"Oh no, anyway." That isn't just Jeremy Clarkson when he heard that the Dacia Sandero's release had been delayed. It was most of the footballing world as Barcelona edged towards the abyss once more.
After drawing with Inter Milan at Camp Nou, Xavi's side are all but doomed in the Champions League. They need to win their two remaining matches, one of which is against Bayern Munich and hope Inter don't get three points from their remaining two fixtures. How the mighty have fallen, but nobody seems too bothered.
Juan Laporta's insistence that by pulling economic levers over the summer or selling commercial deals, TV rights and a bit of the club's soul in advance for some cash to pay for Robert Lewandowski would keep the club alive has backfired. It always looked like it would come back to bite them, but not in the middle of October.
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Barcelona sacrificed long-term money for short-term funding to stop the madness that is buying Adama Traore and Martin Brathwaite for a team that had David Villa, Pedro and Lionel Messi less than a decade ago. Budgeted into the economic levers and the humour they have become wasn't dropping out of Europe's elite club competition.
On paper, Barcelona are better than they have been in previous years. The midfield with Franck Kessie and Frenkie de Jong is solid, and Andreas Christensen and Jules Kounde are top defenders alongside Ronald Araujo. Lewandowski has amble attacking help with Ousmane Dembele and Raphinha, Pedri and Gavi also make up a strong spine.
It's almost comical that Barcelona continued to defy logic over the summer, and somehow it's all gotten worse before looking up for a second. The plan for the budget, according to MundoDeportivo, was to get to the quarter-finals. Going out in the group stage could leave them more than £15m behind in expected revenue. It is also said that just last week, a £1bn budget was discussed by directors — time to backtrack a bit now.
Chelsea, who worked tirelessly with the club over the summer and fell short in most occasions, may well have a sneaky plan to take advantage of the club's financial peril. After allowing Christensen to leave for free last summer, Lewandowski, Dembele, Raphinha and Kounde were all serious transfer targets, whilst De Jong was also pursued heavily, Marcos Alonso ended up leaving Stamford Bridge eventually, Cesar Azpilicueta remained at SW6. Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang's deadline day transfer is arguably the best business of the lot.
Now though, given the financial demands awaiting Barcelona, Chelsea could see a chance to go back in for their previous targets. Barcelona would have lost €106m without the financial levers last season, which would have raised to €210m this season had it not been for their activities. Despite all this, the wage bill went up by nearly 25%.
They still owe more than £100m for the transfers of Phillipe Coutinho, Miralem Pjanic and Neto Mou. If Todd Boehly is willing to go into negotiations with the Spaniards again in 2023, then they might not have much more choice other than to take any way out from certain players. If an offer comes up, they might be forced into a corner where they have to take it.
Would Chelsea want to go back in for Kounde - who turned them down blankly over the summer - or Raphinha after he prioritised a move to Spain instead? That's something that only Boehly may know. It could all hinge on Graham Potter and his demands too, but given that there might be a firesale in Catalonia, or else a carboot coming up in future windows if no more 'genius' plans are found to resolve financial strain, Barcelona won't be getting the sympathy of Chelsea any time soon.
A new midfielder is almost certain to be on the list for Potter, making De Jong a serious option once more, whilst forward players are already being looked at, Raphinha, maybe? Lewandowski makes less sense now that Chelsea already have a 33-year-old forward, but if there was a deal to be made for Dembele as an exciting attacker again, it might be worth revisiting.
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