Premier League clubs issued a warning about the FFP investigation, and Chelsea was handed a points deduction verdict. Over the next two weeks, Chelsea fans may find out the outcome of the investigation.

Chelsea has been informed that, despite the Premier League’s threat of yet another regulatory crackdown, they are unlikely to face any simple penalties for allegedly breaking the Profit and Sustainability Rules (PSRs).

Clubs are expected to find out in the next two weeks whether they will likely be charged for breaking financial regulations; Everton and Nottingham Forest are reportedly in danger after all 20 clubs turned in their 2022–2023 accounts by December 31. Any charges will be made public by January 14. The Toffees were hit with a ten-point deduction in November, which they challenged. However, considering their extravagant spending after winning promotion from the Championship, it’s thought that Forest is eking out a point or two.

Clubs are allotted a rolling three-year maximum loss of £105 million under the PSRs, which translates to a maximum loss of £35 million per season. If a club were to play in the EFL for one or two of those years, though, the window for handling financial losses would be even smaller because of the lower limit.

This implies that Forest’s maximum loss is limited to £61 million, with an additional £13 million for each of the 2020–21 and 2021–22 Championship seasons, and the customary £35 million for Premier League teams following promotion. The massive influx of players would have completely depleted their finances to the point where their wage bill would have been drastically different from what it would have been in the second division, to the point where they would have been paying twice as much in salary as they had in turnover over the previous two seasons.

According to football finance expert Kieran Maguire, who spoke to The Times, “Nottingham Forest was very much at the limit of their Financial Fair Play allowance when they were promoted to the Premier League,” the team most likely to face fines from the Premier League is Forest.

“They continued to invest in new players during their inaugural campaign, signing players at high salaries—some of whom, like Jesse Lingard, ended up being a bust. They would be at the top, in my opinion, if you’re looking for clubs that are near the limit.”

Many will wonder why clubs like Chelsea and Manchester City, who have been under investigation previously, haven’t had the results published yet. Everton’s charge in November and this potential incoming charge for Forest both come through the league’s new ‘fast-track’ charging system, which would see charges for straightforward breaches dealt with by early April, and any points deductions applied to this campaign.

While Pep Guardiola’s team is currently dealing with 115 charges related to FFP rule violations, the Premier League is looking into claims that Chelsea made payments outside of the books while Roman Abramovich was the club’s owner. Given that both investigations are far more intricate, time-consuming, and complex than any of Forest or Everton’s cases, it makes sense that the two are unlikely to face consequences related to those cases anytime soon.

It does not, however, imply that they are exempt from penalties related to the Premier League’s PSRs. Chelsea has clearly lost a lot of money in recent seasons—£156 million in 2020–21 and £121 million in 2021/22—under both Abramovich and new goalkeeper Todd Boehly, but Maguire thinks they can escape punishment.

This is due to the team’s superb use of the transfer market and their ability to balance their books for the previous season by selling players for large sums of money, even though they also lost a lot of money during those same transfer windows. The departure of Mason Mount, Kai Havertz, Kalidou Koulibaly, Mateo Kovacic, and other players in large deals during the summer may have protected the team from any additional fines that would have been incurred had those players been retained for Mauricio Pochettino’s first season as Blues manager.