This week, Chelsea were hit with a £10 million fine and a two-year suspended transfer ban, along with a youth transfer ban for dodgy dealings in the Roman Abramovich days.
As Newcastle United and the PIF tiptoe around the Premier League’s financial regulations, the so-called ‘Big Six’ have been gaming the system for years and avoiding severe punishment. We’re still waiting to find out what’s happening with Manchester City’s 115 PSR breaches, for example.
While Everton and Nottingham Forest were hit with points deductions for going over the PSR loss limit, Chelsea got hit with a £10 million fine for a string of pay-offs totalling £47.5 million, to get transfer deals done under Roman Abramovich. £10 million to Chelsea is like when you drop a penny on the floor, and you don’t even think about stopping to pick it up.
The argument is that Todd Boehly and co disclosed the wrongdoings when they did their due diligence when buying Chelsea, and have cooperated with the investigation. And yes, it’s not the new owners’ fault; they did inherit a club that has won several trophies on the back of these dodgy transfers and has built up a strong fanbase that generates a lot of revenue because of it. They are profiting from those ill-gotten gains.
While Newcastle fans were furious watching this unfold, there is potential for some satisfaction to come, as one of the agents likely to be investigated as part of the fallout from this agent scandal is Zoran Lemic: the man who helped Alexander Isak through his exit from Newcastle last summer.
Vlado and Zoran Lemic, two Serbian brothers, received several million pounds from Chelsea between 2012 and 2015, and were key figures in the signings of the Brazilian players Ramires and David Luiz, Serbian midfielder Nemanja Matic, and the German forward André Schürrle, as reported by The Times.
If the investigation proves that Zoran Lemic took these payments, then it clearly shows the measure of the man who told Isak how to behave in the summer to force through his £125 million move to Liverpool. Vlado isn’t a licenced agent, so he falls outside of the FA’s jurisdiction, but Zoran could be in real trouble.
We should be over this whole Alexander Isak thing by now, especially how spectacularly wrong his first season has gone in Liverpool, but it turns out, we’re still a little bit bitter.
Whatever happens with the investigation into Zoran Lemic, it’s not likely to have any effect on Newcastle United and won’t change what happened with Alexander Isak, but it’s perhaps a dose of karma who acted with a real lack of class during last summer’s miserable transfer saga.
We’d much rather not have characters like that around our club.