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Chelsea‘s American owner Todd Boehly is confident the club will not breach the Premier League‘s Profit and Sustainability Rules (PSR) despite their latest accounts showing losses of £89.1 million ($111m) for the financial year ending in June 2023.
The Premier League rules stipulate that a club can lose no more than £105 million over a three-year period, with Everton and Nottingham Forest having faced points penalties this season for exceeding that limit.
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Chelsea’s losses in the previous season amounted to £121.4m, and the 2019-20 season, in which they made a profit of £36m, will not be included in the next set of PSR calculations in December.
“The club continues to balance success on the field together with the financial imperatives of complying with UEFA and Premier League financial regulations,” Boehly said in the accounts.
“The club has complied with these since their inception in 2012 and expects to do so in the foreseeable future.”
The west London team’s acquisitions have been heavily scrutinised having spent more than £1 billion on players since Boehly took over the team in May 2022, leading to Sky Sports pundit Gary Neville calling them “billion-pound bottle jobs” after they lost in the Carabao Cup final to a youthful Liverpool team in February.
The 2022-23 financial year saw £745.2m spent on talent, while the accounts show an added £454.1m has already been spent on players since the end of that period on signings including Moisés Caicedo, Romeo Lavia and Cole Palmer.
Chelsea have raised money through the offloading of players in that time as well — most notably sending Kai Havertz to Arsenal, Kalidou Koulibaly to Saudi Pro League team Al Hilal and Timo Werner to RB Leipzig.
Chelsea’s spending on player wages is also shown to have grown considerably in the accounts, leaping from £340.2m for the financial year ending in 2022 to £404m in 2023 — the second highest in the division behind treble winners Manchester City.
The accounts also show that the losses for 2022-23 would have been heavier were it not for Chelsea’s sale of hotel buildings to its parent company BlueCo for £76.3m. While the English Football League, which operates the other divisions of professional football in England, excludes asset sales from its financial rules calculations, the Premier League allows for such income to counted.
A proposal to change that rule was considered in 2021, however it was not put to a vote owing to opposition from the clubs in the Premier League, sources told ESPN.
The accounts come off the back of data from the Football Association that showed Chelsea spent more money on agent fees than any other club in the Premier League, paying £75m to intermediaries.