OFFICIAL: Chelsea make important FFP sale with potential £25m added to summer balance | OneFootball

Chelsea have confirmed the deal to sell Lesley Ugochukwu to Burnley on their official website.

Ugochukwu leaves after 15 Blues appearances

After arriving in the summer of 2023, Ugochukwu fought some injuries but still managed to make 15 appearances under Mauricio Pochettino.

We expected him to stick around last season, but instead he went on loan and played 31 games on loan for Southampton, who struggled desperately in an almost record breakingly bad campaign. That really stunted Ugochukwu’s development, but Burnley clearly liked what they saw from the France youth international individually.

The Clarets face a tough battle to stay in the league and Ugochukwu certainly has the skills to help out.

Ugochukwu sale comes down to Chelsea FFP cash flow

Lesley Ugochukwu joins Burnley with Nizaar Kinsella speculating the fee could reach £25m.

The fee isn’t quite clear (it never is), but Nizaar Kinsella of the BBC says it’s “more than £20m and closer to the mid £20s range,” which means we got our money back on what we paid to Rennes.

This seems very much like a cash flow deal to us. The midfielder could easily have gone on loan for another couple of years and boosted his value way beyond £25m. All things being equal, that was the way to go.

However Chelsea are under pressure from UEFA to finish this summer with a negative net transfer balance in order to comply with FFP rules and compete in the Champions League this season, so clearly £25m now was more important than £30m in a couple of years.

We wish Lesley all the best – we though he looked really solid when playing for us, and probably deserved more chances. A good year or two at Burnley and we could certainly see a top 6 team looking at him again. Let’s hop this one doesn’t come back to bite us.