Man United could capitalise on £342m Chelsea reveal to sign Cole Palmer, predicts finance expert

Manchester United will have one eye on Chelsea right now after their financial problems were laid bare, potentially planning a swoop to sign Cole Palmer.

If there was one player in the Premier League who seems destined to one day join Manchester United, it would be Cole Palmer.

This is because Palmer is a boyhood United fan, with the talk around him being unsettled at Chelsea earlier this year sparking renewed questions over a move being made.

Palmer joining United would be a major move within the league, and while it remains a bit of a dream opposed to being immediately possible, Chelsea are under real financial pressure, and this could force their hand.

Chelsea recorded record-breaking losses during the 2024/25 season, according to The Athletic, which could have dire ramifications. Now United in Focus‘ finance expert, Adam Williams, has revealed the potential impact on their need to sell.

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In order to learn whether this helps United’s chances of signing Palmer, we asked football finance expert Adam Williams.

“The first thing you have to note here is that the terms ‘profit’ and ‘loss’ can be somewhat misleading. If I buy something with a £5 note and sell it for £6, you would say I have made a cash ‘profit’ of £1. The same logic applies in reverse to a loss. However, accountancy works differently.

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“In accountancy, ‘profit’ is kind of like a scorecard for how well the business is doing, but it doesn’t necessarily reflect the real flow of cash in and out of the business. The term ‘profit’ is basically a useful fiction in this context. The Athletic report that Chelsea are saying that a big chunk of that £342m loss is due to player value write-offs. That’s a non-cash expense which registers on the bottom line, AKA the ‘profit’ or ‘loss’. But if a player’s value is written down by, say, £20m, Chelsea haven’t actually lost £20m in cash. Instead, the write-off is attempting to reflect the underlying performance of the company. The same goes for amortisation, which is how football clubs account for transfer fees over a player’s contract length, as well as depreciation, which is how clubs account for the decrease in the value of fixed assets – like a new stadium, training ground, or hardware owned by the club – over time. Both of those are non-cash expenses and don’t involve the club losing any ‘real’ money.

“It’s a complicated concept, but it’s relevant here to understand the kind of pressure Chelsea are under and the way in which United might be able to capitalise.

“To see how much real cash Chelsea have lost, we need to wait for their full audited financial accounts to be released. Either way, however, the picture is bleak. If Chelsea weren’t under pressure from the UEFA financial settlement, their owners would comfortably be able to absorb these losses. But the fact is that they are paying hundreds of million more per season than they are earning, and the UEFA agreement means that they will have to either A) drastically cut costs or B) drastically increase revenue, or a combination of the two. But it’s regulatory pressure, not cash.

“If United want to sign Palmer, they’ll be paying more than £100m. I would think that, both in terms of his brand and his ability, he is the very last player that Chelsea would want to sell, but they are going to have to continue to sell players en masse, to the order of hundreds of millions per season. There are only so many squad players that you can continue to get really good fees for. In the end, I think the UEFA settlement will mean that they have to sell some of their A-listers too. Selling Palmer, clearly, would be a last resort but could also be hugely beneficial in helping them there. He’s a United fan, so that would make it even more attractive in commercial terms for United.

“One thing I would predict, though, is that Chelsea will wait until they are deeper into the four-year UEFA settlement to see how they are getting on before they actively start looking to sell superstars. If United checks back in a year or two and it’s going badly, they might have a lot more leverage in negotiations with Chelsea for the player.”

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The Chelsea number 10 at United has been a pipedream since Euro 2024, when Palmer and Kobbie Mainoo discussed their love of Wayne Rooney.

The two boyhood United fans, and it really does feel like an inevitability that he will one day move to Old Trafford.

Palmer, as a replacement for Bruno Fernandes, would be as good as they come, with the Portuguese star irreplaceable.

Mainoo and Elliot Anderson, with Palmer ahead of them, United could have the best trio in the league, all homegrown.

It would break the bank and take Chelsea crisis, but United need to make it happen if it becomes possible.

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