In the last few days, Manchester City have been found guilty of 114 of the 115 charges (and some argue its up to 130 charges) levelled against them by the Premier League. They notably include 7 breaches of PSR (each well over £100m), and 5 breaches of UEFA FFP regulations. There’s a time limit on historical offences, and City can’t appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) as it doesn’t come under their remit. These financial breaches gave Manchester City a huge, unfair and illegal financial advantage. Basically, they cheated.
I fully admit it’s been more than a little funny seeing one particular Man City fan who has a football finance account, who stated we’d go bankrupt and breach PSR every year since 2022, and Man City would get away with all their offences, reacting to the news of recent days. There’s also a sense of karma relating to Enzo Maresca and Enzo Fernandez, who’ve joined City just in time for this guilty verdict.
However, as expected, this news about City has brought up talk about Chelsea, who were punished for 74 self reported offences a few months ago. Now we have people making lazy accusations against Chelsea, saying or acting like literally all our trophies since 2003 were won by cheating. Which we all know, is simply not true.
I figured it was time to put the record straight. And maybe provide some helpful information to Chelsea fans as we, again, have to defend ourselves against mass generalisations and misinformation about our club and our finances. So let’s break down the charges against Chelsea, as objectively as one can do as a Chelsea fan.
Chelsea were proven to have broken the following rules:
Used or paid unlicensed intermediaries in transfer negotiations;
Failed to declare certain agent commissions and payments accurately; and
Allowed third parties to hold economic interests in players, contrary to FA and FIFA rules.
The illegal payments and agents fees totalled £47m, and were paid between 2011-2018. These, one can argue, gave us an unfair advantage, putting money off the books. They helped us buy Eden Hazard, most notably, as well as players like Ramires, Willian and others. UEFA fined Chelsea for submitting incomplete financial information in a similar period, which may have been related to this.
However, it’s important to note, even including the illegal payments in our financial figures for that period, we were still not in breach of PSR or FFP at any point - offences which City committed 12 times in total. We broke rules regarding payments to agents, declaring payments, and third party payments. Whilst these are serious, we were not and have not been in breach of PSR or FFP financial regulations.
There are other less serious offences going back to 2009 and up to 2022, mainly relating to youth and academy players. The major offences, which impacted the first team directly, were those between 2011-2018. In that period, Chelsea won two Premier League titles, two FA Cups, one Champions League, one Europa League and one League Cup between the period of 2011-2018. 7 major trophies.
So for the sake of argument, what would we have if we removed all the trophies from that period from our record for a moment - as some rival fans and those in the media want?
Well, outside of that 2011-2018 period, Chelsea won 13 trophies between 1996 and 2011, and 6 trophies since 2018. That includes every available trophy. Every European trophy, every international trophy, every domestic trophy. 19 trophies in all (not including Community Shields, as unlike Arsenal we don’t count them as trophies). So even taking out the years we committed the offences, Chelsea have still won it all, without breaking the rules. 19 trophies between 1996 and 2025. Which, by the way, is still more than Arsenal, Liverpool or Spurs in that time.
In fact, when Roman Abramovich, the owner when these offences happened, bought Chelsea in 2003 we’d won 5 trophies in the previous 7 years, including two European trophies. All perfectly legally. We were a Champions League club who’d recently challenged for the league. Roman Abramovich only bought us because we were a Champions League club, and because we’d been successful in the decade before his arrival.
Manchester City on the other hand, hadn’t won a trophy since 1970 when they were taken over by the current ownership in 2008 and weren’t playing in Europe. In fact, 7 years before their takeover they were playing in the Championship. None of their recent success comes without their current ownership, the ownership guilty of the 114 charges. Their owners didn’t buy an already successful club, unlike Roman Abramovich. They bought a mid-table club with poor finances and cheated to deliver all their recent success.
The other thing is, no one would have found out about our offences had we not declared them. I think it would be VERY naive to think we’re the only club who’s made illegal payments to agents or representatives over the years. I think a lot of clubs have done this, we just reported ourselves for it. That doesn’t at all excuse what we did, but lets not pretend this isn’t common in football, or compare it to the offences committed by Manchester City.
Now you might say this is all semantics, rival fans especially might. As a Chelsea fan, I’m happy to admit and own the offences we committed and take that punishment.
But I personally - and I’m sure the same will be true of most Chelsea fans - won’t allow us to get tainted with the same brush as Man City, when we didn’t even get charged with the same offences or number of offences.
In contrast to City, Chelsea also self reported and were fully cooperative, disclosing all documents, working with the PL and UEFA, and crucially, the ownership of the club has changed since the offences took place. Whereas some of Man City’s charges are directly linked to them aggressively not cooperating, disclosing paperwork or financial figures, and they’ve always denied the allegations despite the huge weight of evidence against them.
The cases are night and day, chalk and cheese in so many ways, the comparison is absurd to me. Even if you include other allegations going from 2009-2022, we’d still have 11 trophies in 13 years directly before the offences took place, and 2 trophies since. 3 of those 13 trophies are European trophies, one is the Club World Cup. Those 13 also include two Premier League titles.
To be blunt, Chelsea haven’t been perfect. We did break the rules, and we were rightly punished for it. That responsibility lies on Roman Abramovich, Marina Granovskaia and the people running the club at that time. We DO deserve some criticism for that. I’m not going to hide from that, and nor should we as fans. Some may put an asterisk on those trophies, some may not, that’s up to them, but if people want to criticise that period, they have some evidence to do so.
But the majority of our success since 1996 has come without breaking the rules, both before 2011 and after 2018. There are 19 trophies - every one available to English clubs - that we, without any question whatsoever, won fair and square, within the rules, and we owned up to the rules we broke and cooperated with the investigation.
Man City meanwhile, have won 25 trophies illegally since 2011, after 41 years without a trophy at all, and have resisted all investigations, including some alleged threats to journalists.
So when someone tries to be lazy and lump Chelsea and City in the same boat, just remember - and remind people - that we’re not.
The Score