Keith Wyness fears for Chelsea after analysing new documents
Everton’s former chief Keith Wyness believes there could potentially be issues around Chelsea selling part of their Cobham training ground to an internal company.
Speaking on the new edition of Football Insider’s Inside Track podcast, the 66-year-old – who served as CEO at Goodison Park between 2004 and 2009 and now runs a football consultancy advising elite clubs – admitted the fact the piece of land is registered as greenbelt raises questions around how the valuation of the plot can be so high.
As revealed by finance expert Stefan Borson, Chelsea have appeared to loophole PSR by selling their training ground to a sister company.
It has now been confirmed the west London club have sold one of the five parts of their training ground to Blueco 22 Properties Limited.
The sale will allow the Blues to record a profit on their club accounts and potentially avoid a breach of the financial regulations.
Wyness previously told Football Insider the valuation of the site has risen from £23million in 2015 to £150million – an increase of £127million in nine years.
Chelsea could face issues over Cobham sale
Wyness admitted the deal “doesn’t seem right”, but he is prepared to review the situation again once all the details emerge.
He told Football Insider‘s Insider Track podcast: “When I looked at the documents involved, it does say the piece that’s sold internally within their company is also greenbelt.
“This is where I raised previously that the only way you can see such an increase in value would be if there was different planning permission to go from greenbelt into residential or commercial.
“We’ll have to see what value they’ve really assigned to this and then the question will be ‘Is that the correct valuation?’.
“It certainly is a pretty complex behind-the-scenes transaction and it’s growing arms and legs in terms of how it’s being handled.
“You have got to believe Todd Boehly and his people know what they are doing. They have probably got the best law firms there are.
“It’s just questions at the moment more than anything else. It certainly doesn’t seem right in some way, but we’ll have to wait and see for the facts to come out.
“I’m quite prepared to look at that and see that things could be okay, but certainly the fact around greenbelt in planning permission does seem to raise the question about how can a valuation be so high.”
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