sports
“The Premier League is surprisingly lenient”: did Chelsea get off lightly?
Experts believe club would be lucky to escape with fine and suspended transfer ban but further penalties may follow
TL;DR
- Chelsea fined £10.75m and given a suspended transfer embargo for 30+ rule breaches totaling £47m in off-book payments.
- Breaches occurred during the Roman Abramovich era (2011-2018) and related to player transfers like Eden Hazard, Willian, David Luiz, and Nemanja Matic.
- The penalties are considered lenient by experts, especially given the club's success during the period of breaches.
- New owners' self-reporting of some breaches and a £150m 'holdback' clause in the takeover deal likely influenced the lenient outcome.
- The Football Association has a separate, ongoing investigation into 74 rule breaches by Chelsea.
- The financial penalty is expected to be absorbed by the 'holdback' amount, originally pledged by Abramovich to aid Ukraine war victims.