The problems facing Chelsea, Man C, Tott and Liverpool « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News, supporting the club, the players and the manager

By Tony Attwood

Chelsea has a problem.  In fact, even if they win the Champions League this year they have a problem.  The owner wants success now and does not like to hang around if he doesn’t get it.  But the owner also backed the ideas of Uefa to bring in financial controls – effectively to stop anyone else doing what he had done, and just spending whatever it takes to buy the Premier League.  In fact some say that it was all his idea.

So Ambramovich wants success based on financial fair play, and he has had quite a few managers in to try and deliver that.   At present there are no restrictions on spending – anyone can do as they please and play in the Champs League, so if Chelsea win the Champs League or come 4th in the Premier League they are in.  But the financial figures from this year will count towards the calculations on who can play in 2013/14.  So Chelsea might not be ok the season after next.

From 2013/14 on clubs must meet the requirement to break even on their balance sheets, with calculations based on financials from 2011/12 onwards.  You can still make a £45m loss over the first two years, and Uefa is continuing to say they will impose penalties on clubs that don’t come under that figure.

So when Chelsea appoint their new manager he will know that either the club is gambling on it being able to bend the Uefa rules – maybe breaking the limit but getting away with a “warning” from Uefa, or maybe breaking the limit and being fined by Uefa (a useful source of extra income for the guys in Switzerland.)

The problem is that last season Chelsea lost £67.7m – greater than that allowable over the two years introductory period.  Of course in part Mr Abramovich is to blame because he keeps buying and selling managers – at a considerable loss.  £64m spent on managers in four years hasn’t helped.

So how do you rebuild Chelsea while turning a loss of £67.7m a year into enough of a profit to get the average right down?  Not by filling the ground, because it is largely full.  Not by more marketing, because Chelsea have done a lot on that front and they don’t have any new reasons why anyone should pay more (unless they win the Champs League of course).

Thus we are back to selling a few players.  But that means bringing others in, in their place, and unfortunately for Chelsea the chance of promoting from the youth system is small since Chelsea have few youth players of the highest quality waiting to step up.  Also a lot of the top players are in their 30s and thus worth less on the transfer market than might be thought.

Didier Drogba could leave as a free agent in the summer.  Torres could be sold – for quite a bit, although certainly a lot less than he cost. The Wenger technique of raiding the world for the best in the world is harder now because others have picked up the notion, and the chance of picking up an unknown anywhere abroad are lower because of the enhanced interest of prowling scouts everywhere.

But if it is a problem for Chelsea, consider poor Liverpool.  They are nearer the foot of the table than the top, and they clearly won’t get into the Champs League.   That makes recruiting new players of the highest quality hard, but then so do their losses.

The £35m spent on Carroll is not just money spent on a player who doesn’t look that good, but it is also money that is counted when it comes to financial fair play.  Additionally Liverpool  spent £50 million on three midfield players: Henderson, Adam and Downing, and still look as if they need a left back and a central defender.  They could also be said to need a centre forward but that depends on how you see the racist Luis Suárez.

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Of course Liverpool did get £56m for Fernando Torres and Ryan Babel, but still, they need players, and whoever they buy will take them into further loses, and that will hit their FFP position.  You need to pass FFP in order to play in the Europa league as much as in the Champs League.

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So where then does that leaves Manchester City?  They like Chelsea have found that just buying players doesn’t guarantee success, although they could still win the league.  But they have losses of £197million for 2010-11 and even if they got rid of half the team now they would still find it hard to recover not least because players would have to take a pay cut to play elsewhere, and might not be inclined to agree to give up their lovely pay cheque to play for non-top–five team. 

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There is also the pesky little problem of the £350m, 10-year sponsorship deal with Etihad.  Most likely the Fifa gnomes will agree it is ok, simply for a quiet life, and that the Etihad is a ‘related party’ and the £350m was not inflated above a market rate to help overcome the problem.  In any normal court the deal is indefensible but even with Uefa backing down there is still the problem of the wage bill.

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So three clubs, none of them getting what they want, and all of them having a look over the shoulder at the financial fair play regulations.  How will it turn out?

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One possibility is that Uefa will be strong and ban all three clubs from the season after next along with PSG and maybe even Barcelona whose president often speaks of having £40m a year to spend on transfers.  Except that last year they were unable to pay salaries, and had to sell Yaya Toure  and Dmitro Chygrynskiy (the latter for £9m less than they bought him for 10 months before).

Of course a lack of funds doesn’t mean a club fails the financial tests, but it does suggest that the club is making huge losses despite all the noise that comes out of the club.  And they will have to spend big this summer to attempt to keep up with Real Mad.

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So Uefa bans the clubs.  What then?   The most likely outcome would be that the banned clubs would set up their own league to play when the Champs League plays.  A league of Chelsea, Man City, Liverpool, Barca, PSG – maybe even Real Mad although I can’t make head nor tail of their accounts.  Add a few other wannabes and other clubs who have difficulty balancing the books, and you could have an eight team league easily.   Uefa might huff and puff at that, but any order from Uefa for further sanctions against the clubs would probably have no support.

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Alternatively Uefa gives in and finds loopholes – such as fines of £20k or something, and a warning.   That is the most likely outcome I think.

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But here’s one more point: Tottenham.  Seemingly balancing the books, although one is never quite sure with tax-haven owners who don’t have declare any earnings.

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They might be free of the FFP problem, but I doubt that they are free of the problem that besets Arsenal each year – the moronic journalist talk of “Arsenal will have a problem of holding onto…”   There are several players in the Tottenham team that clubs like Man C would like to prize away – and I suspect this summer the Nasri-Cesc issue will focus on Tottenham.

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Of course they might be clever enough to do a Wenger and get ludicrously inflated for players, as well as having replacements lined up.  Arry will love such wheeling and dealing, and that may be the biggest reason for Tottenham holding onto him.  If he goes and the vultures fly over, Tottenham could lose several interesting players.

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Preview of the upcoming league games involving the clubs who might just have a thought about ending in the top four.