I’ll admit upfront to being a relatively new Chelsea and PL fan – I moved to the Uk from the US about 7 years ago and became a Chelsea fan over the next couple of years through a variety of factors (mainly b/c a friend had tickets so I went to a fair number of games).
With the Enzo purchase, there is a lot of discussion about Boehly overpaying – in general, there is lots of debate about how much players are worth, are teams overpaying, etc.
As the title says, how much should a fan care? I don’t know enough about the financial rules (eg FFP) to know whether this a primary concern, or if it’s just people playing armchair football manager. I couldn’t care less if Boehly and the Chelsea owners make a little less of a return on their investment, but are there direct implications of overpaying for player A on your ability to buy player B? Boehly et al don’t have infinite funds, so they will be less inclined to buy B if they bought A, but is there something in the rules and regulations that creates a hard cap (or something close to a hard cap) on total spending?
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This doesn’t seem like something to try and care about if you don’t already.
It’s a gamble, if it pays off, Chelsea get more success, therefore more sponsorship, therefore more money to ~~pay off debts incurred this year~~ spend on even better players so they can have more success and so on.
Of course, if that step goes wrong, the Ponzi scheme falls over.
Just enjoy it.
Nobody really knows about FFP in this situation. It’s supposed to regulate spending, but Chelsea believe they have found a loophole by awarding these unusually long contracts (and thus amoritising the fee over a longer time period). Could it come back to bite them? Possibly. But my guess is they close the loophole but don’t retrospectively punnish Chelsea.
The one way it could really all come crashing down is if you have an extended period out of the champions league. The club will need big revenues to support the expenditure (wages not just fees), and being out of the champions league for too long could be a disaster on that front.
There is also a risk with these big and long contacts too. If the player doesn’t work out, you’re tied into a long period of paying their wages, unless you can sell them. Chelsea have famously experienced that issue before (Winston Bogarde).
Other impacts are you getting ripped off for other transfers in future. I suspect clubs are Chelsea as a bit of an easy mark right now. A club you can convince to pay over the odds for your player.
My concern would be about how is he injecting the money into the club? Usually, it is done through long term zero or low interest loan.
The problem that teams have faced in the past has been when an owner has leant the club money to buy players, but then something has changed: they get bored, they have financial problems elsewhere, they die and their heirs don’t fancy bankrolling a football club. Suddenly the owner wants to recall their debts, or wants to sell to get their money back. But the sale is hard to get because the new owner would have to spend their money paying off the previous owner.
These are the sort of problems that led to Leeds in the 2000s and Fiorentina (in Italy) having problems, and it was where Newcastle were at before the Saudis arrived to bail them out.
If he is loaning the money to the club, that’s an inherently risky financial model. How concerned you are about that would depend on how likely you think it is for that risk to backfire, and if it did, how realistic it is that a club like Chelsea might actually face consequences, or whether there’d always be a new financial backer ready to come in.
Did you see that ludicrous display last night?
600 million spend in less than 12 months, ffp is pointless.
Are Chelsea generating a billion a year in revenue?
I know how they’re doing it, I just don’t get how they’re allowed to do it.
It’s a load of tosh, I hope half these players turn out to be lemons and they’re stuck with them for the rest of their long, lucrative contracts.
Could be Leeds all over again
As a Chelsea fan, do you not worry more that you support a club heavily associated with racism and just general noncery?
Support your local.
I see it collapsing like a house of cards so I can see why you’d worry
Chelsea are going to need a bigger squad to play the Boehly 4-4-3 system. What a tool!