Chelsea tipped to take advantage of FFP 'loophole' to prevent summer fire sale
The 'unforeseen' impact of homegrown player sales could prove to be Chelsea's saving grace this summer as the Blues potentially find themselves having to deal with another year of no European football.
Chelsea's first season of the Todd Boehly era was a nightmare, with the Blues finishing in the bottom half of the Premier League table. That didn't stop them splashing the cash over the summer, with the likes of Christopher Nkunku and Moises Caicedo arriving at considerable cost, but Mauricio Pochettino's side still sit well adrift of the Champions League spots.
Financial fair play rules will be a consideration this summer, with football finance expert Dr Dan Plumley suggesting the Blues could be "very close" to risking a financial fair play breach. However, if they are to offload players who have come through their academy, those deals could be booked as pure profit.
Conor Gallagher, Chelsea's match-winner against Crystal Palace on Monday, is among those to attract interest. The issue for the Blues, however, could come from other teams being well aware of their potential need to raise funds from somewhere.
"I think that this is the kind of what we term as this unforeseen or unintended consequence of certain parts of your regulatory framework," Dr Plumley told Mirror Football courtesy of Grosvenor Sport. "And we have to remember, of course, these regulations were put in early 2010 to coincide with UEFA's regs, and it really did change the landscape of football.
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"But at that point, they probably weren't thinking that these kinds of things were going to happen further down the line and it's because of the way that players are recorded as assets to clubs. If you sign the transfer fee, you divide that transfer fee by the length of the contract and that's your amortisation figure that we talk about.
"You can't do that with homegrown players, which means that when you sell them on, it is pure profit and that would have been the case in a world without regulation. If you've developed a player and sell them, then you take the benefit from that. The loophole, as you say in this one, is that against the bottom line of PSR, its pure profit, not amortised at cost. So, it just makes the bottom line better."
Who should Chelsea look to sell this summer? Have your say in the comments section
Conor Gallagher is among the Chelsea academy graduates to attract interest (Getty Images)Chelsea sold Mason Mount to Manchester United last summer, recouping a significant fee for the England international. An exit for Gallagher might not be especially popular, though, with the midfielder's brace against Palace winning him plenty of praise.
Then there's the matter of whether other clubs, aware of the publicly-available figures around Chelsea's finances, might go out in search of more favourable terms. "Yeah, it’s bound to [affect things], isn't it?" Plumley adds.
"But again, it makes logical sense that if you know a club is in a particularly tight situation against the regulations and is looking to sell, and the Chelsea example is a good one here and Conor Gallagher in particular, if you are going to look to buy that player, you’re probably not going to look to pay Chelsea's asking price because you know their position.
"You know your own position, and of course, if we look at that part of the example, there was he was maybe going to go to Tottenham was one of the names. We know how Daniel Levy operates. We know Spurs are shrewd negotiators. They're going to look to drive the price down, not up, and then it becomes a negotiation."
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