Relaxed FFP will help Chelsea, but not advantage them over rivals

Financial Fair Play, universally known as FFP, was a game Chelsea and others played along with. It was supposed to level the playing field, preventing mega rich clubs from spending without reservation to the point that the clubs go bankrupt over a few busts. It was meant to give teams outside of European competition both a chance to compete and a chance to survive as they tried to catch up.

It hasn’t really done any of that. Whatever punishments came attached to FFP, they have almost exclusively been dealt against the very clubs they were meant to protect. In violation of FFP, mega rich clubs got a slap on the wrist at most.

Chelsea played along with FFP better than most. Relaxing FFP will allow the Blues to be freer in spending, but it will not advantage the club over rivals. This comes in two flavors: the rivals that played the game alongside Chelsea and the rivals held back by the game.

That first category is probably the one that will cause Chelsea the most headaches. The Blues are lucky to have an owner who cares about the club as much as Roman Abramovich does, but even he has his limits. He can spend his own cash on the club more than most, but he simply cannot keep up with Manchester City or Paris Saint-Germain doing the same. Even in a world of FFP, both clubs towed the line of FFP year after year. With no restrictions, 200 million pound windows could become the norm for either.

The second category includes the likes of Everton and Leicester City. Both clubs have, on paper, far more cash than FFP allowed them to actually spend under its sustainability rules. Relaxed FFP could see these clubs playing catch up in ways not unlike Chelsea when Abramovich first arrived. They would run the risk of doing a Leeds, going bankrupt, and crashing down the pyramid, but that may be worth the risk to finally break through the glass ceiling of the top four/six for them.

Of course, not all would be doom and gloom for Chelsea. Liverpool has shown, FFP or not, that smarter transfers over time overcome expensive transfers. The Blues generally struggle to make the smart transfers over the shiny new superstar of the year or a close enough duplicate, but they have gotten better about it over time. City and PSG may be able to outspend the Blues, but Chelsea could simply react by improving scouting and trusting whoever their manager is to get smarter signings.

It’s not as though FFP will go away entirely either. While the breakeven clause will be relaxed, wage levels and transfer fees will be addressed. The former is already an avenue Chelsea is slowly falling behind. The Blues pay their players better than most, but their wage bill is dwarfed by both Manchester clubs and their ridiculous contracts. And of course, even those two come up short against the wage bills of Barcelona, Real Madrid, and PSG.

All of this is not to even mention the true worst case scenario: Abramovich sells the club and wants the debt paid back. It is highly likely that any new owner would have to buy that debt up before even getting to the club’s own valuation, but it would truly depend on the structure of the deal. That being said, given how much care Abramovich has given to Chelsea, it seems incredibly difficult to see a reality where he might leave the club holding the bag to the point of ruin.

FFP has needed changing for a while now, especially given the clubs it was meant to hinder only got stronger as they barely followed the rules at all. Relaxed rules will give Chelsea more freedom, but with City and PSG also let off the leash, it doesn’t necessarily give the Blues an advantage.