Rule-bending Chelsea take transfer gamble to give Potter ultimate selection headache

MANCHESTER, England : Languishing well below their usual league position and with Financial Fair Play regulators watching on intently, Chelsea got creative with their lavish January transfer spending, an outlay that gives coach Graham Potter the ultimate selection headache.

Premier League soccer clubs spent a record 815 million pounds ($1.00 billion) in the January transfer window, an analysis from Deloitte's Sports Business Group said on Wednesday.

The biggest spenders were Chelsea, responsible for 37 per cent of the total, taking their overall transfer expenditure to over 500 million pounds in the eight months since new owner Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital bought the London club.

Such outlay has left many questioning how, when under Premier League FFP rules clubs are allowed to lose 105m pounds over a rolling three-year period, and UEFA rules only allow a 53m pound loss over a three-year period, Chelsea could spend so big.

While Chelsea feel no rules have been broken, they have certainly taken advantage of the state of the market, with impact of the COVID pandemic on incomes leading to a loosening of regulations.

The other striking element to these big-money deals is the length of the contracts offered to new arrivals. British record signing Enzo Fernandez penned a eight-and-a-half year deal, as did 70 million euro ($76.26 million) capture Mykhailo Mudryk.

Such uncharacteristically long contracts enable Chelsea to "amortise" the cost of the transfers over the length of the deal. On the balance sheet, Fernandez's 106.8m pounds can be spread across eight-and-a-half years.

You still have to have the money to spend in the first place, but such practice is common in accountancy. It has, however, angered those who claim the