Chelsea have spent heavily in recent years on players such as Moises Caicedo (Darren Walsh/Chelsea FC via Getty Images)
Even aside from the question of whether Maresca is right, his comments show what Premier League clubs are thinking.
And this is what is new — teams being willing to go quite so close to the line with their spending. The margins are so tight in the Premier League that this appears to be a prerequisite for competing.
Of the past 11 Premier League winning seasons, just one year — Liverpool in 2019-20 — involves a club not currently being investigated for allegedly breaking spending rules.
Those charges are contested and not all sides are breaking the rules — but legal and financial departments are exploding as teams try to keep pace. Some clubs appear set on finding loopholes to keep spending. The realisation that selling youth players provides an outsized PSR benefit (because they bear no amortised cost) can be viewed in this context.
The Premier League is set to introduce new financial fair play rules — comprising of a squad cost cap (which is already operated by UEFA, European football’s governing body) and anchoring (where spending is linked to the revenue of the league’s bottom club) — but these are not expected to change the landscape of academy player sales. Under these owners, and adhering to these rules, Chelsea’s direction appears set.
“It is not only Chelsea spending money on players,” said Maresca on Monday. “It’s all the big clubs trying to try and buy players. Some of the clubs spend more, some spend less.”
This summer, Emile Smith Rowe’s £27m move to Fulham was driven by the PSR boost that the sale of a fringe player would offer Arsenal’s transfer budget. Similarly, the exit of Geordie midfielder Elliot Anderson to Nottingham Forest for £35m (a fee significantly offset by the move of Odysseas Vlachodimos in the other direction) only occurred because of Newcastle’s desperation to avoid a sizeable breach of Premier League rules.
Only a small number of youth academy sales are the transfers questioned by Maresca and fans alike. Nobody is upset when these are not first-team players — their sales are actively encouraged, and seen as a sustainable way to finance the club. City’s sales of Taylor Harwood-Bellis and Tommy Doyle this summer (after a year away on loan) for a combined £25m did not see sky-blue hordes march on the Etihad Campus — but they did help pay towards the arrival of right-winger Savinho.
Like City, Chelsea have been good at making player sales. The issue is the scale of arrivals. “Some clubs spend more, some spend less,” said Maresca. Chelsea spend more.
There is a limit to how long this accounting can help. Selling the jewels of your academy is a loophole, but it is a loophole in the same way that Daedalus and Icarus’ waxen wings were a loophole around the laws of flight. It is not a sustainable strategy and will finish with a bump.
Asked the question he was, Maresca had to answer in the way he did. To say otherwise was to criticise his own club’s strategy. Given he has not even managed his first competitive game at Chelsea, his footing is not that firm.
But his answer still deflects. Chelsea willingly flew this close to the sun. They cannot complain if the wax melts, they get burned and they lose a favourite son.
(Top photo: Darren Walsh/Chelsea FC via Getty Images)
Source link : http://www.bing.com/news/apiclick.aspx?ref=FexRss&aid=&tid=66b3991628674846b5677bb0330c4d0f&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2Fathletic%2F5684689%2F2024%2F08%2F07%2Fmaresca-academy-sales-rules%2F&c=2898571809669837836&mkt=en-us
Author :
Publish date : 2024-08-06 17:14:00
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.
