Vesper

almost Malo's 2 goal ever for us

it like tinkerman is doing whatever he can to lose the 3 points

Guiu on?????? wtf

I am really getting tired of Maresca's bizarre rando sub patterns

why the fuck is Josh not on fucking glassman Badi over him???????

Estêvão on please

horrid defence by Badi straight ball watching

Albanian tractor coming on

Delap coming off

wtf Tosin horrid pass

damn, off the post

lucky to be up it has been dire overall

shit cross by Delap he so needs to step up his play

STUPID YELLOW wtf Neto

Gittens is pretty good with assists

super cross

weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

CuCu having a stinker

wtf Delap stupid shot

THIS!!!!!!!!!

Who can Chelsea rotate in for Moises Caicedo with Romeo Lavia and Dario Essugo out? https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6820853/2025/11/21/moises-caicedo-Chelsea-rotation-analysis/ Nobody can accuse Chelsea of not getting their money’s worth from Moises Caicedo. Since arriving from Brighton & Hove Albion for a then British-record fee of £115million ($150m at the current rate) in August 2023, Caicedo has become their team’s metronome: key in building attacks, screening the defence, and dictating matters in midfield. This season, according to fbref.com, he is also their joint-top scorer with four goals across all competitions, has won more tackles than any team-mate (26) and has had the second-most touches of all Chelsea players (1,016, a hair behind Trevoh Chalobah on 1,018). The only question left to ask about Caicedo is how to make this last. Judging by Romeo Lavia’s starts against Wolverhampton Wanderers, Nottingham Forest and Qarabag and Dario Essugo’s signing in the summer, the intention was for the 24-year-old Ecuador international to be rotated in and out of the side this season in line with Chelsea’s approach to managing their squad. Both those players are currently injured however, with Lavia out until at least December and Essugo possibly into the new year. Catch Up On The Story Reece James, Romeo Lavia, and Chelsea’s different approach to managing comebacks Chelsea beat Ajax with a heavily-rotated side on Wednesday night - it is all part of the club's plans to limit injury absences Caicedo is already leading Chelsea’s squad for minutes played this season (1,262 in 16 appearances — the only match he’s missed was against third-division Lincoln City in the Carabao Cup). International duty with Ecuador — for whom he played two full games in this November window, the second of them finishing in the early hours of Wednesday, UK time — adds to his load. Chelsea head coach Enzo Maresca said in October that he was among a few players unable to train every day due to physical problems. Arguably no player is more important to the club right now than Caicedo, but also nobody in their squad is more in need of rest — even if that is coming off in the 70th minute of a match, say, rather than continuing until full time. So with Lavia and Essugo both sidelined, who else could Chelsea currently use in his place? Here, The Athletic breaks down who could provide makeshift cover. Enzo Fernandez Fernandez has shown a good eye for a through ball this season — here, against Sunderland last month, he drops off to help build the attack from a deeper position and plays an excellent pass up to striker Marc Guiu, whose attempted cross is too close to goalkeeper Robin Roefs. The Argentinian often drops off behind the attack to help link play, tending to occupy the spaces on either side of Caicedo. Finding passes into the final third is not a problem for him like this; doing so from a more central role would be an adjustment, but he is used to the physicality of the Premier League almost three years after signing from Portugal’s Benfica and generally able to move the ball on quickly. Fernandez also does not shy away from the defensive side of the game, as we can see from his ‘true tackle attempts’ in the table below. There are issues with dropping him deeper, though: firstly, the risk of losing the goal threat he has provided this season. Fernandez has had a lot of joy lurking at the edge of the box and making late runs, as shown by his goals against West Ham United and Brighton. A more withdrawn role could jeopardise that. He works hard out of possession, but as we can see from his tackle success rate, the effort he puts in does not always come off. Finally, Fernandez — who stayed home from Argentina duty this month as he manages a knee complaint — could also do with some rest. Cole Palmer’s return from the groin injury that’s kept him out since September should bolster the attack if Fernandez were to drop further back, though. If Fernandez is feeling revitalised after a couple of weeks with no football, moving him deeper late in games to allow Caicedo’s substitution — with Andrey Santos or even Malo Gusto playing the No 8 role — could be a way to give his fellow South American a break. Andrey Santos Santos has mostly rotated with Fernandez as an attacking midfielder, but there could be merit in trying the 21-year-old Brazilian in a deeper role. His tackling statistics are impressive, and Maresca has played him in Caicedo’s usual spot against Palmeiras in July’s Club World Cup quarter-final and Lincoln in the Carabao Cup in September. Having mostly featured from the bench this season, Santos could help cover the defence in the latter stages of games. The main question marks are over his physicality and experience; in June, Maresca said he saw Santos as more of an attacking midfielder than a defensive one, partly because of the physical demands of the Premier League. Santos has struggled at times to win the ball from opponents, and his five yellow cards in all competitions (the most among Chelsea players) from 15 appearances, show he still has some maturing to do defensively. Here, for instance, Lincoln’s Rob Street is more alert to Chalobah’s poor pass and intercepts; Santos stretches but cannot reach the ball and is booked for taking down Street instead. Yes, Chalobah’s pass does not help Santos here — but with defensive team-mates running back either side of him, it is probably not a risk he needs to take. Santos’ comparative lack of Premier League experience (nine games, two starts) is still showing; low-pressure situations might be the safest time to try him out in a holding role. Reece James Maresca has a few defensive options with a history of stepping up into midfield. Chalobah and Gusto have both done it in the past — but keeping Chalobah at centre-back would help Maresca achieve some consistency there, and Gusto is better suited to a wider, more attacking role. In terms of passing range and comfort on the ball, James is one of the best options to push forward. Though typically a right-back, James has played in midfield as recently as the 1-0 win against Tottenham Hotspur on the first day of this month. In that instance, he was alongside Caicedo. His pass map from the match demonstrates his ability to help build attacks with long passes and through balls. James does not face the same physicality challenge Santos does. Playing him in midfield has the bonus of exposing Chelsea’s 25-year-old club captain to fewer sprints up and down the flank — hopefully helping protect him from reinjury after his string of issues in that area. He is defensively experienced, though would need to adapt from being able to isolate opponents against a touchline when playing full-back to holding them up with space to either side. Gusto, Wesley Fofana and even Josh Acheampong are capable alternatives at right-back, which gives Maresca more scope to move James into midfield. Given the desire to manage James’ minutes, sharing a role there with Caicedo could benefit both. There is no straightforward answer, and any makeshift solution will likely have some teething problems — but in the long term, that could be a price worth paying to keep Caicedo at his freshest and best.

Premier League clubs vote to replace PSR: Explaining the new squad cost ratio rules https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6822838/2025/11/21/premier-league-scr-anchoring-financial-rules/ Premier League clubs have voted to overhaul the league’s financial regulations from the start of the 2026-27 season. The clubs held a shareholders’ meeting in London on Friday to discuss a range of proposed new financial measures, known as top to bottom anchoring, the squad cost ratio (SCR) and the sustainability and system resilience (SSR). Anchoring was voted on first but received only seven votes in favour, with 12 against and one abstention. The clubs then voted on SCR, which passed 14 to six — with Bournemouth, Brighton & Hove Albion, Brentford, Crystal Palace, Fulham and Leeds voting against — and SSR, which passed unanimously. A threshold of 14 of the 20 clubs voting in favour of a proposal is required to change Premier League rules. SCR will replace the league’s current profitability and sustainability rules (PSR), which limit club losses to a maximum of £105million ($137m) over a three-year period. This season will be the last under those regulations. The Athletic’s BookKeeper Chris Weatherspoon explains the new rules below, including how punishments will work and which clubs are at most and least risk of being caught out. How will SCR work? Similarly to the current SCR regime operated by UEFA, which nine Premier League clubs needed to adhere to this season. SCR broadly covers one year of club activity, except for player sales (see below), and Premier League SCR will be assessed across a season. UEFA, by contrast, assesses clubs on an annual January to December basis. SCR puts a direct limit on how much clubs can spend on their players and head coach, albeit one which is linked to a given club’s revenue. In other words, the amount able to be spent under SCR will differ from club to club. Costs assessed under SCR include player and head coach wages, agent fees and the amortisation or impairment (when a club writes down a player’s value in their books) of transfer fees. In a continuation of the old PSR regime, costs relating to women’s teams and youth academies are excluded for SCR purposes. To allow for swift punishment — i.e. to avoid matters dragging over multiple seasons, as they have under PSR — clubs will undergo an SCR Compliance Test each March 1. If their squad cost is equal to or less than 85 per cent, they will be deemed compliant. If they exceed that level, they will be subject to an Accounts Confirmation Test at the end of the season in June. How does this compare to UEFA’s rules? A notable difference between the two SCR frameworks is the proportion of relevant income clubs can spend on squad costs. Under UEFA regulations, that limit sits at 70 per cent while the Premier League has agreed to an 85 per cent limit. That won’t matter to the nine clubs already competing in Europe this season, but the extra 15 per cent allowed for the rest tallies with the Premier League’s statement, which says the new rule will “promote opportunity for all of (our) clubs to aspire to greater success, while protecting the competitive balance and compelling nature of the league”. Clubs will only be able to spend a set proportion of relevant income under SCR, which comprises “football-related revenue” (so, generally speaking, a club’s annual turnover) plus their net profit or loss generated from player sales. Under UEFA rules, the latter is averaged over the past three seasons, meaning clubs are less easily able to extricate themselves from regulatory trouble with a quick player sale. The averaging has been reflected in the Premier League’s SCR regime. What are red and green thresholds and the other new terms we’ll be hearing about? That 85 per cent limit has another name, introduced in the new rules soon to inhabit the Premier League’s handbook: The ‘Green Threshold’. At the beginning of each season, clubs and the Premier League will agree on estimated football revenues, from which their 85 per cent, Green Threshold spending limit will be derived. A further limit (the ‘Red Threshold’) will be set at up to 30 per cent higher, so for each club in 2026-27 their Red Threshold will be 115 per cent. Clubs will be able to spend above their Green Threshold without incurring a sporting sanction, provided they do not exceed their Red Threshold. If they exceed the latter, a sporting punishment will follow. If that sounds too simple, then don’t worry, they found a way to make it more complex. If a club complies with their Green Threshold and returns a squad cost ratio of 85 per cent or lower, their Red Threshold will remain at 115 per cent. However, if a club exceeds the Green Threshold, they will see their Red Threshold reduced by the size of the excess. For example, if a club records a 90 per cent ratio in 2026-27, their 2027-28 Red Threshold would be 110 per cent. Premier League chief executive Richard Masters.Alex Livesey – Danehouse/Getty Images The Premier League has termed this a Feedback Loop, and it is one which updates year-on-year. Ultimately, if a club consistently goes over their Green Threshold but does not exceed their Red Threshold, the latter will move ever closer to the 85 per cent mark. On the flipside, if a club exceeds the Green Threshold in one season but is later compliant, they have scope to build their Red Threshold back up to that 115 per cent maximum. In each season they are compliant, they increase their Red Threshold by 10 per cent, up to the 30 per cent overall maximum. As an example, say a club records a 100 per cent SCR figure in 2026-27, or 15 per cent over their Green Threshold. That reduces their 2027-28 Red Threshold to 100 per cent. In 2027-28, they record an SCR figure below 85 per cent, meaning they are compliant. As a result, their 2028-29 Red Threshold would be 110 per cent and further compliance that season would raise it to the 115 per cent maximum for 2029-30. In explaining why clubs will be allowed to exceed the 85 per cent limit without sporting sanction, the Premier League said it “allows for clubs to invest ahead of revenue and reasonable variance or genuine sporting underperformance throughout the season”. In essence, clubs not in Europe have been afforded extra leeway for longer-term spending on squads, albeit up to a reducing limit. No such differing thresholds are in place under UEFA’s PSR regime. What are the punishments? For clubs which exceed their Green Threshold but not the Red, a fine looms, much like under UEFA’s SCR rules. As outlined above, Premier League clubs will also see their Red Threshold reduced in line with the previous season’s excess. That fine will be calculated via choosing the lower of two figures: a club’s Green Threshold overspend per the March 1 measurement (based on projected spending), or the club’s Accounting Confirmation Test overspend (based on the end-of-season actual spending). That figure is multiplied by the percentage overspend in excess of the 85 per cent Green Threshold. If a club’s SCR figure comes in at 90 per cent, their fine will be equal to five per cent (being 90 per cent less the 85 per cent allowed) of the monetary overspend. If that 90 per cent SCR figure translated to a club spending £10m more than they should have, their fine would be equal to five per cent of £10m, or £500,000. If a club breaches in 2026-27, they will not be fined. The ‘levies’, as the Premier League terms them, commence from 2027-28. However, a club will still have its future Red Threshold reduced if its 2026-27 SCR figure falls between the 85 per 115 per cent band. Of far greater consequence is if a club breaches its Red Threshold. As a reminder, that will be 115 per cent of relevant income in 2026-27 but could then vary by club in future seasons. If a club breaches its Red Threshold, a sporting sanction will follow. Red Threshold breaches automatically generate a minimum six-point deduction, with a further point taken off for every £6.5m by which the offending club exceeds its Red Threshold. Crucially, and in a clear departure from the PSR regime, clubs will be punished in the season of their breach. This should, in theory, reduce the complications and impact of a relegation-threatened club (or title-contending one) breaching the new rules. Which clubs are most at risk? Given the rules won’t come into action until next season, nobody just yet but, generally, it is clubs who spend a high proportion of revenue on their playing squads. SCR is directly tethered to a club’s turnover; if they spent the bulk of that on wages and fees, they will have a harder time complying. Player costs have long been clubs’ biggest expense anyway, but the narrower focus of SCR means clubs will be less able to extricate themselves from regulatory trouble via non-football means. That was most memorably done by Chelsea in recent seasons, whose internal sales of hotels, a car park and the club’s women’s team all helped them avoid Premier League sanction. That was not the case with UEFA, which found Chelsea in breach of two of its rules in 2024, as those asset sales were not allowed to be included in their UEFA calculations. Such transactions will now be excluded domestically too. Chelsea’s ability to comply is much improved following the summer’s FIFA Club World Cup success and a return to the Champions League this season, while fellow UEFA breachers Aston Villa should benefit from having had to work towards the continent’s lower 70 per cent SCR limit. UEFA’s SCR rules saw Chelsea and Aston Villa receive combined fines of around £14.7m (€17m) last summer for breaches in 2024.Clive Mason/Getty Images The 85 per cent threshold for non-UEFA clubs gives those teams more headway, but there are a couple who flag up as immediate potential concerns, albeit based on figures from 2023-24 (the latest we have available for most clubs). Per The Athletic’s calculations, using those admittedly outdated figures, five clubs’ estimated squad cost ratio exceeded 85 per cent in 2023-24: Villa, Nottingham Forest, Leeds United, Fulham and Bournemouth. Wolverhampton Wanderers were not far off, at a projected 81 per cent. Bournemouth have progressed in the league and made significant player sales, which contribute to SCR spending power, since then, as have Forest (at least last season in terms of league position), while Leeds are expected to have improved revenues markedly since their last Premier League stint in 2022-23. Fulham and Wolves look in more precarious positions though, as explained, the need to comply will not come until next season. Interesting will be the impact on promoted clubs. They have generally suffered from carrying high levels of loss up from the Championship under PSR, alongside not being afforded the full £105m loss limit Premier League mainstays enjoyed. Forest’s PSR breach came in part because they had to include over £60m of pre-tax losses incurred in the Championship in their first Premier League PSR calculation. With SCR covering only a single season, there should, theoretically, be more scope for squad investment by the Premier League’s newest entrants. That will especially be the case if they choose to accept the financial hit of exceeding their Green Threshold in the season following promotion. What’s the likely impact of no anchoring? In terms of most clubs’ spending limits, nothing at all. As The Athletic detailed earlier this week, per the most recent figures, no Premier League club’s existing squad cost limit under either UEFA or domestic SCR would have exceeded the projected £600million upper limit which anchoring would have introduced. One reason clubs were opposed to an anchored limit, or a ‘hard cap’, was because that probably would not have remained the case. As club revenues continued to grow, particularly at the top end of the sport, an anchored limit would have been more keenly felt. The gulf between the non-broadcast revenues of the Premier League’s richest clubs and the rest far exceeds the gap between the two groups’ broadcast revenues. With anchoring tied to the broadcast income of the least-well-off, the ability of the bigger clubs to use their commercial might for squad spending would have been restrained. In turn, in an argument which appears to have worked, opponents to anchoring feared it would leave English clubs less competitive in Europe, where clubs are only limited to the 70 per cent squad cost limit already imposed by UEFA. That was a valid concern, but only up to a point: on 2024-25 figures, only Real Madrid and Barcelona would have had a higher squad cost limit than the £600million proposed under anchoring, and Barcelona have had plenty of their own problems with a domestic salary cap in recent years. In any case, anchoring was roundly rejected, with 60 per cent of clubs voting against. The repercussions will not matter much in terms of most clubs’ nominal ability to spend, but it could allow those at the top to stretch even further ahead. SCR is tied to revenues and player sales, but the latter are averaged over three seasons. In that sense, clubs looking to make up revenue gaps to those above them through player trading will need to be consistently good at the latter; only a third of sales profits will count in a given season, so one big sale will have less of an immediate impact than it did under PSR. Clubs competing in Europe will remain tethered to UEFA’s 70 per cent limit, without the complication of a domestic anchor reducing their spending power further. Anchoring was held up by its critics as having the potential to suppress player wages more widely. Whether it would have is unclear — the limit was far beyond what most clubs can spend anyway — but it is a moot point now. Whether the introduction of domestic SCR can help improve the finances of an overwhelmingly loss-making English pyramid, one where high salaries at the top have a knock-on effect below, will take much more time to assess. And what about SSR? SSR comprises three prongs. One seeks to ensure clubs have sufficient resources to handle both known outgoings and any reasonable fluctuations that may occur in revenue. The other two look at clubs’ long-term financial outlook, assessing the health of a club’s balance sheet. “The sustainability and systemic resilience rules assess a club’s short, medium and long-term financial health through three tests — working capital test, liquidity test and positive equity test,” the league added. All 20 clubs voted in favour of SSR, perhaps reflecting the lack of concern they have around breaching it. The requirements it will impose on clubs are varied but point toward moving them away from short-term thinking. Those requirements, spread across the three tests mentioned above, include: clubs having to show continued monthly access to at least £12.5million in cash or working capital; clubs demonstrating their ability to withstand a ‘Stress Test’, whereby they suffer a theoretical £85m financial hit, ostensibly to mirror the potential impact of relegation; and clubs need to show assets outweigh liabilities though, crucially, they’ll be allowed to include player valuations at market value rather than book value. So, is this the end of PSR? Yes, or at least it is domestically in the top tier. Clubs will continue to be assessed on three years’ worth of overall financials up to the end of this season but, once they are confirmed as clear of any breaches of loss limits under the existing rules, PSR will cease to be a consideration with the Premier League. That is important given events of recent years, where clubs have used the sale of non-football assets to boost their bottom lines. PSR assessed a club’s overall profitability, meaning high spending on players could be offset elsewhere — even if some of the methods used for the latter were met with incredulity by onlookers. The movement away from PSR means such asset sales will no longer help clubs out of a regulatory jam, as they do not comprise revenue (neither in an accounting sense nor in how both UEFA and the Premier League have laid out their SCR rules). Nottingham Forest and Everton were previously sanctioned by the Premier League for breaching PSR.Michael Regan/Getty Images Ditching PSR means clubs will no longer be assessed on overall loss-making, a fact which would not seem to do much for those with concerns football clubs lose too much money as it is. Much of that loss though, is driven by spending on players and their wages — which SCR directly focuses upon. More closely tethering player spend to a club’s recurring revenues should, in theory, help with sustainability, though only if the limits imposed under SCR are low enough to leave clubs plenty of money for their other bills. At a glance, that might not be the case. In 2023-24, general running costs comprised 24 per cent of Premier League revenues which, combined with an 85 per cent limit on squad spending, would still see clubs spending more than they earn. The end of domestic PSR does not mean clubs will be entirely free of concern surrounding overall losses. UEFA’s current regulations include a Football Earnings rule, which limits club losses across a rolling three-year period — much as the Premier League’s PSR regime does now. English clubs competing in Europe will remain subject to that. There is also the question of how the EFL and its clubs will react to the rule changes. England’s second tier, the Championship, still operates a PSR regime which limits club losses over three seasons. If that remains in place, clubs relegated from the Premier League will need to adhere to it.

https://www.afr.com/companies/sport/Chelsea-s-maverick-money-man-is-playing-to-win-20251111-p5nebx https://archive.ph/5M6DH The final game of the 2025 World Series baseball playoff was the most dramatic in the history of the sport, statistically speaking. On nine occasions, the probability of victory swung by more than 15 per cent; twice more than the next-most volatile championship game, which was played in 1924. Los Angeles Dodgers co-owner Todd Boehly is a numbers man, but amid all the twists and turns he was never in doubt that his team would beat the Toronto Blue Jays and retain the title. “Maybe that was just blind confidence to protect myself, but I felt pretty good the whole game,” Boehly tells AFR Weekend. “The team is really scrappy, and the culture of the team is to never give up,” he says. The 52-year-old American billionaire isn’t afraid of a scrap, either. He has built a business empire and a fortune estimated at $US9 billion ($13.7 billion) by playing the odds and making winning bets. When he led a consortium to buy English Premier League soccer team Chelsea from Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich in 2022 – which at the time was the biggest deal for a sports team in history – Boehly emerged as a disruptive figure in the most fiercely competitive and lucrative sporting competition in the world. That moment marked a symbolic shift in ownership from petro-dollar-backed sugar daddies to Wall Street trained financial engineers who are putting their reputations, sanity and billions of dollars on the line to achieve commercial and sporting success. “The reality is it’s just about winning,” Boehly says in Sydney this week. “Are you winning or are you not? In the end, there can only be one champion.” Boehly says the competitive streak that has driven his career was instilled in him by his high school wrestling coach in Bethesda, Maryland, and initially, he put it to work pursuing a career on Wall Street. After stints at Credit Suisse and private equity firm Whitney, he oversaw the corporate debt unit at New York-based investment firm Guggenheim Partners. In 2012, the city’s struggling baseball team, the Dodgers, was put up for sale. It was a deal that changed his life. Boehly was part of a Guggenheim consortium that paid $US2.15 billion for the team, an amount criticised as astronomical for a franchise that hadn’t won a National League pennant or a World Series for over two decades. It turned out to be a steal. The stadium value and television rights underwrote most of that price and, a year later, the Dodgers’ broadcast rights for 25-years were sold for $US9 billion. Since Guggenheim took over, the Dodgers have been the most consistently successful Major League baseball team, winning their division 12 of 13 years, the National League five times and the World Series three times since 2020. Boehly’s investment mantra is to own “what you need and what you want”. But he says too many owners of sports teams haven’t figured out that they’re actually in the entertainment business. To hammer home the point, he references one of his other teams, the Los Angeles Lakers National Basketball Association franchise. “When you think about the Lakers’ brand, what it stands for and what it means, Dr [Jerry] Buss was probably the first one to come to the realisation that this is not a basketball team, this is an entertainment platform,” he says. “He made the Forum [the Lakers stadium] the place to be. He got Jack Nicholson and celebrities to come to games, and he turned it into something very special.” Boehly has been a part owner of the Lakers since 2021, when he joined a consortium to buy a minority stake in a deal that valued the NBA franchise at $US10 billion. He has gone all in on Los Angeles. Aside from the sports teams, he is leading an ambitious luxury development in Beverly Hills under the Aman brand. In 2022 his investment company, Eldridge Industries, took control of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association after a diversity scandal rocked its big annual event, the Golden Globe Awards. And Eldridge is betting on LA’s screen industry, too. The company owns stakes in Oscar-winning production company A24 (Everything Everywhere All At Once, Civil War) and the music back catalogues of Bruce Springsteen and The Killers. Each business has its own strategy, depending on its industry. Boehly’s approach to sports ownership is pretty simple. Pay up to buy fabled teams in big cities, then back them to be consistent winners. The big-city support base means enough bums to fill stadiums and keep seat-prices high. While storied old teams give off a “glow” that attracts fans across global markets, who will pay broadcasters to watch their heroes and might buy the merch, too. It was this strategy that informed the deal that would make Boehly himself a globally recognised name. And his attempt to upend the way soccer business is done made him, for many, a figure of ridicule. Buy now, pay later soccer Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 changed many things, and in the world of soccer it forced Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich to sell his prized club. Boehly swooped, seeing off a dozen “credible” bids to land Chelsea, one of the most successful and highest-profile clubs of the 21st century. Big city and fabled? Tick. The price tag was hefty, with £2.5 billion for Abramovich’s stake (which was frozen to be used for Ukrainian humanitarian causes) and a pledge to invest another £1.75 billion into the club. It was an eye-watering sum, more than 20 times the £140 million Abramovich paid in 2003. Was this the Dodgers trade all over again? Boehly believes so. But he acknowledges there have been plenty of doubters, and critics of his methods, if not the overarching strategy. “The English papers remind me every day how smart they are and how stupid I am,” he says wryly. While Boehly was not the first American to buy into the EPL (11 of the 20 teams this season have American owners), his arrival reset the bar for spectacular and controversial. Chelsea embarked on a spending spree unprecedented in top-flight soccer. Within a year, they had made two of the most expensive signings in soccer history, and In the three years since Boehly took over, Chelsea have splashed about £1.5 billion on almost 50, mostly young, players. The strategy appeared like madness. But it soon became apparent there was a method to it that borrowed heavily from the way sports business is done in America. It’s all about accounting arbitrage. To understand Boehly’s radical approach, you need to understand how amortisation works in soccer accounting. When a player is bought, the transfer fee paid to the selling club is not booked as a single expense in one year. Instead, it is treated as an asset and the cost spread evenly over the length of the player’s contract. Typically, a £50 million player on a five-year contract will be accounted at a £10 million a year cost (amortising the transfer fee), plus their wages. Chelsea’s strategy was to sign much more expensive players, such as Moises Caicedo for £100 million, on eight-year contracts, thus getting top-class players at a mid-range price – in Caicedo’s case, £12.5 million a year. The strategy, which was almost exclusively used on young players with potentially long careers ahead of them, allowed the manager to front-load a complete squad overhaul without immediately breaching spending limits under the EPL’s Profit and Sustainability Rules, and European soccer’s Financial Fair Play regulations. Both of these tie spending to each club’s profit. As a bonus, they could lock in relatively modest wages, theoretically avoiding costly contract renegotiations and transfer battles. This was the part of Boehly’s plan to quickly turn Chelsea into a winning team. “You’re going to continue to watch our team evolve and grow,” he said this week. “We’ve got them together for a long time. I’m pretty excited about what the future looks like.” Long contracts are common in American sport, where there are no transfer fees and spending rules are limited to salary caps. But they are not in soccer because Boehly’s strategy carries risks other clubs found outweighed the short-term gains. The most obvious is the “albatross risk”, where the team is left with a long-term liability because a player underperforms, suffers a major injury or just doesn’t fit the manager’s system – a particular risk at Chelsea where Boehly is onto his fifth manager. Out-of-favour players on big wages and long contracts are hard to sell because other clubs won’t match the wages and there is little incentive for the player to leave. Players who can’t get a run in the first team – of which there are many at Chelsea – can be a drag on morale, too. Chelsea now has a huge and inflexible cost base for most of the next decade, reducing their ability to spend in the future. That means they have to sell before they can buy, but under Boehly’s strategy, selling players for a decent profit has become harder. Profit from a sale is calculated minus the remaining book value. For example, if a £100 million player on an eight-year contract is sold after three years for £70 million, his book value is £62.5 million (£12.5 million amortised per year for three years, leaving five years on the books). The club books only a £7.5 million profit (£70 million minus £62.5 million). All of which means that Boehly’s short-term, debt-fuelled gamble has mortgaged the club’s financial flexibility for years to come. Other clubs don’t have this problem because the amortisation “loophole” was closed as a result of Chelsea’s spending binge, and is now set at a maximum of five years. Still, the jury remains out on whether it will work. After coming 12th in a disappointing first campaign, Chelsea have improved to finish sixth and then fourth last season. With big-money signings like Caicedo leading the way, they are currently third in the EPL. Boehly says he has needed a thick skin to deal with the intensity of opinions that come with owning sports teams because fans have such a deep emotional investment. “Sometimes my wife and my family take it differently than I take it. I just find it’s one more person that doesn’t know what they’re talking about.” It’s a sentiment on show at the UBS event, where Boehly slaps down audience questions about the need to find a new goalkeeper and senior players. “Sanchez [the goalkeeper] is doing pretty damn well right now … Reece James has become an unbelievable leader,” he says from the stage. Don’t stare in the rearview mirror too long Among pundits, on-field success has led to a softening of views on Boehly’s controversial transfer plan. Whatever the commentary, Boehly gives off the vibe that he doesn’t care, and is totally uninterested in looking back. He refers to a graduation speech given by Roger Federer in which the tennis great explained that while he’d won 20 Grand Slams, he won only 54 per cent of the points he played. “That point is the most important thing at that moment in time, but when it’s over, you got to move on,” Boehly tells AFR Weekend. “If you stare in the rearview mirror too long, right, you’re going to get lost.” As if to prove the point, months after the amortisation loophole was closed in April 2024 he was again getting creative with Chelsea’s financials. By selling assets – including the Chelsea women’s team – to other companies he owns, Boehly was able to report a solid profit and give the club more headroom to keep buying players without breaking the rules. Was it a blatant exploitation of the rules or a smart strategy to compete with state-backed clubs such as Newcastle and Manchester City? Opinion is divided. For his part, Boehly is under no illusions that Chelsea has to win for him to be accepted and for his investment to be maximised. English soccer’s biggest club, Manchester United, is proof that success on and off the field are intertwined. It has been 12 years since they last won the Premier League, and the club has struggled on the field and in the sharemarket. The New York-listed shares have gone nowhere in five years, neatly reflecting a club that has spent up while falling short of expectations. “It’s been a long time since they’ve won,” Boehly says when asked about Manchester United. “Winning is really valuable so figuring out how to get back on the winning ways is important for all teams. You have to be competitive.” Chelsea knows as well as any club that fans love a winner. Five EPL titles and two Champions League wins in the 16 years after Abramovich took over made it a global brand. For Boehly, continuing that growth, rather than squeezing more out of the fans, is the way forward. “We’re trying to grow a global fan base. If your fan base is continuing to grow all around the world that should lead it to naturally believe that your revenue is going to continue to grow.” A plan to emulate Warren Buffett Three weeks ago, Boehly was at Chelsea’s home ground of Stamford Bridge to watch his team lose in the last minute to newly promoted Sunderland, whose achievements he describes as “phenomenal”. Ironically, Sunderland’s relegation from the top division in 2017 made it the subject of a Netflix documentary, Sunderland ’Til I Die, which was produced by Fulwell Entertainment, a production company Boehly part owns via Eldridge Industries. For all his shrewd investments in sport, Boehly is absolutely a finance guy. Eldridge owns stakes in over 100 businesses across the world in insurance, real estate, asset management, technology and aviation. Among the investments is a stake in Brisbane-based mining engineering company Ausenco, which specialises in supporting miners of critical minerals. “For us it was a really good way to get a seat at the table in what is an important topic.” Boehly jetted into Australia to appear at the UBS event before heading up to Queensland for the company’s board meeting. His grand vision is to emulate Warren Buffett, not simply by owning undervalued assets, but by amplifying returns in an insurance company structure. “Berkshire Hathaway in 1992 was $US11 billion in market cap. They passed a trillion last year. If I add up all the value of the enterprises that make up the insurance business, they massively dwarf the asset management business.” Boehly is talking about Buffett’s strategy of buying an insurance company to house his investments. This meant he could raise money via insurance policies, and so long as the underwriting was good he could invest in and accumulate assets funded by other people’s money. The result was Berkshire compounding at 15 per cent. “Compounding at 15 per cent is not easy,” says Boehly. “By being able to really understand what it is that you’re invested in, allows you to do that in a differentiated way.” He says he has no problems switching from working out how to avoid bad loans in his insurance book to avoiding injuries among his players. “In the end, these are the business models. I am trying to figure out how to identify patterns and where the odds are good.” Boehly likes his odds with Chelsea, but he knows risks have to be taken in business and in sport. And the value of business, sport and life is that the unexpected will happen. Like on that memorable evening in Toronto, when an unlikely double play in the second extra innings delivered a comeback for the ages. “Those are the stories you can look back on and embrace. But the experiences that have guided me are when things haven’t worked out, and you get back up and move forward when you’ve been knocked out.”