Chelsea turning back time with biggest Premier League spending spree ever
London, Thursday
Frank Lampard was on holiday in America when news broke of the Roman Abramovich take-over at Chelsea.
By the time he was back for pre-season training, the place was brimming with new talent and megastars such as Ronaldinho and Andriy Shevchenko were being linked.
This was pre-Financial Fair Play and Abramovich spent a staggering £290million on 19 new players in his first 15 months.
Adjusted for inflation this is about £450m today, yet still Lampard flourished.
Who better, in that case, to be at the wheel when Chelsea complete the signing of Kai Havertz from Bayer Leverkusen for a club-record £90m and establish a new high for spending by a Premier League club in a single window?
Havertz follows Hakim Ziyech, Timo Werner and Ben Chilwell, four players recruited by the west London club at a combined fee of around £230m.
Throw in the acquisitions of Thiago Silva and Malang Sarr, signed on free transfers last week, and Abramovich is back in the realms of 2003.
Chelsea have splurged on transfers at a rate of more than a million a day since Ziyech’s deal was struck with Ajax in February.
There are six more weeks before the market closes and there are live targets still in play such as Declan Rice at West Ham.
The club’s last accounts recorded a loss of more than £100m yet Chelsea are able to make financial sense of it.
They did not spend at all in January and, last summer, under a FIFA ban, could only convert loan signing Mateo Kovacic into a £40m move.
Since then, they have banked more than £100m from the sale of Eden Hazard to Real Madrid and another £50m for Alvaro Morata’s move to Atletico Madrid, which became a permanent transfer this summer.
Outgoings helped reduce the wage bill, including well-paid senior players David Luiz, Pedro and Willian.
In the midst of the pandemic, UEFA have agreed to ease the restrictions on FFP and proposed changes to the loan system, due to have been introduced by FIFA this year, have been delayed, offering Chelsea’s accountants more flexibility.
New defender Sarr, coveted by Newcastle and others as he ran down his contract at Nice, is to go on loan and versatile England defender Fikayo Tomori will command interest and a good fee if he spends this season out on loan.
