Chelsea Transfers

[robsblubot 3,237]

And I thought the whole point was to win silverware... silly me.

Suppose Chelsea FC is now an expensive "Football Manager in Real Life" experiment. It's going to look really stupid when the successful experiments (actual WC players) demand to leave at some point--which is what players always do.
Real Madrid will thank us for all our efforts and gladly take these players off our hands.

[Vesper 27,350]

Hard spending cap likely coming in for 2025/26

we are so fucked

[Vesper 27,350]

Why a spending cap could signify a subtle but important power shift in the Premier League

https://theathletic.com/5442600/2024/04/24/premier-league-spending-cap-importance/

 

So an era of unprecedented Premier League changes could be about to move into new territory — from points deductions to spending constrictions.

The asterisks which dot this season’s table in relation to punishments for clubs who have breached the top flight’s profit and sustainability rules (PSR) may soon be followed by question marks on balance sheets across the division.

GO DEEPER

Premier League clubs to vote on introducing new spending cap

Should a majority of its clubs vote through the proposed hard spending cap for the 2025-26 season, it would not only aid the competitive nature of what is the world’s strongest domestic league, but also enforce a subtle shift in the perceived power base of English football.

The cap idea is based on the concept of “anchoring”, designed to limit the amount of money any club can invest in their squad by tying it to a multiple of what the division’s lowest earners get from the league’s centralised broadcast and commercial deals.

It would go a step further than the UEFA-mirroring new squad-cost rules, which clubs are set to vote on in June, that permit squad spending to a ratio of revenue and player sales, a small but perhaps overdue concession to those who are worried about the league’s competitive balance.

Under the additional anchoring — or hard cap — plan, greater clarity and transparency would arrive, ensuring — so the theory goes − that everyone from Chelsea and Manchester City to Wolves and Crystal Palace are playing by precisely the same rules.

The multiple is the multiple. Obfuscation, workarounds, and overspends would no longer be backstage levers for the big boys to pull.

For years, the Premier League’s ‘haves’, super-rich City, Chelsea and, more recently, Newcastle, have seemingly had things their own way: the former pair as yet unsanctioned despite allegations potentially far more serious than those that have triggered punishments for Everton and Nottingham Forest, the latter able to take a seat at the petrostate top table and enjoy some (if not all) of the benefits City and Chelsea have had over the past two decades.

If those clubs squirm at the notion of a hard cap, then many supporters outside of their fanbases will have little sympathy.

Of course, it might require slightly reduced salaries for current or new players, but the bank balance pains for those stars could be worth it for the sustainability gains. Anyone familiar with Everton’s piteous predicament would argue that if one of the league’s handful of ever-presents can sink to their knees so badly, something needs to be done to prevent it happening to others.

Everton tried and failed to chase the established ‘Big Six’, with their owner Farhad Moshiri bankrolling a misguided spending spree that in the end has them close to rolling off a precipice.

The Merseyside club might not have been able to get into such a mess had anchoring been in place in 2016, when the British-Iranian businessman first took over.

But how has such wider ethical concern seemingly won out over self-interest? What has got anchoring to the point of genuine consideration, where it would seem like the big boys are not getting it all their own way?

The answer could be a subtle power shift, caused by new mutually-beneficial alliances. The Premier League’s broadcast revenue sharing has always been, by European football standards anyway, a relatively noble meritocratic arrangement.

It is less that sharing ratio which clubs such as Everton, West Ham and Palace are worried about — and more the consistent advantage clubs such as City, Chelsea and Manchester United have accrued from decades of participation in European football.

Not only do the ‘Big Six’ tend to pocket extra millions every season from qualifying for one of the three UEFA competitions, they also get to strike more lucrative commercial deals each year because of it. Newcastle and Aston Villa are doing their best to prise open the door to that clique, but the established gap already seems fairly structural.

A larger Champions League designed to ward off a European Super League and next summer’s first, much-expanded Club World Cup will only reinforce the gap between the Premier League’s long-standing haves and have-nots.

It took an interesting coming-together of not only the top flight’s minnows and its middle classes — such as Palace, West Ham and Fulham — but also some of that upper-class elite to get anchoring on the agenda so firmly.

A move towards a North American sport-style salary cap system might well have been endorsed by the likes of U.S.-owned Liverpool or Arsenal in the hope it could rein in a common foe.

If City, as widely predicted, overcome the spirited challenge of both those clubs to retain their Premier League title, meaning four in a row and six in seven years, their steely dominance over English football will be underlined.

Perhaps the hope from rivals is that the introduction of a hard spending cap will loosen Sheikh Mansour and City Football Group’s firm grip on Premier League success in the past decade, and start to level the playing field a bit.

For the Premier League, much maligned in some quarters with their application of PSR sanctions casting uncertainty on this season, it is another pushback against the need for external regulation. Anchoring is unlikely to have got this far without Richard Masters, the league’s chief executive, recognising it as another concession to ease his ongoing scrutiny.

All this may still not be enough to make it a reality, though.

Ultimately it is the Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA) who might have the decisive say. The players’ trade union will need to be demonstrably consulted, listened to and likely negotiated with for the proposal to actually come into force for the season after next.

Even then, if Premier League footballers revolt strongly at the potential for pay cuts, it could throw the whole deal into doubt. Nobody will want the potential for U.S.-style sporting strikes, such as the mid-1990s baseball walkout that saw two major-league seasons left incomplete.

There would be the potential for the PFA to ask for rises in the multiple (already up from an original four and a half to five) until the point that it makes little difference and becomes lip service.

Monday’s vote may be the first step in a small but important change for the Premier League but the players on the field who do the running could yet stop it in its tracks.

Until such point, anchoring will remain a tantalising notion for a potentially fairer top-flight game, and a rare moment when the petrodollar-boosted ‘haves’ were made to contemplate the fact that not everything will always go their way.

[Vegetable 790]

57 minutes ago, Vesper said:

Until such point, anchoring will remain a tantalising notion for a potentially fairer top-flight game, and a rare moment when the petrodollar-boosted ‘haves’ were made to contemplate the fact that not everything will always go their way.

Yeah, so, maybe, like, actually enforce the current FFP rules. If petrodollars would actually bother people in charge, they would be contained. Just a quick reminder that Chelsea had an actual freaking government on its back for a few years, trying to do as much problem for the club as possible. Petrodollars will find a way no matter this mumbo jumbo.

Anyway, all those "fairness" ideas seem bit delusional to me. Did motorsport became more interesting after pushing F1 and WRC teams to be pretty much same thing? Unfair advantage is a problem that ruins sport, but the advantage is pretty much the point of sport. Let the big clubs be big clubs, smaller be smaller, just stop pretending to not see what City or PSG are doing. Reminds me of the pseudo-draft idea of choosing random players from few years back. What is even the point of owning and investing into the club then? You earn more, you spend more, trying to enforce equality sounds like making the football one corporation with few different logos. Meanwhile PSG or Real won't care for any caps, so it's shooting the world's best league foot off.

[OhForAGreavsie 5,776]

2 hours ago, Vesper said:

Why a spending cap could signify a subtle but important power shift in the Premier League

https://theathletic.com/5442600/2024/04/24/premier-league-spending-cap-importance/

 

So an era of unprecedented Premier League changes could be about to move into new territory — from points deductions to spending constrictions.

The asterisks which dot this season’s table in relation to punishments for clubs who have breached the top flight’s profit and sustainability rules (PSR) may soon be followed by question marks on balance sheets across the division.

GO DEEPER

Premier League clubs to vote on introducing new spending cap

Should a majority of its clubs vote through the proposed hard spending cap for the 2025-26 season, it would not only aid the competitive nature of what is the world’s strongest domestic league, but also enforce a subtle shift in the perceived power base of English football.

The cap idea is based on the concept of “anchoring”, designed to limit the amount of money any club can invest in their squad by tying it to a multiple of what the division’s lowest earners get from the league’s centralised broadcast and commercial deals.

It would go a step further than the UEFA-mirroring new squad-cost rules, which clubs are set to vote on in June, that permit squad spending to a ratio of revenue and player sales, a small but perhaps overdue concession to those who are worried about the league’s competitive balance.

Under the additional anchoring — or hard cap — plan, greater clarity and transparency would arrive, ensuring — so the theory goes − that everyone from Chelsea and Manchester City to Wolves and Crystal Palace are playing by precisely the same rules.

The multiple is the multiple. Obfuscation, workarounds, and overspends would no longer be backstage levers for the big boys to pull.

For years, the Premier League’s ‘haves’, super-rich City, Chelsea and, more recently, Newcastle, have seemingly had things their own way: the former pair as yet unsanctioned despite allegations potentially far more serious than those that have triggered punishments for Everton and Nottingham Forest, the latter able to take a seat at the petrostate top table and enjoy some (if not all) of the benefits City and Chelsea have had over the past two decades.

If those clubs squirm at the notion of a hard cap, then many supporters outside of their fanbases will have little sympathy.

Of course, it might require slightly reduced salaries for current or new players, but the bank balance pains for those stars could be worth it for the sustainability gains. Anyone familiar with Everton’s piteous predicament would argue that if one of the league’s handful of ever-presents can sink to their knees so badly, something needs to be done to prevent it happening to others.

Everton tried and failed to chase the established ‘Big Six’, with their owner Farhad Moshiri bankrolling a misguided spending spree that in the end has them close to rolling off a precipice.

The Merseyside club might not have been able to get into such a mess had anchoring been in place in 2016, when the British-Iranian businessman first took over.

But how has such wider ethical concern seemingly won out over self-interest? What has got anchoring to the point of genuine consideration, where it would seem like the big boys are not getting it all their own way?

The answer could be a subtle power shift, caused by new mutually-beneficial alliances. The Premier League’s broadcast revenue sharing has always been, by European football standards anyway, a relatively noble meritocratic arrangement.

It is less that sharing ratio which clubs such as Everton, West Ham and Palace are worried about — and more the consistent advantage clubs such as City, Chelsea and Manchester United have accrued from decades of participation in European football.

Not only do the ‘Big Six’ tend to pocket extra millions every season from qualifying for one of the three UEFA competitions, they also get to strike more lucrative commercial deals each year because of it. Newcastle and Aston Villa are doing their best to prise open the door to that clique, but the established gap already seems fairly structural.

A larger Champions League designed to ward off a European Super League and next summer’s first, much-expanded Club World Cup will only reinforce the gap between the Premier League’s long-standing haves and have-nots.

It took an interesting coming-together of not only the top flight’s minnows and its middle classes — such as Palace, West Ham and Fulham — but also some of that upper-class elite to get anchoring on the agenda so firmly.

A move towards a North American sport-style salary cap system might well have been endorsed by the likes of U.S.-owned Liverpool or Arsenal in the hope it could rein in a common foe.

If City, as widely predicted, overcome the spirited challenge of both those clubs to retain their Premier League title, meaning four in a row and six in seven years, their steely dominance over English football will be underlined.

Perhaps the hope from rivals is that the introduction of a hard spending cap will loosen Sheikh Mansour and City Football Group’s firm grip on Premier League success in the past decade, and start to level the playing field a bit.

For the Premier League, much maligned in some quarters with their application of PSR sanctions casting uncertainty on this season, it is another pushback against the need for external regulation. Anchoring is unlikely to have got this far without Richard Masters, the league’s chief executive, recognising it as another concession to ease his ongoing scrutiny.

All this may still not be enough to make it a reality, though.

Ultimately it is the Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA) who might have the decisive say. The players’ trade union will need to be demonstrably consulted, listened to and likely negotiated with for the proposal to actually come into force for the season after next.

Even then, if Premier League footballers revolt strongly at the potential for pay cuts, it could throw the whole deal into doubt. Nobody will want the potential for U.S.-style sporting strikes, such as the mid-1990s baseball walkout that saw two major-league seasons left incomplete.

There would be the potential for the PFA to ask for rises in the multiple (already up from an original four and a half to five) until the point that it makes little difference and becomes lip service.

Monday’s vote may be the first step in a small but important change for the Premier League but the players on the field who do the running could yet stop it in its tracks.

Until such point, anchoring will remain a tantalising notion for a potentially fairer top-flight game, and a rare moment when the petrodollar-boosted ‘haves’ were made to contemplate the fact that not everything will always go their way.

Massively in favour of this. Have been calling for it, here and elsewhere, for decades. Let's bury the Financial Unfair Play nonsense once and for all.

[OhForAGreavsie 5,776]

I saw a report that Palace have put a £60m price on Michael Olise. Now, it has to be acknowledge that if he was interested in coming back here he'd have done so last summer. Worse, if he didn't fancy Chelsea last off-season, why on Earth would he do so this time around? Even so I'd be happy to see the club try again. Of the players linked last summer he was the one I wanted the most.

[Blue Armour 4,168]

7 hours ago, robsblubot said:

And I thought the whole point was to win silverware... silly me.

Suppose Chelsea FC is now an expensive "Football Manager in Real Life" experiment. It's going to look really stupid when the successful experiments (actual WC players) demand to leave at some point--which is what players always do.
Real Madrid will thank us for all our efforts and gladly take these players off our hands.

That's why this whole 'build for the future' argument is so speculative.

It might pay off, it certainly will raise the resale value of the entire squad, but it doesn't necessarily amount to the trophies. AKA, Wenger's Arsenal.

But hey, maybe some fans like that. Basically enjoy the process, not the end results.

 

[robsblubot 3,237]

20 minutes ago, Blue Armour said:

That's why this whole 'build for the future' argument is so speculative.

It might pay off, it certainly will raise the resale value of the entire squad, but it doesn't necessarily amount to the trophies. AKA, Wenger's Arsenal.

But hey, maybe some fans like that. Basically enjoy the process, not the end results.

 

Yup and I reckon the missing variable in their equation is "time." What do we do while these players develop? Watch grass grow? 😃 Players blossom at different times in their careers -- there is no guarantee these youngster will get anywhere near their peaks in 2-3 years from now.

Take Solanke as an example. He's playing well now at 26!

Edited April 26 by robsblubot

[Vesper 27,350]

5 hours ago, OhForAGreavsie said:

Massively in favour of this. Have been calling for it, here and elsewhere, for decades. Let's bury the Financial Unfair Play nonsense once and for all.

So you are ok with us being pegged at the same spending level of Palace or Bournemouth?

[Blue Armour 4,168]

5 hours ago, robsblubot said:

Yup and I reckon the missing variable in their equation is "time." What do we do while these players develop? Watch grass grow? 😃 Players blossom at different times in their careers -- there is no guarantee these youngster will get anywhere near their peaks in 2-3 years from now.

Take Solanke as an example. He's playing well now at 26!

The long-term contracts all our new signings are on, should itself be a clue.

This a long play by Eghbali & Co. They ultimately want a squad that has appreciated in value 6-7 years from now, when they are ready to sell the club. From their perspective., it doesn't matter if some players mature faster than others. The ones that mature faster., might want to move before that time period, but Eghbali & Co. will make a good profit from the sale of such players., who feel they are too good to remain.

That's their primary objective. Any trophies or results we pick along the way will just be a bonus.

Th3ats why they will only hire a manager that agrees with their 'vision'. Glorified yes-men. Hopefully some of them will have decent coaching credentials.

[Vesper 27,350]

Jesus fucking christ, some cunt on BBC suggested we sell Palmer to help balance our books.

IF we sell him, I AM DONE, OUT. EOS

[Strike 6,969]

26 minutes ago, Vesper said:

Jesus fucking christ, some cunt on BBC suggested we sell Palmer to help balance our books.

IF we sell him, I AM DONE, OUT. EOS

I don't think there's any worry of this happening. At least this summer.

Club is offering him a new deal. 

[robsblubot 3,237]

13 minutes ago, Strike said:

I don't think there's any worry of this happening. At least this summer.

Club is offering him a new deal. 

Yeah agreed, not right now. Another season like this one though and his agent will get real busy.

Edited April 26 by robsblubot

[OhForAGreavsie 5,776]

20 hours ago, Vesper said:

So you are ok with us being pegged at the same spending level of Palace or Bournemouth?

I believe in the US salary cap system. In the name of competition I want to see all clubs competing in the same tier allowed the same budget. Now, whether each club can afford the maximum spend is another matter but, if they have benefactors willing to front the money without encumbering the club with debt, they should be allowed to spend up to the tier maximum. Right across the globe, leagues are dominated by their richest clubs. Decade after decade it goes on. Occasionally we get an exception like Laverkausen but it never lasts. Soon enough Bayern will be off on another ten year winning streak.

Granted defining the tiers would take some work but it can be done. Or so I believe at any rate.

Edited April 27 by OhForAGreavsie

[OhForAGreavsie 5,776]

19 hours ago, Vesper said:

Jesus fucking christ, some cunt on BBC suggested we sell Palmer to help balance our books.

IF we sell him, I AM DONE, OUT. EOS

Only way he gets sold is if there's a clause he can trigger. Surely? SURELY?

[Vesper 27,350]

No, we are NOT buying Gabri Veiga

Fichajes,, close to the the worst major football in Europe, is lying again

there really should be a law against papers literally making shit up

[DH1988 1,199]

If we can get 2 strikers, plan A and plan B ie. I was always a fan of having Giroud, a completely different dynamic in striker, what Llorente was for Poch, irrespective if Poch stays.

I would honestly move Jackson to LW if it meant we got 2 actual strikers, not worldies.

[Thor 2,135]

22 minutes ago, DH1988 said:

If we can get 2 strikers, plan A and plan B ie. I was always a fan of having Giroud, a completely different dynamic in striker, what Llorente was for Poch, irrespective if Poch stays.

I would honestly move Jackson to LW if it meant we got 2 actual strikers, not worldies.

Been watching Bologna and Joshua Zirkzee would actually be perfect next to Cole and Jackson either side. He plays amazingly with his back to goal and picks out passes so well. Perfect for when we are going against these park the bus teams. Even have Nkunku playing just behind.