{"id":835135,"date":"2026-03-19T00:47:20","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T00:47:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/835135\/"},"modified":"2026-03-19T00:47:20","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T00:47:20","slug":"blueco-burden-liam-rosenior-with-1-3bn-problem-after-chelseas-champions-league-exit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/835135\/","title":{"rendered":"BlueCo burden Liam Rosenior with \u00a31.3bn problem after Chelsea’s Champions League exit"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"\/ Add as preferred source on Google <\/a> <\/p>\n

Chelsea\u2019s accounts show investment of \u00a31.3bn in players in the last two years of BlueCo ownership, meaning Liam Rosenior must now deliver Champions League football to prevent mass player sales.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cIf Chelsea don\u2019t make the Champions League next season, the club will have to sell players to a much greater extent than they had originally planned,\u201d says University of Liverpool football finance lecturer Kieran Maguire, speaking exclusively to The Chelsea Chronicle<\/strong> after Rosenior\u2019s side\u2019s humbling at the hands of Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League last night.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey do, however, have the inventory to do that. I am deliberately using words like \u2018inventory\u2019 because BlueCo<\/a> are a hedge fund. They don\u2019t see players as individuals but rather as assets with a book value.\u201d<\/p>\n

After Chelsea\u2019s slim hopes of securing qualification for next season\u2019s Champions League by winning the competition itself this term were kyboshed, their only route is now the Premier League, where 5th place will be enough thanks to English football\u2019s UEFA association coefficient.<\/p>\n

Did Rosenior make a mistake handing Sarr his first Champions League start in THIS scenario? <\/p>\n

\"FBL-EUR-C1-CHELSEA-PSG\"Photo by FRANCK FIFE \/ AFP via Getty Images <\/p>\n

But the Blues have won just one of their last five in the league, and Rosenio<\/a>r \u2013 who replaced Enzo Maresca in the Stamford Bridge dugout after moving from sister club Strasbourg<\/a> in January \u2013 is under pressure.<\/p>\n

They are 5th in the Premier League ahead of the weekend\u2019s trip to Everton, who could move to within two points of Rosenior\u2019s side with a win. Liverpool, with one more point than Chelsea, currently occupy the last of the Champions League spots.<\/p>\n

BlueCo\u2019s time in West London has been turbulent to say the least, marked by a staggering investment in new signings and wages, as well as a cavalier approach to the Premier League and UEFA\u2019s spending regulations.<\/p>\n

In the summer, UEFA reached a settlement with Chelsea<\/a> after the club breached its financial rules last season. Under the terms of that agreement, Chelsea must now more or less break even financially over the next three calendar years, or they could be kicked out of Europe and their \u00a327m fine increased by \u00a352m.<\/p>\n

With operating losses of \u00a3200m-plus in each of the published financial years since the BlueCo takeover and a British-record loss of \u00a3355m for 2024-25 confirmed by UEFA<\/a> in a recent report, is Champions League football next season a prerequisite? And could Chelsea be forced into selling some of their A-listers if Rosenior fails to achieve that objective?<\/p>\n

\u201cChelsea don\u2019t get enough credit for their ability to monetise the market,\u201d says Maguire.<\/p>\n

\"ChelseaPhoto by Shaun Brooks \u2013 CameraSport via Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 2020, player sales were \u00a3190m. In 2023, \u00a3203m. In 2024, \u00a3208m. Admittedly, they have ridiculous levels of purchases in those periods. I will be intrigued to see the level of impairment on players\u2019 values when the full accounts are published. The mood music coming out of Chelsea at the moment is the loss figure in the UEFA report was due to technical accounting issues. But if you\u2019ve spent \u00a31.3bn over two years recruiting players, some of those deals aren\u2019t going to work out. <\/p>\n

\u201cTo say therefore that player write-downs are merely a technical issue is understating the problem. Recruitment has been pretty erratic \u2013 there have been some big hits and some big misses.\u201d<\/p>\n

Join Our Newsletter<\/p>\n

Receive a digest of our best Chelsea content each week direct to your mailbox<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Add as preferred source on Google Chelsea\u2019s accounts show investment of \u00a31.3bn in players in the last two…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":835136,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[10],"tags":[239415,2915,10047,79,16,15],"class_list":["post-835135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-blueco","tag-exclusive","tag-liam-rosenior","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116253088121220379","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/835135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=835135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/835135\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/835136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=835135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=835135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=835135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}