“The surprise is” – Expert looks at gloomy sheets relating to how Chelsea are being run | OneFootball

Former Manchester City finance advisor Stefan Borson has a pretty gloomy look at how Chelsea are operating.

As we know, last week it was reported that Chelsea were operating with some pretty major financial losses.

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The Athletic reported on 26 February that is the highest pre-tax deficit in English football history, having increased from £93m in 2023-24.

The news outlet revealed Barcelona’s €555m (£487m) in 2020-21 is the only loss to ever have exceeded that level after they were severely impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Borson on the losses

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Speaking exclusively to Football Insider, Borson discussed the Blues’ losses after analysing the Uefa report.

“There’s no surprise that it’s over £200m,” said Borson.

“They’ve been running this operating loss of over £200m for a number of years, so that bit in itself is not a surprise. The surprise is that there’s obviously some very chunky elements that occurred in the last financial year that have driven that number to a very high number.

“Now, I think what’s happening is that, first of all, it’s very hard for us to reconcile those numbers because the reporting perimeter to Uefa is different from that which we see in the public domain.

“It’s going to be very hard for us to fully reconcile what that £342m is. Certainly, we’ll have a better idea at the end of March when we see their results because they’ll have to publish all their accounts, so we’ll be able to get closer to the £342m.”

What’s impacted all this?

Borson revealed some of the elements behind why Chelsea’s losses have increased dramatically.

“I think in simple terms, what you’ve probably got is about €30m (£26.3m) of settlement with Uefa,” said Borson.

“Then you’ve probably got, maybe €75-100m (£65.8-87.8m) of what’s known as impairment, which is the taking the balance sheet value for certain players. In particular, there’ll be Mudryk, who probably has been impaired fully now.

“Sterling, who they probably impaired at the year end. Then also taking a big hit because they crystallised a loss on somebody like Chilwell, who went for free.

“There are those sorts of situations that probably has come to maybe €75m of the €325m (£285m), or whatever it is that they’ve had the hit for. So, there are a lot of exceptional one-year things that are in that number, but clearly it’s massive.”

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