Chelsea sitting on £45MM transfer profit for 2017 with few signings in sight

Chelsea could sign nearly any of their top transfer targets and still be in the black for 2017. The Blues’ are running a £45 million transfer surplus while approaching the panic buy stage of the transfer window.

One of the more ridiculous moments in Chelsea’s summer transfer window was their bickering over £3 million in Danilo’s transfer fee. The Blues will see Danilo at least twice this season, as he signed with Manchester City for £27 million. Danilo’s fee was about two-thirds of Chelsea’s transfer profit – not revenue, profit – this year. And the contentious £3 million was 8%.

Chelsea sold Oscar for a club record in January. They quickly followed that with the more mundane sale of Patrick Bamford to Middlesbrough. The fees from Oscar and Bamford almost exactly cover the club record purchase of Alvaro Morata.

Chelsea’s other two paid signings – Tiemoue Bakayoko and Antonio Rudiger – cost about the same amount the club made on their six sales through July. Nemanja Matic’s £40 million transfer to Manchester United puts the Blues thoroughly in the black halfway through the window.

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Over the last few years the Blues have started to turn the tide on their transfer deficit. In the last 10 seasons, Chelsea have been in the black only twice: 2008/09 and 2014/15. The deficits in Chelsea’s last two seasons – £22 million in 2016/17 and £2.7 million in 2015/16 – were two of the three lowest of the last decade.

This is a far cry from when Chelsea’s managers were under orders to run a surplus in order to keep the club viable. Well before the Premier League era, Chelsea’s ownership did not tolerate deficits the way other clubs did.

"Chelsea ran a transfer surplus every year [under Tommy Docherty]. All the other clubs ran a deficit… Chelsea did not have the money most of the other clubs did, so Docherty’s clubs punched above their weight. – Tim Rolls, The Blue Lions"

Those were days long before media rights contracts, Nike sponsorships and billionaire owners. Prolonged and repeated deficits were the path to administration, rather than a round of shrugs. Chelsea were also a yo-yo club between the First and Second Divisions then, without the generous safety of modern parachute payments.

Breaking even on the transfer market is, in a way, admirably nostalgic. But beyond the gratuitous nod towards Financial Fair Play, it is an accomplishment bereft of achievement. The most cynical read is that it confirms that Chelsea’s academy is just a cash crop. Instead of producing future Blues, it produces future transfer fees.

Chelsea should avoid either extreme in the transfer market. The club’s ownership and management deserve praise for not diving into the more extreme excesses of the transfer world, such as the one unfolding right now. For whatever criticism is still lobbed at Roman Abramovich for starting these trends, he at most lit the fire. He is not pouring gasoline on it. And as Manchester United learned last season, expenditure is not a reliable predictor of success.

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But that does not mean Chelsea should place a symbolic financial milestone ahead of their needs and ambitions on the pitch. The club are in a position now to round out their squad without going much – if at all – into the red. No one will take consolation from a transfer profit if the Blues underachieve this season.