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Make them give all their assets to Fulham
We’re acting like these things are new now? The entire system is rotten to the core, not just the club funding but the entire organisations running the sport
Is this any different than City taking ‘revenue’ from shell companies owned by their club’s owner? If nothing will be done to City for money laundering and stuff like that I doubt anything comes of this.
And despite all of this, the Premier League will keep opening its legs to any shitty human with a lot of money.
Do you know what money laundering is?
Don’t worry guys, I’m sure the FA, the Premier League, UEFA and FIFA, bastions of sporting integrity, will come together to tackle the corruption of the likes of Chelsea and City any day now.
Just like that rainforest scare a few years back. Our officials saw there was a problem and they fixed it.
AC Milan bout to get the biggest fine
Everton hiding behind the furniture in fear too
We all knew their success was bullshit, let’s hope this is the nail in the coffin that confirms it.
Arsenal fans had Usmanov owning their club for a long time and begged him to own it fully at times too so it’s always funny when they cry about Abramovich.
And the former shareholders of the club refused to sell any more to him, and passed away before cashing out on a sale to avoid him taking over instead of Kroenke because of his character. Not the same situation at all
Time to post another pathetic megathread on your sub.
They can financially dope all they wish, but the players still have to perform, the manager still has to do a job. Money doesn’t buy competence or success.
You could say the same for chemical doping…
It clearly does. Believing that the wealthiest clubs aren’t consistently they most successful is denying reality.
Chelsea’s success will always have an asterix next to it - if they were owned by Arabs, of course.
Both clubs cheated, and have caused the PL to become worse as a result
The extent of Chelsea’s cheating and cities cheating are barely even comparable. It’s like one slapped a grandma and the other committed a genocide.
Chelsea FC face fresh questions over how its former owner Roman Abramovich funded the club’s success, after leaked files revealed a string of secret payments that may have breached strict football rules, including those on “financial fair play”.
Experts said the transactions, uncovered through a joint investigation by the Guardian and international partners, could lead to the Premier League imposing punishments on Chelsea, such as a deduction of points.
The files reveal a series of payments worth tens of millions of pounds over a decade, routed through offshore vehicles belonging to Abramovich. The transactions in question appear to have been for Chelsea’s benefit, raising questions about whether they were declared in accounts submitted to football’s governing bodies.
Every time I read about Roman’s financial transactions, there are new shell companies from the BVI. More shell companies than people have throwaway email/reddit accounts. He must have a dedicated guy on payroll just for naming them.
I’ve never understood the success of shell companies, just go out on the beach and pick them up.
Don’t get me started on hedge funds. The guy I pay to do mine once only costs £200 for the day.
Sad for the new owners since nobody from the Roman era is still there but I guess they didn’t do the necessary due diligence.
Hard to believe they didn’t know. Everyone knew.
Actually, it is due to Boehly this is known. After they took over, he found these transaction and reported them.
Isn’t due diligence usually done in advance of a buy? Seems kind of reckless.
Generally yes, but this sale was fast tracked, so it wasn’t completely done and they kept 100m from the sale amount, anticipating these fines because of poorly kept books.
This is separate to the ones Boehly reported. These new transactions became known due journalists investigating dodgy dealings between Cypriot companies and Russians.
Wrong. This information is due to insider leaks from a Cypriot bank/company. You can read about this story and others from the excellent OCCRP reporting.
The hero we need but not the 1 we deserve.
You do have to question this entire piece of journalism considering it’s not telling us anything new or groundbreaking. We already know as fact that Clearlake have reported secret payments that were made under previous ownership to the Premier League months ago when going through the club’s finances. I don’t suppose Bruce Buck or Marina are around to face questioning?
I swear it’s like a new publication gets to write this exact story every couple of weeks (coincidentally the last one came during the last international break aka slow news cycle).
Next they’re going to tell us we paid Andreas Christensen’s dad as a scout or that we paid Bertrand Traore’s mum - both of which we’ve already served two transfer bans for btw.
Do you not think that maybe that is why Clearlake reported what they did. To muddy the water like this. They report the least damning thing they can find and lump every other accusation in as what they’ve already reported.
They’ve found more payments haven’t they. That’s what this is saying. It’s more of the same stuff. Not looming good for chelsea
You do have to question this entire piece of journalism considering it’s not telling us anything new or groundbreaking.
Did you read the article? It literally states multiple instances of rule breaches that have not been self reported.
We already know as fact that Clearlake have reported secret payments that were made under previous ownership to the Premier League months ago when going through the club’s finances.
I don’t think much of it has been leaked to the press though - this is the media doing what the should be doing.
The question is, what kind of punishments should Chelsea face? If it’s a small points deduction years later, when it ultimately doesn’t matter, then it’s not much of a deterrent to anyone else.
The only fair punishment that would also act as a deterrent, is to strip them of all their titles during this period.
Or make them take Havertz and Mount back and refund the clubs.
Lol, that’s not a deterrent at all as that has no tangible impact on the team.
The games still happened, the players got their bonuses and new contracts, the fans got their parades and merch. Who cares if a wikipedia entry gets changed?
Bet you won’t have this opinion when city fans sing “champions of Europe, you’ll never sing that” at the Etihad
I really doubt if Chelsea’s CL wins get vacated that City’s will stand…
You can never take back those moments, but it’s definitely a more severe punishment than a points deduction on a season where it’s likely not going to matter that much.
A points deduction would keep Chelsea out of Europe for another year and hurt them financially. What’s an asterisk going to do?
I’m not convinced you clicked the link and read the article
Looks like relegation fight is back on the menu, boys
Take away those titles!
I’m not sure if anything substantial will wind up happening mostly because Clearlake have been upfront with the Premier League and self reported potential infractions.
BUT if this leads to significant punishment down the line, it will taint Abramovich’s legacy as owner. He will no longer be known as strictly the serial winner who took us to a household name. It’s not my place to adjudicate nor am I naive enough to think his image was totally clean before all of this. It’s just something to ponder. Potential punishment on top of the two transfer bans we were handed? It skews the measurements.
Hey guys, I just murdered someone. I’m being upfront though, so I guess that’s fine right?
Not really the same but yeah that would potentially soften the sentencing
More like I murdered one guy and admitted it. That means you can ignore the other 15 bodies right.
BUT if this leads to significant punishment down the line, it will taint Abramovich’s legacy as owner.
Only if it leads to titles being stripped or something. A few 10s of millions in total going to some agents here and then isn’t going to do much.
What I am curious about it is why they did so in the first place. The amounts are too little to go through all this trouble. I’m more inclined to think that his finances were such a complicated web that every now and then, money went out from the “wrong” shell companies or they simply missed it when reporting it later because it was so complicated.
Should be a stripping of titles as it was previous owners and perhaps a financial restriction to punish the gains down the line from the cheating.
Don’t think self reporting matters does it? They can still penalise the club, dock points and put a transfer ban in place.
It certainly helps, or at least should. Thought City’s tactic of denying, bribing and throwing lawyers at it seems to be working better.
Everyone already knew he was a criminal and operated the club in a shady manner. Only deluded Chelsea fans think it was done legally in any way. Not a diss but this literally doesn’t change anything, and I don’t think most Chelsea fans would care anyway, they’ve got their titles
Oil
And some gas. Some rare Earth materials. And a good dose of corruption!
City and Chelsea duking it out for the one direct promotion spot in the national league next season.
UAE is ‘too important’ for city to face charges atleast for now
I always like to think what would happen if a huge club dropped to the National League. It’s worse than relegation for players because the Championship is not that bad, some players jet off but some will stay to help fight back. If City or Chelsea, hypothetically were to drop down what would they do? Would Foden or James stay at their respective clubs to stat pad in the National League? Would the entire squad have a clear out and they’d use some PL2/U21 kids in the league? It’s fascinating to think about.
Both ours and city’s academy is very strong as well so I’d imagine other PL and Championship clubs would sweep up a lot of our young players as well. End up fielding the under 8s
It was nice while it lasted.
They can borrow our trophy cabinet if the league ever does anything about all those plastic trophies they won. It’s spotless just like theirs was before Daddy Russia.
What new questions? Must be a slow news day at the Guardian
People always like to point out that City ruined football, but the FA and the other authorities just letting Roman financially dope his way through success was rhe bigger alarm.
None of it matters now. They’ve reaped the benefits and any points deduction doesnt make a difference.
People always like to point out that City ruined football, but the FA and the other authorities just letting Roman financially dope his way through success was rhe bigger alarm.
Every single big club become success due to financial doping. ManU, Liverpool, Arsenal.
There are no exceptions.
It’s the history of English football. So why would they fight against tradition.
It was technically legal when Chelsea did it, although they more than Man City or PSG (or collapsing clubs like Leeds or Portsmouth) are the reasons behind the FFP rules.
I think its pretty obvious who is old enough to remember the first few years under Abramovich compared to Man City currently by the level of fury towards Man City cheating.
Chelsea spent double or even triple what their nearest rivals did in 2005 or so. Man City outspend their rivals sure, but not by an insane amount.The real issue is that a team like City “shouldn’t be allowed to spend as much as Man U or Arsenal” which is odd IMO, I think there should be a hard salary/transfer cap to level the playing field, not a “well you were massive before we changed the rules, so you can spend X, but you weren’t as big so can only spend Y”
People can disagree with that if they like, but the fact that Chelsea themselves managed to spend way more “non football income” than Man City, become one of the “big clubs” just before the rules changed, so now are “allowed” to spend more than City, because now their “football income” is huge is just mad to me.
I think there should be a hard salary/transfer cap to level the playing field
While this would ‘level the playing field’, it would just take money from the players and give it to the owners so I don’t think this is obviously a good thing.
If you limit how much can be spent on players, that just means more money going into the owners’ pockets. It’s not like teams are going to lower prices because player salaries are lower.
I suppose there could be more profit sharing, or funds taken for lower leagues/grassroots football, or any number of good causes.
It’s not like teams are going to lower prices because player salaries are lower.
Or perhaps they could put some sort of price cap in place so fans don’t get ripped off. Wouldn’t really work on match tickets as demand is still high now, even at those crazy prices, but replica shirts/merch, things like that.
Obviously you make a good point, but if we were to implement a hard cap, I think they’d also have to implement other plans to stop it simply being money going into the pockets of the owners of the richest clubs (as the smaller clubs wouldn’t be affected by salary caps).
Hell, why not make the teams fan owned, so if there is profits being made, its going to the fans not some billionaire who can’t even be bothered to show up to matches?
We don’t know how much City spent. They’re accused of lying about it.
are “allowed” to spend more than City, because now their “football income” is huge is just mad to me.
tbh the rules aren’t really about fairness. FFP isn’t the real name anyway. It’s about stopping the problem of sugar daddies getting bored and leaving the taxpayer to pick up the pieces.
I thought we kind of know what’s going out (as in wages, transfers etc) through their books and what other teams report. It’s the dodgy money coming in that’s the main issue.
Though imagine that 115 charges, there some on both sides!Either way, even if you want to just make up whatever numbers you feel are right (let’s say Haaland cost 120m for example) I still feel like they’d be short of the mad advantage Chelsea 2005 had. You couldn’t massage the transfer fees to make them double what Man U, Chelsea or whoever spend. Plus it looks like Chelsea were lying all the time anyway.
Which is why they should be forced to start over. Relegate them to the bottom of the pyramid and remove the titles won.
That is the only fitting punishment for them and city. Just complete death penalty. But they’ll never do, there is zero incentive. The fact is as long as the premier league continues to grow in popularity, people keep going to games and keep watching on tv that is consent for all of this. The message everyone is sending to the premier league is that we love cheating, we are all in favour of the league being uncompetitive and bought by city every single year. Because we keep watching it.
Exactly. They have already reaped the rewards from their cheating and will continue to do it until they actually get a punishment that sets them back so much they can’t just continue to do it.
Woah. Chelsea would get mocked plenty for it.
But at the time of the take over there wasn’t FFP and they were still being mocked for the way they became successful by most.
Blackburn did it in a smaller way. Chelsea went nuts and City perfected it.
Chelsea walked financial doping so City could run with it.
I’m sure I read somewhere that relative to transfer fees at the time Chelsea were bankrolled more than City.
Yes. Adjusted for inflation, the amount Chelsea spent under Abromovich is insane even compared to City.
Man City pay a lot to players and management under the table though so this is apples and oranges
I thought the issue is that when Chelsea got taken over, what they did wasn’t “against the rules”
There weren’t any FFP rules.
Earlier the 3 foreigner rule made clubs rely on regional players so they couldn’t just splash money all over.
If there weren’t that rule then Berlusconi would’ve bought the whole Dutch national team
Our funds came openly and directly via the owner, there were no FFP issues to try and skirt around at the time. City are funded by fake sponsors in an attempt to bypass FFP.
Did you read the article? Most of these off-book payments are from 2010-2017, after FFP had been introduced.
I agree, people in charge are the ones who allowed this to happen in the first place. now it’s a big mess with clubs being in financial doping all over Europe.
The FA and UEFA: Oh No! Anyway…