One of the reasons that Chelsea’s Premier League case took so long, and that the punishment has been so light, is because the club voluntarily gave “thousands upon thousands of documents” to the competition. That took a long time to go through, and ensured information came to light that officials would never have known about.
Hence Chelsea only receiving a suspended first-team transfer ban, a nine-month ban on academy signings and a £10.75m fine, for secret payments to players and unlicensed agents in transfers between 2011 and 2018.
The fine may be the largest the Premier League has ever given out, but it’s still essentially the sale of an academy player, a perception which fits with another, much more excoriating view of this judgment.
Other executives and football officials believe that it is precisely this scale of documents which also point to the scale of the “cheating”, and how an “extremely lenient” punishment is not appropriately reflective of the nature of the breaches.
On that exact point, another key Premier League consideration has been that the undisclosed payments wouldn’t have seen Chelsea breach the financial restrictions, but other sources view this as irrelevant and tangential, given it is ultimately about dishonesty from the previous ownership that brought tangible effect on the Premier League table. It could even be said to bring value for the new ownership, given that such trophies elevated the very status of the club.
As the most prominent example, Eden Hazard’s transfer was the most high profile investigated, and he was the key player in the two title wins over 2014-15 and 2016-17. There is no suggestion Hazard himself was aware or involved in any wrongdoing.
Such considerations nevertheless seem to be entirely missing in the Premier League’s initial statement, even though the winning and losing of a sporting competition is what the competition is ultimately all about.
Some have been spitting about “inconsistency” and a “classic fudge” that prevents ructions, especially in contrast to outcomes like those involving Nottingham Forest and Everton.
A majority are nevertheless said to be seeing this in the context of the Manchester City case, especially since there are so many echoes, and what this might mean. It is still fair to say there hasn’t quite been the same feeling about the Chelsea case, principally because of the long-time awareness that the new ownership self-reporting was going to bring leniency.
That has so far been the primary mitigating factor in the two cases resolved out of the three so far. On buying the club after the sanctioning of Roman Abramovich, the Clearlake ownership found multiple concerns that they reported to all of the Premier League, the Football Association and Uefa.
The Premier League have now followed Uefa in primarily issuing a fine, taking the total financial punishment to £18.75m, from the £8m settlement with Uefa in 2023.
Some sources say the FA’s investigation may yet be more extensive and potentially lead to a bigger sanction – especially since Luton Town received a 10-point deduction for irregular payments to agents in 2008 – although the two English bodies did work together in the investigation process.
There is, in fact, considerable surprise within the game that the FA outcome has not come first, given there have been murmurings about it for some time.
In this case, Chelsea’s self-reporting brought a “sanction agreement”, so the Premier League never actually issued charges. That is one major difference with other cases.
The club were described as having a “completely open door”, allowing the Premier League to assess a level of information they wouldn’t otherwise have got access to. As some sources quipped, other clubs have not operated in the same way.
This is fundamentally why Chelsea got a greatly reduced sanction. One key argument has been that there may not even have been available evidence to punish the club had they not come forward. It is consequently seen as a genuinely “unique” case that can’t really be compared to other recent examples.
The Premier League have also been keen to state that “in no scenario would the club have breached the League’s Profitability and Sustainability Rules during the relevant periods, had the relevant payments been properly included in the club’s historical financial submissions”. An argument also repeatedly made there is that there is a significant contrast between clubs who deny such breaches and those who go directly to the Premier League.
An absolute core aspect of any analysis of this outcome is that such arguments only cover one aspect of the breaches.
There is considerable disquiet at the lack of reference to sporting advantage, not to mention that this is ultimately about dishonesty.
As one illustration, Everton might have ultimately been punished for a breach of PSR, but that decision came down to technical accounting arguments on the treatment of interest. It could genuinely have gone either way.
And while all of Chelsea’s dishonesty might have come under a different ownership, a key point in such cases is that it is still the same club responsible. It is still the same club that retains all the value of that, as well as the trophies themselves.
Other officials insist that the fact it’s a different ownership should only be a mitigation, which of course raises the question about severity of the punishment.
As numerous sources say, such evidence coming to light at the time would likely have brought huge points deductions – “certainly the most severe punishments ever seen”.
The scale of it would have been up there with the City case. The Manchester club insist on their innocence.
A belief nevertheless pervades that this could have significant ramifications for the City case. It has the potential to further delay it, since the precedents could open up procedural challenges.
City obviously cannot claim co-operation or ownership change.
On the latter, however, the Chelsea titles won over this period are seen as relevant to the very value of the club under Clearlake.
Even with regards to the comparison with Uefa’s process, which was conducted much more swiftly, one response has been “they spent three more years on it and still did nothing more”.
Standing back, one insider argues that this Chelsea case ultimately comes down to the following.
“They blatantly cheated and still have the trophies to show for it.”
The largest ever fine, which amounts to no more than an academy graduate sale, sounds rather small-scale next to that.