Chelsea make record £140m losses

[Mac 10 †]

Chelsea make record £140m losses 
 
Chelsea have recorded losses of £140m, the biggest in football history.
 
It was a severe increase from the £88m loss they made last year, with the Blues citing a "series of exceptional one-off items" behind the rise.

"These figures reflect the continuing restructuring of the business which we began in 2003-4," Chelsea chief Peter Kenyon told the club website.

"The rise is down to some exceptional items that were necessary to help us in our aim to break-even by 2009-10."

The termination of a deal with Umbro, which cost £25.5m, plus a total loss of £22.8m over the transfers of Adrian Mutu and Juan Sebastien Veron and the £5m for Academy recruitment were picked out as the "exceptional items".

Kenyon added: "We terminated the Umbro contract which had a huge impact on these figures, but we have not yet seen any of the financial benefit of our new adidas contract.

"Similarly these figures do not include any of the monies from our new sponsorship deal with Samsung, which was the biggest in Premiership history."

Chelsea's wage bill was reduced from £115.5m to £108.9m, while transfer fees, and the additional fees involved in buying players, fell from £175.1m to £101m.

Turnover dropped from £152.1m to £146.6m, with the PLC putting that down to the sale of Chelsea Village Travel, the club travel agents.

Chelsea have used Roman Abramovich's fortunes to fund a transfer spend of nearly £265m which helped them win their first domestic league title for 50 years when they won the Premiership last season.

[KURUPTION-81]

It takes the piss that a club can make a loss that huge yet not have to change the way the cllub is run.

[BJV]

£140m is pocket change for Abramovich, I just hope he doesnt keep interest in running clubs forever

[Kassem]

i hope them russian catch him ,so i can watch chelsea rot into debt,just imagine they having to sell evryone to  pay for someone like lampard only

[wcsoldier]

Sorry but it wouldn't be afford. In France we have a control organization , who drop teams in inferior division, in case of huge debt. There is no fair competition right here, Real had a huge debt, Spain king gave money, now this (without forget lots of other teams)