Revealed: Why Chelsea may avoid serious points penalty after 74 charges for alleged rule breaches dating back to Roman Abramovich era

The Blues reported themselves to the FA, Premier League and UEFA after discovering “incomplete financial information” had been submitted to the relevant authorities during the period of 2012 to 2019.

The 74 charges being levelled against them by the FA relate to payments made to agents between 2009 and 2022, with most of the attention in that case being narrowed on the era of 2010-11 to 2015-16.

Chelsea have changed hands since then, with the Todd Boehly-led Clearlake Capital regime taking charge at Stamford Bridge in 2022. That change of ownership could be considered mitigating circumstances on the Blues’ behalf, while full cooperation with the investigation and early admission of any wrongdoing would help to limit any sanctions that are eventually imposed.

Manchester City’s former financial adviser, Stefan Borson, has told Football Insider: “The nub of it will be whether anybody can establish that the breaches created a sporting advantage. If you have a sporting advantage established, then it’s likely that you end up with a sporting penalty. Now, that can be mitigated by considerations like new ownership, early guilty plea, lots of cooperation. These are all things that Chelsea are pushing out into the media as being what they’ve done. That is mitigation. There’s no question. The question is what’s the starting point?

“Is the starting point, well, this is very serious, and we think you’ve had a major sporting advantage? The starting point is a number of points, in which case you’re mitigating down percentage wise from that points deduction.

“If you look at something like Nottingham Forest, they had a lot of cooperation commended by the commission. Now, that was a Premier League commission, but the law is basically the same and they’ll cross compare the cases. In that case, there was basically an argument where Nottingham Forest said, we should have a 50 per cent reduction on the penalty. The Premier League said, that feels a bit too much 50 per cent, maybe 30 per cent. The commission went in the end for 30 per cent. It was going to be six for Nottingham Forest and they got two knocked off for early admission and cooperation.

“You would think that Chelsea would be able to get 30 per cent, maybe even a 40 per cent reduction for their mitigation, adding all the bits and pieces together if everything they’re saying is true about how they cooperated, admitted it, informed. So, they get very good mitigation.”

Nottingham Forest were docked four points during the 2023-24 season, while Everton were stung with an eight-point penalty for breaches of Profit & Sustainability Rules (PSR). Chelsea have until September 19 to respond to the charges being brought against them by the FA.