Chelsea have obvious next FFP decision to make as points deduction reality clear

And now we wait. For the next 12 months, presumably when things ramp up again in the summer but also predictably later on this season when Everton find out the verdict from their second set of financial breaches, Chelsea will be in a state of limbo.

They aren’t the only side – Arsenal, Manchester United, and Liverpool are all pushing the line too – but they are the most obvious candidate to pick on. Committing over £1billion in potential transfer spending over just three windows and 18 months gets you into the conversation alone, let alone dropping from third to 12th and slowly up to 11th in the table.

Chelsea are also a wonderful example of how the whole profitability and sustainability rules (PSRs) experiment is largely misunderstood. File, ‘what about Chelsea, how can they afford *insert player X’s name here’ into the category of, ‘why haven’t Manchester City been punished yet?’.

There are relatively simple answers to these questions that have largely gotten lost in the total controversy of the past 13 months. The Premier League has gone from a silent bystander, watching its clubs bring in effectively any owner from across the world, spend more than any other country on players and wages, and evade any eyesight, let alone slap on the wrist, to an angry machine.

Realising, you suspect, the threat of an independent regulator and government interference with ‘our game’, the league has taken a fight to itself. Manchester City were charged with 115 breaches of financial regulations before Everton followed, having gone over the PSR threshold.

In the time since, the league has become a warzone. Online, in the courtrooms, on the field, and on paper. It is a mess.

READ MORE: What Nottingham Forest points deduction means for Arsenal and Chelsea FFP fears in Man City wait

READ MORE: Reece James return, Christopher Nkunku injury – How Chelsea can line up after international break

Everton have been punished – docked 10 points this season in November for wrongdoing over a three-year period before that, and not including this season at all – and had that softened. The appeal took their initial sanction down to six points, boosting their chances of survival, but not getting them clear of the murky relegation swamp.

They await the outcome of their second trial and could be stripped of yet more points, with that inevitably going to another appeal. Meanwhile, Nottingham Forest, who only spent one of the three years analysed at any given moment in the top flight, have lost four points.

That comes with more cries of mistreatment and, you guessed it, an appeal. Forest’s losses were larger than Everton’s – going £34.5million over the adjusted £61million loss-making threshold compared to £19.5million over £105million – but their outcome is better. There is plenty of mitigation for that, but it does pose an interesting question.

For clubs that know they are pushing the line, close to overstepping, and already holding themselves back from action in the market due to the pressure of being punished, can it all be factored in? The EFL, for example, lays out the sanctions in black and white, effectively stating what the punishment will be for each level of infringement and rule-breaking.

Whilst that hit of between three to nine points for a relegation-threatened side is enormous, the argument could easily be made that for clubs higher up the table, it could be factored in. Whilst 10 points is a lot across the board, four and six are relatively small and could realistically be made up with little fuss.

For Chelsea, it is certainly worth thinking about. The club maintain that they are compliant with PSRs – and so far the league agree – but following a third successive year of making losses over £90million, there is understandable strain being placed on the accounts.

At face value – and this ignores the so-called ‘positive losses’ that the league allows with regards to pumping money into the academy, stadium, women’s team and infrastructure – there is a loss of over £364.8million since 2021. That number is clearly way above the £105million threshold but, as mentioned, will also be reduced in regards to what the league looks at.

The 2021/22 accounts, which were released last month, were actually an improvement on the year prior, despite it coinciding with the takeover of Todd Boehly-Clearlake Capital. The worry is that things in 2022/23 took a huge Graham Potter and total mismanagement sized step in the wrong direction.

Add to that the growing outlay on transfers – even if most players signed under the new owners have had their costs amortised over between six and eight-year contracts – and the lack of Champions League broadcast and prize money, there are serious questions to be asked. The revenue itself may well be up, and that is ultimately a big part of the Boehly-Clearlake plan, but it will need to rise significantly more to keep them away from the league’s stringent law enforcers.

Then again, as the club look to keep selling their homegrown talent for ‘pure profit’ in order to boost these numbers – though the real ugliness of the system is lost on nobody despite the polish it may add – there is a way out. Just how sustainable that is, nobody knows although everyone has rightful doubts.

The point for Chelsea here is that having seen the punishments being handed out, they may well think that a points deduction is actually quite stomachable. The current league table would disagree, but that is now a moot point.

An Everton-sized sanction would leave them in 13th, well clear of any danger, and still within reach of their current mid-table mediocrity. This isn’t a positive, and it’s the goal to keep hitting the ceiling of the bottom half, but it’s not detrimental.

It would all but end any chances of securing European football next year – though this is hypothetical – and that is a real prospect still for Mauricio Pochettino’s side. However, looking forward to what could come in the future – and the questions will definitely be asked next season – and six points still doesn’t sound too bad.

If Chelsea improve at a rate consistent with the hopes of their owners (far from certain, but not out of the realms of possibility with quality in players like Cole Palmer, Nicolas Jackson, Malo Gusto, and Moises Caicedo) then that will be worth considerably more than the points they would lose to punishment.

The unknown element here is how much the league would punish them for being significantly over the threshold. If that £19.5million was more like £50million then the punishment is likely to reflect that, and suddenly the payoff isn’t worth it, even if the leeway breaking the rules gives them does allow for a new striker or statement signing.

These are not moral dilemmas that are planned, and the league ultimately wished to deter via their punishments, but the facts are that those verdicts will do less damage to teams higher up the table. Chelsea can’t lose a title because of a deduction, they aren’t even being ruled out of a top-four challenge.

If the PSR punishments remain along this line then Chelsea, or clubs like Chelsea, may well be justified in trying their luck. It’s the sort of spending risk that has swallowed EFL clubs whole, and it’s not behaviour to be promoting but it does feel like the sort of conversation that will start to enter the footballing world.