With the end of a decade for Chelsea owner, Roman Abramovich in sight, it is worthy of mention how the businessman has shaped the future of the club from a club in distress to one in fit shape for the future. If we are being truthful, it wasn’t an easy feat to achieve, looking at how much it cost to get Chelsea to be at this point they are presently. That still doesn’t change the work put in to seal that structure and make the club into a place fit for champions.
The start of the millennium saw a strong Chelsea with determination, fighting spirit and all other qualities you find in a winning team but that same team had not lifted the league cup in almost 45 years. Sad as that may have seemed, it was the reality of the club and the fans.
The arrival of wealthy beneficiaries in various clubs in the 2000s, however, changed that with Chelsea being one of the clubs that enjoyed the change that era brought.
Before Manchester City upped the ante through the cash injections of their Abu Dhabi-based owners, Abramovich was the ultimate Premier League sugar daddy. His money ensured Chelsea were able to assemble a world-class squad to compete with Arsenal, United and the very best in Europe.
The big money move pros
In the 2011/2012 season, Chelsea brought in big players to the club. Not to say the rest brought in that season were not big but the signing fee for these six was not less than eight million euro. Now, at that time, eight million euros is pretty expensive and to think that eight million euro was the least paid for out of those six highly paid for.
Juan Mata tops the list that season, the club signing him for a whopping 26 million euros, followed by the 15 million euros the club splashed on Romelu Lukaku, and 13 million euro on Raul Meireles. The total expenditure for Chelsea in that season was left at a total of 96 million euros. (TransferMarkt)
No wonder the ever economical Arsene Wenger wasn’t pleased with the club for ‘financial doping’ as he had said then.
It would have been the worst season for Chelsea had they spent that big and hadn’t gotten anything back in return, but they did. That was the same season they went ahead to win the Champions League, engraving their name in the history of Europe’s top competition as the first team from London to have won the league.
That wasn’t all. In 2013, Chelsea won the UEFA Europa League and became the fourth club to win all three main UEFA club competitions.
They had reached the Promised Land and money paved the way for them.
The big money move cons
Abramovich’s big money had reshaped the outlook of English and European football as a whole as to what to expect on spending in the transfer market. He had paid massively for players since he got in from 2003, most of his player spending running into millions.
It would have been a great investment for him should Chelsea decide to sell some of the players more than they were brought in but UEFA hit hard with the Financial Fair Play regulation that left Chelsea with a big problem. Their loss had been summed up by a jaw-dropping £88million loss posted in 2003/04 and this does not include the loss Carlo Ancelotti recorded in his first season in charge.
This then led to the new Chelsea that needed to sustain itself because the ‘sugar daddy’ needs to give his pocket a rest.
Where the Financial Fair Play regulation left Chelsea
When it came to making money, Chelsea became expert sellers in the transfer market in the second decade of the Abramovich era and even though that had not turned in profits on his investments, it had helped the club cut down the loss to a considerable amount in such a short time.
Conclusion
Who knows where we’d have been by now if the Financial Fair Play regulation was not introduced but then again, maybe Chelsea would have been an unstoppable force in the whole of Europe now with handpicked players from all over the world playing on the team but brought in because of money but not for the passion of the sport.
