If Chelsea are getting around this as suggested by only counting an eight of the value due to the contracts being 8 years, why are they only counting the players signed since Boehly took over? Surely the players bought beforehand will count towards each years spend?
Well, the media (at least those who are even bothered to analyse it, like Simon Jordan in this case) seem to only be thinking about their spending since Boehly came along.
But there are other players on the books, like Lukaku, who were signed for big money and are still being amortised on the accounts in reality. Now, to be fair they've gotten rid of a lot of the players they spent big on (Werner, Havertz for example), but Lukaku alone probably still costs £25m a year (£100m ÷ 4 years).
Also, another thing that isn't really getting picked up in mainstream media is that the money from aforementioned players they sold won't simply show up on the books as pure profit - they'll also have to subtract their book value from the fee they got. So, in Havertz' case for example, he still had two years left of his five year deal, so still had a book value (amount still left to be amortised) of £28m. So even though Jordan is talking as though Arsenal paying £60m for him means £60m of pure profit, the actual amount of profit Chelsea get on the books is £32m, not the whole amount.
Basically, it's all well and good for people to say, "this is how Chelsea are doing what they're doing", but to me it still seems absolutey batshit crazy. Even selling a shitload of players is barely accounting for their amortised spending, never mind the fact that these amortised fees will be there every single year - and getting added to - for the next five years, or seven years in a lot of cases.
