[h=1]Uefa's Financial Fair Play rules could tie new Chelsea manager's hands[/h] • European body is adamant it will apply sanctions on clubs
• Expensive recruitment may lead to disqualification
To secure André Villas-Boas's release from Oporto Roman Abramovich paid £13.3m, taking overall compensation to £64m. Photograph: Glyn Kirk/AFP/Getty Images
What is it that first attracts a manager to work for the multi-billionaire
Roman Abramovich at
Chelsea? It cannot be the owner's laid-back attitude to the terms of a contract once results turn bad. Nor, perhaps, is it the caring and sharing vibe among the players in the dressing-room. It is possible, if a little unfair, to paint Chelsea as a club overrun by ruthless egomaniacs.
The clue, of course, is in the question. Abramovich's fortune is estimated at $13.4bn and, when managers sign up, they have come to expect a certain leverage, over and above their handsome wage packets. Put simply, they believe that serious transfer market clout will be theirs. Thanks to Abramovich's financial backing since his takeover in 2003, Chelsea have become serial contenders at home and in Europe. New managers imagine the dream job, cherry-picking the world's finest talent, a sort of Fantasy Football without restrictions.
But, as Abramovich began the process to appoint his sixth permanent manager, after Andre Villas-Boas paid on on Sunday,in the traditional way for a failure to meet expectations, the feeling was that the sales pitch had to change. The expected big-name arrival will most likely want big money to reshape the squad in his own image. The realities of Financial Fair Play, however, ought to dictate otherwise.
As of the 2013-14 season clubs throughout Europe must fulfil the requirement to break even on their balance sheets and the calculations will be based on financial information from the 2011-12 and 2012-13 reporting periods. There are caveats, chief among them the "acceptable deviation" of €45m over the first two years, and there are doubters within the game. Arsene Wenger, the Arsenal manager, has voiced his fears about whether FFP will have real teeth. Yet Uefa's leading officials are adamant that sanctions will be taken against any club which oversteps the mark. Exclusion from the Champions League or Europa League, which would come into force in 2014-15, are their most swingeing measure.
According to Chelsea's most recent accounts, released on 31 January, as the media was consumed by transfer deadline day action, the club made losses of £67.7m. The numbers have not generally been helped by the recoil from Abramovich's trigger finger. When he paid £13.3m last summer to secure Villas-Boas's release from Porto, it took his compensation outlay on managers hired or fired to £64m in a little over four years.
Villas-Boas might not enjoy a windfall settlement on the remaining term of his £4.5m-a-year contract, which was scheduled to run to the summer of 2014; he is to continue to receive his weekly wage from Abramovich until he gets a new job. But if this represents an unwanted outlay, the Stamford Bridge books stand to be hit rather harder by a failure to qualify for next season's Champions League. With 11 Premier League games to play, Chelsea trail fourth-placed Arsenal by three points, with a visit to Emirates Stadium to come on 21 April.
Whichever way you look at it, a summer spending splurge, of the kind that saw £71m lavished on Fernando Torres and David Luiz in January of last year, is unlikely; unless, of course, Abramovich intends to raise two fingers at FFP which, again, is unlikely. Not only has the Uefa president Michel Platini promoted Abramovich as a standard bearer for FFP but the Russian has made efforts to cut costs in all areas at his club. The latest financial figures showed that losses were down while turnover reached a record £222.3m. The Torres/Luiz spend even felt like an anomaly at the time. The chairman, Bruce Buck, and the chief executive, Ron Gourlay, have spoken of their commitment to FFP and they are adamant that Chelsea will comply, although they do continue to live in the red.
If one of the frustrations that Villas-Boas feels at present concerns the denial of being able to oversee the squad's renewal, the task still needs to be carried out. It might feel more urgent in the summer, when the thirty-somethings have another season in their legs. It would be difficult, though, to horse-trade with the existing players, in the hope of upgrading the squad. The veterans' values on the market have diminished. Chelsea allowed Nicolas Anelka, for example, to complete a cut-price move to Shanghai Shenhua in January while Didier Drogba could leave as a free agent in the summer. The younger players, meanwhile, represent the future and it would be counterintuitive to cash in on them. Torres remains the big imponderable but one of the many questions about him involves how sharply his price has dropped.
It does not feel like a great time for a manager to come to Chelsea. Four years ago, they were a missed penalty from winning the Champions League; now, they might have to contest the Europa League. There are misgivings over recruitment policy; player power and thorny politics remain rife while highly regarded managers have fallen short. The new broom must inspire, rebuild and, above all, win. An open chequebook will not be among his weapons.
