Arsenal, Tottenham Hotspur, and the rest of the Premier League will be keeping a close eye on Chelsea’s situation surrounding suspected Financial Fair Play (FFP) violations.
Arsenal, Tottenham Hotspur, and the rest of the Premier League will be watching Chelsea‘s ongoing predicament over alleged Financial Fair Play (FFP) violations closely. The Guardian and a group of international outlets, including the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) and Germany’s Paper Trail Media, have launched a joint investigation, revealing a series of payments totaling tens of millions of pounds made during former owner Roman Abramovich’s tenure at Stamford Bridge over a decade.
These payments are apparently ‘routed through offshore vehicles’ owned by the Russian billionaire, with the transactions considered to benefit the Blues, prompting some to question whether the governing bodies were made aware of the accounts. According to The Guardian, ‘four leading sports lawyers’ have told them that some of the payments may have violated both Premier League and UEFA FFP regulations, with football finance expert Kieran Maguire claiming that a financial penalty or burden is less likely than a points deduction.
“If there is evidence that the club used third-party transactions to circumvent the profitability and sustainability rules, sanctions would be either financial or a points deduction,” he said. The latter is more plausible, because any commission looking into a club’s circumstances will wish to issue a deterrent to prevent others from replicating such activity.”
It’s unclear when all of this will come to a head, with Mauricio Pochettino‘s side now sitting 10th in the table, having collected 16 points from their first ten Premier League games. The Blues are already ten points behind fourth-placed Tottenham Hotspur, 11 points behind Arsenal and Liverpool, and 12 points behind league leaders Manchester City.
The Premier League penalised City earlier this year with a total of 115 potential breaches of the top flight’s financial regulations. The alleged violations span the 2009/10 season to the 2017/18 season.
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