Despite claiming that they are working under a policy of making the club profitable within five years, Chelsea have posted year end financial figures for their first title winning season in fifty years which show a massive ?140 million deficit.

The club have pointed to the fact that pre-tax figures for 2004-05 show a six-per-cent reduction in player wages and four-per-cent increase in football revenues as well as absorbing large one off payments such as the ?25 million buy out of their sponsorship deal with Umbro and the cancellation of ?14 million purchase Adrian Mutu’s contract as positive points to take from the announcement.

While Chelsea chairman Bruce Buck points to a ?100million adidas 10-year kit sponsorship deal and a ?50million shirt sponsorship contract with Samsung being signed during the year in question, neither the adidas nor Samsung deals figure in the accounts for the year ending June 30 2005. Whether the phenomenal transfer spending of the past two seasons will continue is another question but with Russian sugar daddy Roman Abramovich’s fortune still growing at an astounding rate it is difficult to see how Chelsea will ever be able to run itself on a level footing with the other English Premiership clubs, never mind balance the books.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 27th, 2006 at 7:58 pm and is filed under Chelsea. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.