By David Owen
February 3 – Chelsea may have boosted this year’s profits by close to £8m as a result of the club’s deadline-day dealings in which it effectively swapped one attack-minded wide man for another. The Premier League leaders brought in Colombian World Cup star Juan Cuadrado (pictured) from Fiorentina for a reported £23.3 million, while selling German World Cup winner André Schürrle to Wolfsburg for a reported £22 million.
While the deals largely cancelled each other out in cash terms, the lop-sided way in which player valuations are handled in English corporate accounts ought to enable the Blues to post a net gain on two deals that, on the face of it, left the club out of pocket to the tune of £1.3 million.
This is how the accounting magic might work:
Schürrle originally joined the West London club from Bayer Leverkusen in June 2013. This was said to be on a five-year contract for a £18 million fee. Since, when a player is bought, the transfer fee is normally amortised over the length of his contract, this suggests that around two-thirds of the German’s 2013 price tag, say £12 million, would have remained on Chelsea’s books at the time of this week’s sale.
The £22 million reportedly paid by Wolfsburg exceeds this residual value by £10 million – a handy enough gain even for a club with Chelsea’s enviable financial resources.
Against this must be set the portion of Cuadrado’s fee that needs to be amortised over the remaining five months of Chelsea’s 2014-15 financial year.
The 26-year-old Colombian is said to have signed a four-and-a-half year contract. This suggests the amount in question would be just over one-eleventh of the overall fee, or some £2.2 million.
Deducting this from the Schürrle gain leaves £7.8 million which should approximate to the combined benefit of the two deals to the club’s bottom-line, excluding other imponderables such as wage costs.
A significant surplus on player sales was one factor behind the £18.4 million profit – the biggest under Roman Abramovich’s ownership – that the club reported for its 2013-14 financial year.
The financial astuteness of its recent deal-making has not, however, been at the expense of quality: the present squad is generally recognised as significantly stronger than the group inherited by manager José Mourinho on his return to West London in 2013.
Contact the writer of this story at moc.l1734901743labto1734901743ofdlr1734901743owedi1734901743sni@n1734901743ewo.d1734901743ivad1734901743