Chelsea have not only raised £76.3m from the sale of their on-site hotels - the Blues have also kept hold of the revenue streams.

Chelsea made a pre-tax loss of £90.1m last season but that figure would have been far greater had the club not sold the Millennium and the Copthorne to BlueCo 22 Limited, which is a subsidiary company owned by those at the top. The EFL excludes asset sales from financial rules calculations, but this is not the case in the Premier League.

As well as acquiring the hotels, Chelsea's owners have given themselves the management contract so that they can maintain the income streams moving forward. Former Crystal Palace chairman Simon Jordan said that was 'clever accountancy' and proof that 'these boys aren't stupid'. However, it was put to Jordan that was 'total hypocrisy' given his previously contrasting views on the prospect of Newcastle United selling an asset to a Saudi club who were also majority owned by the PIF.

"Context is everything," he told talkSPORT. "It's much easier to establish a fair market price of a piece of property than it is to establish a fair market price of a player with due respect because often the beauty is in the eye of the beholder. If you decide that a player is worth £50m because it suits your commercial ends, you don't really don't need to stack that up very much.

"If you do with a piece of property, you're going to underpin it a little bit more substantially. The argument is similar but different and, also, context is everything.

"If you frame the conversation that we were having about the Saudis and how the Saudis are going to rip English football apart, my response at the time was based upon, 'I'm not sure I'm particularly enamoured with this idea.'"

A number of Premier League clubs raised concerns about Allan Saint-Maximin's £30m move to Al-Ahli last summer and whether an injection of funds could be disguised as a transfer fee to help Newcastle make signings while complying with financial regulations. However, the deal was deemed to be of fair market value.

Using a huge data bank, and the help of independent assessors, the Premier League found evidence of players of a similar age, position, ability and experience moving for similar amounts outside the Saudi Pro League. The deal remains the one and only piece of business Newcastle have done with a Saudi club at a time when Chelsea, Liverpool and Manchester City are among those sides who have generated tens of millions from such trades and also got big earners off the books.