“Let’s see” – Why the real test of Chelsea’s “radical” player trading model comes next year

The international break always provides a good chance for a slightly bigger picture look at things, and that’s very much the case today with the Athletic, who have done a big report on Chelsea’s player trading model and whether it’s set to be a success.

People from around the football world have been discussing it this week, including former Blues coach and current Porto president Andre Villas-Boas.

It remains a controversial subject for Chelsea fans, many of whom don’t like it regardless of the potential profits.

Reservations remain about long term benefits

Joe Shields, Paul Winstanley, Laurence Stewart and Sam Jewell with the Conference League trophy.

“No reasonable assessment of Chelsea’s recent business can be made without acknowledging that they breached both of UEFA’s main financial rules last season, and have had to employ some pretty, shall we say, ‘inventive’ methods to avoid doing so domestically, too,” Chris Weatherspoon writes.

“As to whether it’s now working, I think two answers apply: for now?, yes; long-term?, let’s see.”

The huge amounts of money being brought in from sales clearly point to a system that’s working – but there’s more to it than that.

Chelsea battle PSR and FFP

The battle against FFP and PSR is only going to get tougher, so we can expect spending to decrease this year.

“The £76.5million profit from the sale of hotels and a car park in 2022-23 drops off their Premier League PSR calculation this season… while the £198.7m profit from selling their women’s team will fall off next year. In fairness, the plan appears to be to continue with high player turnover and use transfer sales as an extra income stream, much as Chelsea have done for many years now. Whether they’re able to do it to the level they need remains to be seen.”

So really only once those exceptional sales are off the books, and when the whole pipeline has matured, will we start to get a sense of long term viability of the strategy. Buying and selling for a profit is possible – but doing that while challenging for the league is the hard part.