Chelsea’s academy has been one of the best in world football for a long time, and they have consistently sold many of its graduates.
However, in recent years – coinciding with the arrival of Todd Boehly and Co as the club’s new owners – the Blues have done so more often than usual. Well, why is that?
The obvious reason is that Chelsea have spent enormous sums of money in the transfer market since Boehly’s arrival.
Of course, they were not shy in that department during Roman Abramovich’s tenure, but the £600 million net spend on players over the past two years would have been outlandish, even for the Russian billionaire.
The more complicated reason for the sales of academy products is the heightened importance of the Premier League’s profit and sustainability rules (PSRs).
The rules are not new, though the emphasis being put on them in recent years – with Everton and Nottingham Forest both receiving points deductions – certainly is.
What are the Premier League’s PSRs?
The Premier League’s PSRs were introduced to regulate the amount of money clubs are allowed to lose over a certain period.
As it stands, Premier League teams can make a loss of no more than £105m across three seasons or £35m per season.
It is important to note that spending on the likes of training facilities and youth development does not count towards this figure. The key area that the PSRs focus on is transfer expenditure.
So, what does this all mean for Chelsea and, in particular, their academy graduates?
Why are Chelsea selling their academy graduates?
See, when players are signed from other clubs, the annual loss is the transfer fee divided by the number of years on their contract.
This is known as amortisation and is the reason that Chelsea have tended to offer unusually long deals to new signings in recent windows.
Moises Caicedo, for example, was signed for £115m on an eight-year contract. This will only count as a £14.4m loss with regards to the PSRs for each of those eight seasons.
However, the negative is that if players like Caicedo were to be sold in the near future, the Blues would be unlikely to make a profit.
Removing the £14.4m from the original £115m fee still leaves £100.6m – which is what Chelsea would have to sell him for this summer in order to not make a loss. In 2026, this figure will decrease to £86.2m and in 2027, £71.6m.
Whereas, transfer fees received for academy graduates go down as ‘pure profit’ in the books, as they did not cost anything to sign.
For example, when Chelsea sold Mason Mount to Manchester United, the entire £55m fee went down as profit.
Already this summer, the West London club have made almost £100m from the departures of Ian Maatsen, Lewis Hall and Omari Hutchinson – all of which will help towards meeting the Premier League’s PSRs.
When you take this into consideration, it is no wonder that the West London club are willing to listen to offers for the likes of Conor Gallagher and Trevoh Chalobah, too.
Many Blues supporters would argue that keeping their homegrown is more important than making statement signings, but that is not how the Chelsea hierarchy appears to see it.
Related Topics
