Soccer: Abramovich dusts off his wallet

Roman Abramovich. Photo / AP

Like Charles Dickens' benefactor, Roman Abramovich is the patron whose generous donations arrive out of the ether and whose motives are unknown. Money shall back you, he promises Chelsea, and never more so than this week.

The mysterious Abramovich might no longer be the richest man in possession of an English soccer club but he retains the capacity to surprise us all in the way that no other owner does.

A British world record transfer fee for Fernando Torres in the last week of the January transfer window? This time he really has outdone himself. He has until noon today (NZ time) before the January transfer window is closed.

Abramovich kicked down the door to English soccer's elite in 2003 with an acquisition policy as finessed as that of a coach-load of new-money Russian tourists let loose on Bond St.

But the changing trend of his stewardship since then has, with the exception of the occasional self-indulgence (Andrei Shevchenko, Avram Grant), demonstrated he has learned fast.

When the dust has settled on most of Abramovich's big decisions at Chelsea you can just about see the cold, hard logic. Appointing Peter Kenyon? One in the eye for Manchester United. Sacking Jose Mourinho? One row too many. Sacking Luiz Felipe Scolari? The season was going nowhere.

Yet amid the frenzy that has accompanied a £35 million ($72 million) bid for Torres - with the potential it may rise today - and another £26 million on David Luiz from Benfica, one question is unanswered.

How does the acquisition of Torres and Luiz - a throwback to the days of August 2003 when Abramovich was carefree with his millions - square with Chelsea's plans to keep themselves the right side of UEFA's Financial Fair Play legislation?

The new UEFA governance model requires clubs applying for a licence to play in the Champions or Europa League to lose no more than £39 million over the space of three seasons.

By the looks of things, Torres' fee alone could account for that.

The next financial results soon to be released by Chelsea are expected to show, as has always been the case under Abramovich, significant losses.

But the club have long focused on those results due in a year's time which are expected to say they have broken even.

This has been Chelsea's aim for years and after all the sneering they have endured they deserve some credit for getting there.

But if they do pay huge fees for Torres and Luiz today those accounts will feel the full impact.

Coincidentally, 2011-2012 is the season when UEFA's Financial Fair Play kicks in, with Chelsea eager to make a good impression. The problem Abramovich wrestles with as he again opens the vaults is that financial fair play will be the least of his problems if his team are not good enough to qualify for the Champions League.

He has to strengthen. Almost eight years in English soccer and he is back at his first strategy: paying big money for the best players of other clubs.

Abramovich had a go at financing an academy that would produce the best young players in the world with mixed results. For all the money and legions of scouts around the world, the best product has been Josh McEachran, a kid from Oxford who was scouted at the age of 8 the old-fashioned way.

This month, Gael Kakuta and Patrick Van Aanholt have quietly been shipped out on loan and Jeffrey Bruma is expected to follow. These are undoubtedly talented young players, but Bruma was supposed to be the reason that Chelsea did not have to replace Ricardo Carvalho, who left in the summer. That sounded fanciful then. It seems ridiculous now.

The Chelsea Under-18 team that beat Arsenal in the FA Youth Cup this month had 10 English boys in the side, which suggests that the old plan of cherry-picking European academies has gone out of the window. But while Chelsea wait for the next John Terry to emerge it is the owner's wealth that will have to come to the rescue again.

Under Frank Arnesen, Chelsea tried to buy unknown teenagers who they hoped would become the best players in the world.

The days when Abramovich handed over a chunk of his fortune and all Chelsea's problems disappeared are gone, even if Torres and Luiz arrive today. Money shall back you. But these days there are consequences to spending too much of it.

- INDEPENDENT