TA: Chelsea’s crazy player transactions can cope with PSR pressure in the short term, but in the long term there are many hidden dangers

October 13th, TA wrote an article on Chelsea’s current “aggressive player trading strategy” and pointed out that although this strategy helped the club cope with the pressure of financial rules (PSR) in the short term, its success was based on irregularities and “creative” accounting processing, and it was full of hidden dangers in the long term.

Any assessment of Chelsea's strategy must acknowledge the premise that they already violated two of UEFA's major financial rules last season, and also adopted quite "creative" methods domestically to get through. Therefore, the so-called "success" of this strategy is questionable. TA's core point is: in the short term, this strategy works; but in the long term, we still have to wait and see.

Currently, Chelsea is adopting a "player trading model on steroids." Last summer, the team made around £300m from player sales, which greatly helped them comply with the settlement agreement with UEFA. The agreement requires Chelsea to individually limit their losses in each of the next three seasons. Sources familiar with the situation revealed that Chelsea is expected to comply with the terms of the agreement in the 2025-26 season.

However, huge long-term risks are looming. The reason why Chelsea must continue to sell players in large quantities is because the huge profits previously used to balance the accounts are about to be excluded from the calculation of the Premier League's Profit and Sustainability Rules (PSR).

Among them, the £76.5 million profit from the sale of hotels and car parks in the 2022-23 season will be invalidated in this season's calculations, and the £198.7 million profit from the sale of the women's football team will also be invalidated next season.

This means that Chelsea must use transfer sales as a regular additional source of revenue through continued high player turnover in the future to fill the huge operating losses. Finally, TA also raised a fundamental question: the true measure of success should be winning trophies. Although Chelsea are the defending European Cup and Club World Cup champions, there is still a huge question whether the gold content of these trophies matches their huge investment.