Chelsea punishment ‘extremely lenient’, says club’s former exec Purslow
Former Chelsea executive Christian Purslow has labelled the club’s punishment from the Premier League for making undisclosed payments totalling £47.5m “extremely lenient and favourable”.
Chelsea escaped with a £10.75m fine and suspended transfer ban after the club’s current owners self-reported offences they said they had discovered in an audit of the previous ownership of Roman Abramovich.
The Premier League pointed to Chelsea’s level of cooperation as justification for not issuing sporting sanctions, having previously handed Everton, Nottingham Forest and Leicester City points deductions for the less serious crimes of breaching spending limits.
“I have to say that I think that in total the level of mitigation that has been applied here is way too generous,” said Purslow, who was Chelsea head of global commercial activities from 2014 to 2017.
Speaking on the Football Boardroom podcast, which he co-hosts with journalist Henry Winter, the former Liverpool managing director and Aston Villa CEO said he felt the verdict was “very inconsistent with previous regulatory cases and sanctions where I think the amount of mitigation credit given for clubs cooperating has been much less than seems to have been granted here”.
He added: “That must really rankle with clubs like Everton and Nottingham Forest who I don’t think have had much credit in the past when they have cooperated.
“I think the vast majority of people in the game view this as an extremely lenient and favourable outcome for Chelsea Football Club.”
Premier League told to apply rules consistently
It comes as English football continues to wait for the outcome of the Premier League’s long-running dispute with Manchester City over more than 100 charges relating to financial reporting.
Leading barrister Nick De Marco KC, who represented Leicester and Forest in their cases with the Premier League, stressed the importance of rules being applied consistently.
“When it is argued, in various football disputes, that points deductions must be imposed even for inadvertent breaches, in order to vindicate compliant clubs, one has to wonder whether that reflects a genuine commitment to consistent strict enforcement in all cases, or is simply a position adopted for the purposes of a particular case,” De Marco wrote on social media.
Chelsea’s punishment has come during a turbulent week for the club, who crashed out of the Champions League and slipped out of the Premier League’s top five with a home defeat by Newcastle United.