Saturday 14 January 2017 09:29, UK
Chelsea have spent a total of £31.4m on getting rid of Jose Mourinho and his staff since 2007.
‘The Special One’ and co were paid £8.3m when he was sacked in December 2015, compared to the £23.1m he and his staff received in 2007.
Chelsea’s accounts for the 2015-16 season reveal that despite a record turnover of £329.1m and a £49m profit on player trading, the fallen Premier League champions still managed to post a £70.6m loss.
But while there is no arguing that a 10th-place finish in the Premier League, and no cup success, amounts to failure for the first team, Chelsea's apparent financial under-performance is a little misleading.
The reason for this is that the club paid kit supplier Adidas £67m in compensation for cancelling a 10-year deal six years early so it could sign a much better deal with Nike.
The Adidas contract was worth about £30m a year to the club but the new 15-year deal with Nike, which starts next season, will bring in £60m a year, much closer to the record £75m Manchester United banks every season from Adidas.
And the decision to part company once more with Mourinho, the most successful manager in the club's history, also appears to have paid off as Chelsea's results improved under interim boss Guus Hiddink, with permanent successor Antonio Conte taking the team to the top of the table this season.
Among the other details revealed in Chelsea's accounts are that owner Roman Abramovich continues to pour money into the club, about £90m over the last two years as well as £1m a season for his luxury box.
Chelsea also added 104 new staff, taking the total employed to 785, although the wage bill remained relatively flat at £222m.
And there were some large payments that came just after the June 30 cut-off for this accounting period, including an initial £96.3m investment in Marcos Alonso, Michy Batshuayi, N'Golo Kante and David Luiz.
But perhaps the most notable expense not included in this set of accounts is the £5m settlement reached with former first-team doctor Eva Carneiro, who dropped her claim of constructive dismissal against the club and sex discrimination against Mourinho on June 7.
Carneiro left the club after she was publicly criticised and verbally abused by Mourinho for treating Eden Hazard on the pitch, against Mourinho's wishes, in a game at Stamford Bridge against Swansea in August 2015.
