Two hundred and sixty two point four million pounds. Lost. Gone. Vanished into thin air like a centre half at a corner kick.

That's Chelsea's pre-tax loss for the year ending June 2025. The highest in Premier League history. Let that sink in. In the entire history of English top flight football, no club has ever managed to lose that much money in a single year. And Chelsea did it while also spending more on agents' fees than any other club in the country.

In my day, if you lost that kind of money, you'd be selling the training ground, the kit man's car, and the chairman's dog. You'd be holding fundraisers in the social club. Raffle tickets at a quid a pop. Meat draw on a Friday. Not announcing it on the same day the agents' fees come out like some sort of financial double header from hell.

Don't get me started on the agents.

Actually, do get me started. Because that's the problem with modern football. When I was managing, the agent was a bloke called Dave who had a Nokia 3310 and a Vauxhall Cavalier. He'd ring you up, ask for an extra fifty quid a week for his lad, you'd tell him where to go, and that was that. Deal done. Maybe a handshake in a Little Chef off the A45 if things got really serious.

Now? Now you've got super agents with offices in Monaco, taking percentages on deals that make your eyes water. Chelsea spent more on agents than anyone else in the league. More than City. More than United. More than clubs that have actually won something recently. The agents are getting rich. The club is posting record losses. And somehow everyone just carries on like this is normal.

It's not normal. None of this is normal.

You know what a £262 million loss used to buy you? It used to buy you the entire Football League. Twice. With change left over for a new set of bibs. Now it buys you seventh place and a squad so bloated you could field a different eleven every week for a month and still have lads sitting in the stands wondering when their number's going to get called.

And the thing that really gets my goat is this. Chelsea have spent billions. Actual billions. They've signed more players than I've had hot dinners, and I've had a lot of hot dinners. They've handed out eight year contracts like they're loyalty cards at Tesco. And what have they got to show for it? A Conference League trophy. That's it. That's your return on investment.

When I was at Kettering, our entire annual budget was less than what Chelsea probably spent on biscuits for the boardroom. And we finished mid table. Respectable. Solvent. No one was posting record losses. The books balanced because they had to. Because there wasn't a billionaire waiting in the wings to pour more petrol on the fire.

That's the problem with modern football. There are no consequences. You lose a quarter of a billion pounds and what happens? Nothing. You sign more players. You pay more agents. You roll on to the next window and do it all again. Financial Fair Play? Don't make me laugh. It's neither fair nor does anyone play by the rules.

I remember when Roman Abramovich first came in and everyone said the spending was unsustainable. At least Roman won things. At least there were trophies in the cabinet to justify the madness. This lot are burning money for the sheer sport of it.

£262.4 million in losses. Record agents' fees. And somewhere in London, Todd Boehly is probably already on the phone to another agent, working on the next deal, ready to break his own record next year.

In my day, we called that insanity. Now they call it a business model.