The Saudi's are rapidly becoming one of football's biggest players

Will it end anytime soon?

Saudi Arabia is making waves in football through both its league and sovereign wealth fund (PIF-Public Investment Fund). They’ve bought Newcastle United and are throwing money at global superstars left and right. Now through the excellent reporting in The Telegraph over the last 24 hours we have an insight into what might be happening behind the scenes, and that rival clubs are concerned both Chelsea and Wolves might be using Saudi connections to dodge FFP (if this is the case, I say more power to them, FFP is a sham - the real question is about cross-ownership and influence).

As my colleague Johnathan Starling points out, a bigger question remains over the PIF’s possible investment in Clearlake Capital and therefore in Chelsea. It is a known thing that Todd Boehly does business with the PIF on other matters, but how much of that relates to football? Stay tuned on that question.

Whatever the motivation, Saudi Arabia appears ready to help Chelsea comply with FFP and potentially balance their books based on player sales. Chelsea already led the Premier League in revenue from player sales the last few seasons, netting almost twice as much as runner-up Manchester City. But the reality is, unlike City, whose days of overspending abruptly ended with Covid (yeah I know they paid over the moon for Jack Grealish but that appears more a one-off than anything recently), Chelsea’s spending went into overdrive once Boehly and Clearlake took over the club.