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Chelsea are staring at a possible financial crisis ahead of next Tuesday’s transfer deadline.

Officials at Stamford Bridge need to sell or otherwise offload four senior players before September 1, or they could face the prospect of those players cancelling their contracts and leaving on free transfers under a new legal framework.

The summer transfer window for English clubs shuts in only a few days, and that has left the Blues dealing with a serious squad logjam.

Premier League squad registration rules, FIFA loan restrictions and tough new player protection regulations have created a major issue for Chelsea if the situation is not resolved in time.

Chelsea’s oversized first-team group currently contains 39 players. Although 10 of them qualify as Under-21 players, which means they do not take up places in the Premier League’s 25-man squad list while still remaining available for selection, the situation for the rest of the squad is severe.

As Premier League regulations allow only 25 senior players, four established players aged over 21 will be left unregistered if they are still on Chelsea’s books once the transfer window closes.

In earlier seasons, Chelsea may have eased such registration problems by sending surplus players out on loan, especially to French club Strasbourg under the shared BlueCo ownership structure.

But revised FIFA rules have limited that option.

FIFA allows clubs a maximum of six international loans in a season, and there is also a separate rule that says no more than three players can be loaned to the same club.

Chelsea have already used up two of their six outgoing international loan slots, with one of those going to Strasbourg. As a result, Chelsea have four outgoing international loan places left in total, and they can send only two more players to Strasbourg.

The danger of leaving players unregistered now goes well beyond the dressing-room unhappiness seen in previous years. A new agreement between FIFA and the global players’ union FIFPRO gives sidelined players placed in a club’s so-called "bomb squad" the right to pursue legal action.

If a player is left out of the official squad list or made to train away from the first team, that player now has the legal right to claim "just sporting cause."

If Chelsea are found to have breached these employment standards, the affected player could in theory terminate his contract immediately.

For Chelsea, such contract cancellations would mean losing hundreds of millions of pounds in amortised transfer value as well as possible future resale income. In theory, players signed for huge transfer fees could leave for nothing.

With the transfer deadline set for next Tuesday, September 1, Chelsea have less than a week to complete the required exits.