Friday, February 22, 2008

Chelsea's bank balance is fun

Remember when I stabbed you in the back so Roman could bring in his boyfriend? Yeah... good times...


[On a slow news day, you take what you can get]

Chelsea FC, the team I lovingly remember as the team that broke football*, is in the news again for their remarkable finances.

Yesterday saw the club release their financial results, revealing a record group turnover but also a 75 million pound loss for the year before June of 2007. D'oh.

In spite of this, they still expect to break even on schedule by the 2009/10 season, making the world erupt into laughter.


[* I will not digress from this even though Man Utd were the ones who paid 28 million for him in 2001... as Chelsea signed him in 2003 for 15 million anyway!]

Chief executive Peter Kenyon drank the Kool Aid, and it's tasting good:

"Our long-term target of operating profit break even by 2009-10 remains ambitious but we are determined to meet it or get as close as we can. In the meantime, we have made good on our pledges of last year, hitting all of our aims. We have expanded globally as a club, we have reduced our salaries as percentage of turnover, we have continued to be successful on the field, we have increased sponsorship revenue and we continue to invest in our academy and reduce our reliance on transfers."
They do have a lot of money coming in, but it's going to take quite some time to dig out of the hole that their absurd transfer market dealings have put them in.


Chelsea's transfer magic:
- 15 million on Nicolas "I have the attention span of about one season" Anelka
- 10 million on Chris "What the fuck happened" Sutton
- 15 million on Veron
- 16 million on Adrian Mutu
- 6 million on Glen "I love going out on loan" Johnson
- 31 million on Sheva
- 7 million on Khalid Boulahrouz
- 20 million on Ricardo Carvalho
- 9 million on Ivanovic
- 13 million for Paulo Ferreira
- 6 million for Geremi
- 17 million for Damien Duff


Chelsea will be "self-sustaining" at some point. Just not by 2009/10.

3 comments:

Spectator said...

If by "self-sustaining" Chelsea means that they are subsidizing other teams with their transfer fees, than yeah Chelsea is right on target.

Josh said...

I'm no Chelsea fan, but if you're going to rip them for their ridiculous signings, maybe we should point out some of their more prudent deals, too.

(here's the part where I was going to list bargain basement purchases such as Essien and Drogba, only to learn that they spent a fortune on them, too. I found out that Peter Cech was cheap, but that was pre-Roman)

Actually, fuck that.

The NY Kid said...

17 million for Duff? Who even knew that Haylie and Hillary had a footballing brother?