Editco.net

Chelsea FC in the UK has just revealed that its highly-paid assets - the players - have dropped in value by about 20 per cent or £40m or so even as the club closes in on a League and Cup double.

The good news is that its wage bill has dropped a bit (to a mere £140m) but that's just because it hasn't sacked a manager recently. Ditching Jose Mourinho (who did rather well), Avram Grant (who'll hook up with his old employers when Portsmouth play Chelsea in the Cup Final) and short-lived Luiz Felipe Scolari cost them £35m over two years.

Mind you, this was only what the club paid for Andriy Shevchenko from Milan who failed to get in the team very often.

Now Chelsea owner Roman Abramovitch, who's just taken delivery of the world's biggest private yacht so he's not on his uppers yet, seems to have decided that he wants to get rid of his expensive older players who aren't worth much in the transfer market these days. Hence the write-down in value.

But what might worry Roman more are the signs that the top has been sliced off the transfer market.

In the January transfer window remarkably few deals for real money were done by Premiership clubs and with the pound falling against the Euro British clubs find transfer fees and contracts much more expensive.

In fact the only clubs spending big money consistently appear to be Real Madrid and newly-rich Manchester City and even Man City's Abu Dhabi owners must be wondering how wise it is to be spending top dollar although it looks like they've bought themselves a Champion's League place.

As for profligate Real Madrid they were humiliated by a mostly home-grown Barcelona line-up in the recent local derby.

The world as a whole may be inching out of recession but one suspects that football is set to face one of its very own.