Chelsea punishment ‘the deal of the decade’, claims sports law expert
By Jamie Gardner, Press Association Chief Sports Reporter
A sports law expert says it is “difficult to dispute” that Chelsea gained a sporting advantage from a series of undisclosed transfer payments under former owner Roman Abramovich – and believes Manchester City will be “heartened” by the outcome.
Chelsea avoided a points deduction after their new owners self-reported the payments to the Premier League and other authorities during their 2022 takeover of the club.
The club have instead been fined £10.75million and given a one-year transfer ban, suspended for two years, as part of a sanction agreement with the Premier League in recognition of their “exceptional co-operation” with the league’s investigation.
Simon Leaf, a partner at Three Points Law and the co-author of the chapter on financial regulation in the textbook ‘Football and the Law’, described the agreement as “the deal of the decade” for Chelsea and believes a points penalty should have been issued.
He believes there is “significant sleight of hand” in the text of the agreement in not directly addressing whether £47.5million worth of undisclosed payments to facilitate the signings of stars such as Eden Hazard constituted a sporting advantage.
The text does not mention the phrase ‘sporting advantage’ once, whereas the written reasons confirming initial 10 and four-point deductions against Everton and Nottingham Forest for breaches of the profitability and sustainability rules mention it six and 31 times respectively.
“(Chelsea) will be absolutely delighted with the outcome, whilst others – particularly those at clubs that have had long battles with the Premier League in recent years over PSR breaches – will be left scratching their heads as to how Chelsea have managed to pull off what appears to be the deal of the decade,” Leaf told the Press Association.
“The league has been quick to point out that the illicit payments would not, even if properly disclosed, have pushed Chelsea beyond the PSR loss threshold. That finding has been used as a justification for the absence of any sporting sanction.
“But the reasoning does not hold. If the league had accepted that Chelsea obtained a sporting advantage – which, given the players acquired through these payments, is difficult to dispute – it is hard to see how anything short of a points deduction could have followed, given the arguments it made forcefully in both the Everton and Forest cases.
"So instead, the two concepts have been quietly conflated. In other words, no PSR loss-threshold breach has been treated as equivalent to no sporting consequence.
“That is a significant sleight of hand. The PSR is not a single rule about staying within a loss threshold. It is a broad regulatory regime with multiple obligations around financial reporting, disclosure and transparency – all of which Chelsea admitted breaching. The repeated assertion in the sanction agreement that the payments ‘did not cause the club to breach the PSR’ carefully ignores that point.”
Leaf said the consequence moving forward was “troubling”, adding: “There is now an implicit suggestion that points deductions are reserved for clubs that breach the loss threshold, and that deliberate deception and concealment – however serious – sits in a different, lesser category. That is a perverse hierarchy, and one that the league will struggle to defend if it is ever pressed on it directly.”
The news of the Chelsea sanction comes with the outcome of an independent commission’s examination of over 100 charges laid against Manchester City by the Premier League for alleged breaches of its rules still outstanding – charges which the north-west club strenuously deny.
Leaf said: “I suspect Manchester City will be heartened by the outcome here and also more generally the somewhat softer, more conciliatory and collaborative approach that the Premier League appears to be taking in its approach here, and with other clubs in recent times.”
The Premier League have been contacted for comment on Leaf’s remarks.