Chelsea, Leicester City admit FA charges, fined lightly for fracas

Both teams were charged for the fracas at the end of Chelsea’s 2-1 victory over Leicester City in the penultimate round of this year’s Premier League, but it looks like both teams will get off quite lightly (and rightly so, since it was just a bit of handbags and nothing more).

The FA announced today that both teams were fined equal amounts, £22,500 for breaching FA Rule E20.1 (the “failing to control players” one). Both teams admitted the charges and neither appealed, which always runs the risk of being deemed frivolous and resulting in even greater punishment.

That said, the size of this fine is rather small, and is in fact smaller than any of Chelsea’s (semi-)recent fines, which slowly ramped up during the Mourinho Mk.II era from £30k in February 2015 against Everton to almost ten times as much on appeal, to £290k, after the Battle of the Bridge against Spurs in May 2016.

That fine, which was initially £375k, also contained a strong suggestion that further infractions could result in non-financial penalties as well — i.e. points deduction — which led to some unfounded speculation in the last couple weeks that the FA would make good on those threats. But five years is a long time in football discipline, and it would appear that our record has been wiped somewhat clean by the governing body. For now.