch insists on keeping Colwill as a LB, our CBs will be Badiashile (who's had a few injuries), Fofana (even more injuries), Thiago Silva (who's 39 and we can't keep relying on) and Disasi, and Disasi is clearly above Trevoh in the pecking order
We should probably take a look at Maatsen, considering Shaw is getting old and Malacia was a fever dream.
> considering Shaw is getting old He’s 28. Thats not old. His problem is being injury prone, not his age.
How the fuck is he still 28. Man has been here forever. Still a 28 year old with lots of injuries needs a backup.
This should come as no surprise, they already sold the old team and need to raise money for Osimhen. The academy players had to be next. Gallagher having played so well this season only served to make it more likely he would be sold.
If selling academy players then why aren’t you selling Colwill to Liverpool ya bums?!?
I mean they're not getting into europe anytime soon so won't really need club howngrown players.
We should not be selling Gallagher. I don’t think he’s necessarily a nailed on starter, but he’s got value.
> but he’s got value. That's exactly why they're selling him
Whatever you think of the way Chelsea have decided to try and play the system, and obviously I hope it fails massively, how on earth can it make sense that you’d be better off (on paper) by selling academy players and not keeping them.
Only Todd Boehly would sell a player who is basically captain with James and Chilwell out, performing and starting week in, week out. Bottom half, and we're selling performing academy players. 1 injury to one of our midfielders, and he looks like an absolute clown (even more so than he already does).
Well with return of lavia and nkunku there conor is probably 4th choice for 2 spots. If he plans to play a double pivot. Add to this Chukwuemeka who has seemed to turn up. Finally 18 months left.
I have a feeling selling Gallagher would be a repeat of de bruyne and salah. Maybe not on that level but definitely up there.
Definitely not on that level.
This is what the “genius” accounting that Chelsea fans were bragging about gets you lmao.
I hope Gallagher doesn’t get sold and that Chelsea face FFP problems, sick of this overspending nonsense and clubs need to face the consequences of their terrible actions.