They aren’t investing in two clubs. They have funds under management by Clearlake, which is a private equity firm. Clearlake has an investment in Chelsea, so the connection to PIF is indirect. It would be akin to your bank having an investment in your club - that doesn’t mean you have an investment in your club.
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its like money laundering but here your launder ur unwanted players for crazy prices to beat FFP rules
Okay so you mean that PIF in now way can dictate or even suggest how Clearlake operates or where it invests?
They dont. PIF itself is an investment group that is managing a large amount of its own investments, and is using Clearlake (other other investment groups) as a hedge against their own investments not going well. That hedge isn’t actually a hedge if they interfere with the investment decisions because at that point they dont need Clearlake and dont need to allow Clearlake to take their % off the top.
To be clear though, big investors in funds like this will regularly air concerns and even argue over the decisions the fund manager makes, and in some cases pressure, especially in the form of threatening to take their money out of the fund, can cause them to alter their decisions. I don’t know if anyone knows how big a % of the fund comes from PIF but you can imagine that it’s likely to be big enough that threats to remove the money could alter the decision making. I just think with as many different places as PIF have their money that is very unlikely to be the sort of approach they’d be having with a fund like this.
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not much different than Liverpool being owned by FSG, who have sold an percentage of shares to RedBird. Except RedBird is not the PIF.
As Arminius pointed out a few posts up, that is the wrong analogy. The better one is of a bank, a company that has shareholders and account holders. PIF are analogous here to account holders who just have some of their money placed in the institution.
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Be that as it may, it seems awfully easy and convenient for all the Chelsea deadwood to be shipped off to Saudi Arabia…and at a profit no less.
PIF need players. Chelsea have lots of players they no longer need. Many of those players have already demonstrated a willingness to follow money. It’s a natural place for the Saudi league to be making enquiries and so is as close to a win-win-win scenario for all involved as you can get without there having to be any skullduggery to explain it.
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understood, but if you have a Chelsea player being sold to a PIF-owned team in Saudi league for over-inflated transfer fees… well that will be pretty indicative of some money washing…
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I also find it very convenient that Chelsea need to get rid of players, no one wants those players, but they’ll suddenly turn a profit on offloading all of them to various PIF clubs simultaneously. I don’t know/care about the above story of investments and blah, blah, blah but there has obviously been some form of communication between PIF and the Chelsea ownership to orchestrate this move.
Chelsea appear to be the big winners from this, although the PIF clubs will be satisfied also. I expect there to be some more close links made off the back of this. Maybe Saudi Arabia are trying to find a way into the American market.
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there’s not even a question. I dare not suggest something even more nefarious at play in the long game.
I think newcastle get to point at Chelsea when anyone questions their deals/ funding too. Muddying the water helps them much more as Chelsea’s spending wont be sustainable over the long run and people will just shrug their shoulders if they think everyone is at it.
“It’s juts the way the game is now, Jim. It’s not jumpers for goalposts anymore”
Humble N’Golo Kante who drives the same Fiat Panda for the last 10 years also off to Saudi. Not for the money, off course.
Nothing says you can’t be rich while still remaining humble.
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Chelsea’s massive squad has timed perfectly with Saudi.
They could have Mendy, Koulibaly, Kante, Ziyech and maybe also Auba taken by that league.
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It smells fishy
FIFY
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Add another to the list of possible outcasts off to Saudi…
https://twitter.com/FabrizioRomano/status/1671291376741302275?s=20