The scale of Roman Abramovich's investment in turning Chelsea into the dominant force in English football was underlined on Friday when the club posted a loss of 140 million pounds ($249m) for the year to June 2005.
The losses, which are underwritten Abramovich's multi-billion pound personal fortune, are by the far the biggest ever recorded by an English football club, and significantly higher than the deficit of 87.8 million registered in 2003-04, the Russian tycoon's first year of ownership.
Chief Executive Peter Kenyon however stressed that the increase was largely due to a series of exceptional one-off items and claimed that the west London club was on track to break even by 2009/10.
"These figures reflect the continuing restructuring of the business which we began in 2003/4," the former Manchester United supremo argued.
"The overall loss increase is, in the main, down to some exceptional items that were necessary in order to help us achieve our strategic business aim of break even by 2009/10. In simple terms we have taken some pain now for long-term gain."
The big hits that Chelsea took on their bottom line during the last financial year included 25.5 million pounds to get out of a shirt sponsorship deal with Umbro, which is being replaced by a more lucrative deal with Adidas which has yet to impact on the club's revenues.
{{/usCountry}}The big hits that Chelsea took on their bottom line during the last financial year included 25.5 million pounds to get out of a shirt sponsorship deal with Umbro, which is being replaced by a more lucrative deal with Adidas which has yet to impact on the club's revenues.
{{/usCountry}}Chelsea also had to declare an accounting loss of 13.8 million pounds after sacking Romanian striker Adrian Mutu following a positive test for cocaine. A further write-off was incurred after Argentina midfielder Juan Sebastian Veron was offloaded at a loss of nine million pounds.
Other exceptional costs included five million pounds spent on recruitment to the Chelsea academy — an investment the club hopes will reduce transfer spending in the future.