Even though Chelsea are now cleared to spend £150million in the January transfer window, the club has released a statement slamming the 'deeply unsatisfactory' approach to their case.

Chelsea's appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) was successful, and have had their transfer ban reduced after breaking youth transfer rules.

Chelsea now say that they feel they were treated differently to Manchester City, who escaped a transfer ban and were given a paltry £315,000 fine instead for similar violations.

Chelsea FC believe they were treated differently to Man City in their recent transfer ban case

Chelsea's FIFA transfer ban for breaking youth transfer rules has been cut to just one window

Manchester City escaped a ban and were fined £315,000 for similar violations to Chelsea

'The approach taken by FIFA to this case has been deeply unsatisfactory, not least as FIFA chose to treat Chelsea entirely differently to Manchester City for reasons that make absolutely no sense to Chelsea,' said the club statement.

Chelsea were originally given a two-window ban, but it has now been reduced to one, which they already served this summer.

FIFA had originally accused Chelsea of breaching Article 19 of the FIFA regulations in relation to 27 players.

The club's statement continued, calling some of the accusations against 16 of these players 'perverse,' as they say FIFA confirmed these players were entitled to register. They also say 'we are grateful that this appears to have been corrected by the CAS.'

Chelsea will now look to spend in January, with Crystal Palace winger Wilfried Zaha a target

Of the remaining 11 players, Chelsea say that six of them qualified for one of the exceptions set out in FIFA regulations.

The statement then says: 'With respect to the remaining five players, FIFA’s position was that it “deemed” these players to have registered prior to any application for registration being made. Chelsea maintains, as was held by CAS in the Real Madrid case, that the FIFA regulations do not cover a concept of “deemed registrations” and accordingly it is not open to FIFA to “deem” that registrations were made before they were in fact made.'

Chelsea closed out the statement by saying that although the protection of minors is important, 'if FIFA continues to impose inconsistent and unequal sanctions on clubs then it will not only undermine the very purpose of the regulations, but it will also bring into doubt the game’s confidence in FIFA being able to appropriately regulate this important area.'

Borussia Dortmund winger and England international Jadon Sancho is also on the Blues' radar

Manchester City received their fine back in August, and City insiders insist the key reason for only receiving a £315,000 fine was the fact that their breaches were 'less serious' than their Premier League rivals, and also related to fewer players.

'The club accepts responsibility for the breaches which arose as a result of misinterpretation of the regulations in question,' said the English champions at the time of the ruling.

Chelsea were also fined £460,000 on top of their transfer ban, which has now been halved.

'The sole arbitrator found that CFC did violate Articles 19.1 (related to the international transfer of minors) and 19.3 (related to the first registration of minors), but for a significantly smaller number of players (about one third of the violations found by FIFA),' a CAS statement read on Friday.

'In addition, the violations of other RSTP rules were found to be less serious than those attributed to Chelsea FC by FIFA.

'Accordingly, the sole arbitrator reduced the sanction to one single transfer ban (which Chelsea FC already served during the 2019 summer registration period), and halved the monetary sanction.'