Stefan Borson insists Chelsea's spending is ‘not sustainable’ despite co-owner’s claims

Chelsea’s spending is “not sustainable” despite co-owner Jose Feliciano’s claims about the situation at Stamford Bridge.

That is according to former Manchester City financial adviser Stefan Borson, who exclusively told Football Insider the Blues can’t continue making significant losses.

Speaking at the Bloomberg Invest business conference on 4 March, Feliciano insisted Chelsea’s ownership group, BlueCo, has implemented a “more sustainable system” that is “yielding results”. 

The 53-year-old is co-founder and managing partner of Clearlake Capital, which owns a majority stake at Stamford Bridge. 

Chelsea’s financial situation has been questioned since BlueCo took over the club in May 2022, having spent around £1.8billion on signings during that time. 

Why Jose Feliciano didn’t tell the ‘truth’ about Chelsea’s situation

Chelsea’s pre-tax losses reached £342million last season, according to Uefa’s European Club Finance and Investment Landscape report. 

That is the highest pre-tax deficit in English football history, having increased from £93m in 2023-24.

Speaking exclusively to Football Insider, Borson discussed Feliciano’s claims around sustainability.

“Which bit is sustainable?” said Borson.

“Clearly, it’s not sustainable to lose £200-300m a year at the operating line every year, so that clearly isn’t the truth. The reality is it’s not sustainable, whatever he says.

“I don’t think he was really suggesting that that’s the business plan. The business plan is around buying the best young players, having to buy less new players every year, selling the ones that don’t quite work for a profit. 

“There’s nothing unique about Chelsea’s business model anyway. I mean, it’s broadly what lots of clubs have done. The only thing that they’ve done is that they’ve skewed it slightly to a younger age and said that they don’t want to buy any player over 25, 26. 

“That’s the only bit of the model that’s different from other teams that might have been a bit more flexible, and so far, it’s just not worked.” 

Chelsea’s ‘biggest problem’ revealed after heavy losses

Borson insisted Chelsea’s “biggest problem” is their significant operating expenses over the past few years.

“In terms of sustainability, there’s nothing sustainable about losing £200-300m a year at the operating line,” said Borson.

“Even forget about the nearly £350m loss last year, which had let’s say a whole load of impairments in there and a whole load of non-cash costs, so they say. We’ll find out in the next couple of weeks what they were.

“Even if you ignore that, the biggest problem is more what they’re doing at the general operating line.” 

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