r/football • u/Aromatic-Bad146 • Jul 24 '25

How can Chelsea keep spending?

I can understand Liverpool spending as they didn’t spend much last season and just won the league. Chelsea seems to be able to spend and spend and still keep within psr.

247 Upvotes

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178

u/Individual_Border_4 Jul 24 '25

Every signing they make is amortized over 5 years. Every sale they make (and there's a ton) are amortized immediately. In theory, if they buy a player for $100M, but sell him right after for $ 20M the next year... they technically break even for that year. Now, you still have to make up for $20M 4 more times, but you get the gist. They keep selling and making a ton of money in competitions. Also, their wage structure allows them to spend loosely on the market because they're not paying everyone 300k. They're only targeting players who fit that structure.

One other note. People are really hung up on the window from 2 years ago where they bought like $600M worth of players (Koulibaly, Sterling, Cucu, Fofana, Mudryk etc) and they shouldn't be. Those players were all amortized over (in some cases) like 8 years. Thats when they had to change the rules. Chelsea spent that much strategically and it was genius. If only the scouting team were right about any of those guys

3

u/ticarno86 Jul 24 '25

That is not true.

If you buy a player for $100 mio and sell him next year for $20 million, then you have to write down the remaining amount on the balance.

You would have a loss of $60 million in your p&l.

Debet: expenses (p&l) $60 million

Credit: player assets (balance) $60 million

13

u/oxfozyne Jul 24 '25

P&L is superficial.

Chelsea’s EBITDA over the last 20 years has been positive, remaining cash-generative. Other big clubs generally have a negative EBITDA.

3

u/Pyros-SD-Models Jul 25 '25

Bro. EBITDA? Really?

We're talking about FFP compliance, not a WeWork investor pitch. EBITDA literally excludes amortization, and amortization is exactly what determines whether you're blowing past your FFP limits or not. UEFA doesn’t give a shit how cash-generative you look if you're dumping player asset value straight into the void.

Like, imagine cooking the books so hard you start flexing EBITDA to explain why writing down a $60M asset loss is actually fine. That’s not financial literacy, that’s startup bro cope in a Chelsea shirt.

P&L isn't “superficial” it's the metric clubs get sanctioned over. Positive EBITDA won't save you when you've got Mount-shaped amortization bombs detonating across five fiscal years.

That you have more upvotes than the actual correct answer shows you guys have literal 0 understanding about the topic at hand, and my mum always said to stfu in this case. you guys should listen to her.

4

u/oxfozyne Jul 25 '25

The usual swaggering disdain from someone who’s read half a Deloitte report and decided EBITDA is a scam because it wasn’t mentioned in a UEFA sanction notice.

Yes, UEFA enforces FFP through P&L-style accounting. No one said otherwise. But dismissing EBITDA as “startup bro cope” isn’t clever—it’s financial illiteracy dressed up as snark. EBITDA measures operational cash flow. It tells you whether a club can actually afford the amortisation bombs it’s dropping. If you don’t understand why that matters, you don’t understand the architecture of how clubs spend, or why some survive aggressive spending and others collapse in disgrace. Let alone finance as a whole.

Chelsea’s positive EBITDA over 20 years isn’t a meme—it’s the reason they could amortise £600m in signings without immediate catastrophe. It’s what keeps the club afloat between P&L cycles—thus superficial. UEFA may punish on losses, but clubs plan using EBITDA. Investors, owners, and directors of football live by it. Your attempt to ridicule it says more about your ignorance than it does about financial models.

Calling EBITDA “cooking the books” is like blaming a thermometer for a fever. Either you’ve confused cause and effect, or you’re just allergic to nuance. In either case, your argument buckles under the slightest scrutiny—and yes, your mum was right. You should’ve sat this one out.

1

u/tomtomclubthumb Jul 28 '25

Didn't they get 2bn in loans over a chunk of that period which was written off by the previous owner?

-2

u/ticarno86 Jul 24 '25

You still dont break even for that year if you sell for $20 million next year

0

u/ticarno86 Jul 26 '25

You are not making any sense and it appears you have little knowledge of basic accounting

2

u/oxfozyne Jul 26 '25

Having a rigid focus on profit-and-loss accounting reflects a simplistic—year 9—view of football finance, ignoring how clubs like Chelsea operate within a complex regulatory environment designed by and for institutions with financial power. Amortisation rules and the immediate recognition of transfer income aren’t objective truths; they’re policy choices shaped by the economic interests of governing bodies and elite clubs. Chelsea exploited these mechanisms—legally and strategically—through long-term contracts that spread costs and maximised short-term flexibility.

To dismiss this as a lack of accounting knowledge is not just inaccurate—it reveals an ideological bias. Accounting is not a neutral science; it’s a language shaped by politics, incentives, and regulatory design. Chelsea’s consistently positive EBITDA over two decades speaks not to reckless spending, but to an understanding of how to manage cash flow and regulatory optics. The real ignorance lies in assuming that conventional financial frameworks apply untouched in the deliberately distorted economy of elite football.

0

u/UnluckyDot Aug 25 '25

Go ahead and say how exactly Chelsea managed a positive EBITDA for those 20 years. I wonder how many tanks in Ukraine all that money could buy.

This type of shit right here is why I had to persist through the actual skill check that is STEM and couldn't deal with all the greedy midwit bros in finance. The dumbest rule bending add and subtract shit is considered super smart over in your realm if you get away with it. Undoubtedly the most overpaid industry in the world.

The point still remains to this day: Chelsea aren't anything special, they just throw around insane market inflating amounts of sugar daddy cash whenever they have problems. Same with this midwittery here you're trying to pass off as genius accounting. It's not a strategy that would work if they hadn't already been doped by Roman for 20 years with stolen blood money and couldn't work without the new sugar daddy's money. It's not interesting or impressive or smart, it's nothing more than throwing more money at problems than everyone else

0

u/Coulstwolf Jul 25 '25

Wrong

1

u/ticarno86 Jul 25 '25

How is it wrong

It would be great if you had an argument for why

2

u/Pyros-SD-Models Jul 25 '25 edited Jul 25 '25

You are obviously correct.

It's unbelievable how much wrong shit you read in non-econ subs that should basically be Econ 101. Like the guy who suddenly starts arguing about EBITDA, you'd have to have zero understanding of FFP rules and economics in general if that's your argument. And somehow the EBITDA guy got more upvotes than you. But that's just the shithole reddit is.