Wine glasses clinking in Chelsea's boardroom

Listen carefully and perhaps you can hear the sound of wine glasses being clinked in celebration in Chelsea's boardroom. It's some result for them if you consider the scale of offending — financial chicanery, dodgy deals, cheating, whatever you wish to call it — that was brought before the English Football Association (FA) without, ultimately, leading to anything more than a £10million ($13.4m) fine.

There will be no points deduction for the secret payments in the Roman Abramovich era that, rather awkwardly, helped to put Chelsea into such a position that £10m is the kind of money inside Stamford Bridge to be shrugged at. As we all know, if there is one way to punish a £2.5billion behemoth such as Chelsea, it is to fine them the equivalent of what they might pay one first-team player in wages per season.

'Shameful and arrogant disregard'

So let's recap what exactly Chelsea did to warrant their 74 disciplinary charges. There was, to quote the FA's own judgment, clear evidence that Chelsea had “deliberately flouted” the system in a way that “reveals a shameful and arrogant disregard for the rules of the game, and which has done so much to bring the game of football, and the name of CFC, into disrepute.”

To read through the relevant documents is to be reminded that Eden Hazard's transfer from Lille was one of those over a 13-year period of repeat offending, from 2009 to 2022, when Abramovich's Chelsea made unofficial payments to unofficial agents. In total, £47m was paid out: 44 transactions relating to 32 players, 18 of them being minors.

To be clear, none of those players — a list that includes Hazard, Willian, Ramires, Nemanja Matic, David Luiz, Samuel Eto'o and Andre Schurrle — did anything wrong. And it is worth keeping in mind that the modern-day Chelsea flagged up the breaches as a result of their due diligence when buying the club in 2022. For that, the BlueCo consortium deserves some form of credit and, in turn, some level of mitigation when it comes to the punishment.

A 'result' for BlueCo

The fine was initially set at £26m. It was then reduced by a third to £17.25m because of Chelsea's co-operation, another third was taken off, reducing it to £11.4m, because of the club's early guilty plea to all 74 charges. Then it was brought down again to £10m because of unspecified fines that had apparently already been handed out. That is what is known, in old-fashioned parlance, as a “result.”

The FA, as such, has let Chelsea off by almost £15m. The Premier League has already fined Chelsea £10.75m and, three years ago, UEFA imposed a punishment of £8.6m. So it adds up. Yet it's still peanuts for a club of Chelsea's wealth.

The only punishment that would truly have hurt them would have been the kind of points deduction other clubs have faced for, on the face of it, lesser offences. Everton were docked 10 points in the 2023-24 season, reduced to six on appeal, plus a separate two-point penalty later that season. Nottingham Forest were docked four points. Both clubs were nearly relegated as a result.

Strong words, suspended penalties

“We sympathise with the owners of CFC who now have to pay the penalty for the conduct of their arrogant predecessors, who clearly believed they were above the law,” read the FA's verdict. “Nevertheless, that conduct was so egregious, so persistent and of such a duration that an overall sanction... must reflect the fact that over a period of 13 years, one of the leading clubs under the umbrella and authority of the FA, if not in Europe, behaved in such a way that the integrity of football... was seriously compromised.”

Yet Chelsea won their appeal, which removed the suspended six-point deduction that, unreported until the last 24 hours, had originally been put in place. Instead, a ban was imposed on Chelsea registering players for two transfer windows. But that was also suspended.

What does this mean for Manchester City?

And you can forgive the cynicism when there is another disciplinary matter currently in the system: Manchester City and at least 115 charges relating to alleged financial breaches, from 2009 to 2018. That's almost three and a half years since the Premier League announced the charges.

The legal process is slow — glacier-like, indeed — and it can feel almost ludicrous that we are still waiting for a verdict with no idea when one is coming. The hearing, led by an independent commission, concluded in December 2024.

City are another club with the wealth to deal with a fine as if it were no more trouble than swatting away a bothersome fly. So we can safely assume they will have been watching what has happened to Chelsea with great interest — in particular, the absence of any sporting sanctions.

It doesn't automatically mean that, if the case is proven against City, they would get away with a financial penalty. It does, however, make you wonder whether it is leaning that way and, whenever the day comes, whether we will hear the sound of clinking glasses in City's boardroom, too.