Chelsea have recorded a loss of £140m, the biggest in football history by any club.
It was a huge increase from the £88m loss they made last year, with the clubs citing a ‘series of exceptional one-off items’ behind the rise.
“These figures reflect the continuing restructuring of the business which we began in 2003-4,” Chelsea chief Peter Kenyon told the club website.
“The rise is down to some exceptional items that were necessary to help us in our aim to break-even by 2009-10.”
The club ended its deal with Umbro, which cost £25.5m, plus a total loss of £22.8m over the transfers of Adrian Mutu and Juan Sebastien Veron and the £5m for Academy recruitment were picked out as the “exceptional items”.
Kenyon added: “We terminated the Umbro contract which had a huge impact on these figures, but we have not yet seen any of the financial benefit of our new adidas contract.
“Similarly these figures do not include any of the monies from our new sponsorship deal with Samsung, which was the biggest in Premiership history.”
Chelsea have spent £265m on transfer fees alone since being taken over by Roman Abramovich.
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