Former Chelsea star Joe Cole insists the club’s financial missteps should be not be held against the players who helped the Blues win silverware under Roman Abramovich.<\/p>\n
Chelsea\u2019s current owners reported finding more than \u00a347million of undisclosed transfer payments when they took the reins in 2022, covering the 2011-2018 period that brought two Premier League titles and four other trophies to Stamford Bridge.<\/p>\n
A sanction agreement with the Premier League has seen Chelsea fined \u00a310.75million and given a suspended one-year transfer ban.<\/p>\n
No asterisk has been placed against their on-field achievements, despite under-the-counter deals being involved in signings including Eden Hazard, Ramires, David Luiz, Samuel Eto\u2019o and Willian, and Cole believes that is how it should be.<\/p>\n
“When you step on those white lines, that\u2019s the only pure thing left in football,” he told TNT Sports.<\/p>\n
“There\u2019s a group of players (that) come together and go through a whole season in the toughest league in the world or a European competition and you win something.<\/p>\n
“You can\u2019t take that away from the players.<\/p>\n
“There\u2019ll be people up and down the country, other clubs and supporters going ‘it\u2019s not really fair\u2019. But what\u2019s been done has been done.<\/p>\n
“The financial irregularities need to have a financial punishment. But the group of players and manager that steps over the white line? They deserve to win the trophies.”<\/p>\n
\n
Listen to the RT\u00c9 Soccer podcast on Apple Podcasts<\/a>, Spotify<\/a> or wherever you get your podcasts<\/a>.<\/p>\n Watch Liverpool v Galatasaray in the Champions League on Wednesday from 7.30pm on RT\u00c92 and RT\u00c9 Player. Follow a live blog on the RT\u00c9 News app and on rte.ie\/sport<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Chelsea star Joe Cole insists the club’s financial missteps should be not be held against the players…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":351810,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-351809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=351809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351809\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/351810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=351809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=351809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=351809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}