Chelsea lost £65m in its last financial year, better than last year's £74m obviously but bringing the net cost to owner Roman Abramovitch's wallet to over £350m. And that's without former manager Felipe Scolari's pay-off. As it is the club paid £23m to former managers Jose Mourinho and Avram Grant, most of it to Mourinho it's thought, which may be one reason why the 'Special One', now managing Inter Milan, is looking so chilled these days. Abramovitch has converted some of his 'loan' to the club into shares, presumably to get UEFA boss Michel Platini off his back. Platini has said that heavily-indebted clubs should not be allowed into European competitions because they have an advantage (sort of) over clubs that need to balance their budget. CEO Peter Kenyon, who was on holiday when Scolari was sacked, says Chelsea plans to match financial ins and outs from next season. But that means not sacking the manager, currently Guus Hiddink, which will take some getting used to, and selling players before buying. But few clubs want to buy Chelsea's collection of overpaid, over-aged stars. Neither do they want to leave. Nobody else, with the possible exception of the shiekhs who own Manchester City, would pay them so much. Scolari blamed his misfortunes on the failure to buy Brazilian Robinho from Real Madrid in the summer. That may or may not be the case but it's unarguable that if you don't buy decent new players every year you're going to struggle to win a place in the Champion's League, let alone win the actual competition, which would be a financial disaster for Chelsea. No wonder the usually ebullient Hiddink looked a touch pensive when he was pictured in this morning's papers.