LONDON — For the Chelsea fans who headed to Stamford Bridge for the team’s first home game since its world crumbled last week, signs of the club’s new, diminished circumstances were clear to see.

For the first time in memory, there was no match program for sale. No tickets to future games were available, either. The cavernous club store was shuttered, its doors bearing signs that danced around the uncomfortable news everyone already knew: that government sanctions imposed last week against Chelsea’s Russian owner, Roman Abramovich, meant no merchandise could be sold on Sunday, or in the foreseeable future.

Still, the stands were full. A game was played. And in an atmosphere that for long stretches bordered on the funereal, with the home fans absorbing taunts from their rivals from Newcastle and their team failing to make much of an impression on the field, it took 89 minutes for Chelsea to produce anything worth cheering: a goal from Kai Havertz that gave the hosts a 1-0 victory.

It was the day’s nervous silences, though, that perhaps best encapsulated the uncertainty about Chelsea’s new reality: two decades of success financed by the wealth of a Russian oligarch suddenly giving way to doubts about the team’s ability to retain its players, its ambitions or — most of all — its place at the top of English, and European, soccer without access to his fortune.

Only a last-minute tweak of the government license that is allowing Chelsea to continue operating prevented even more hardship: A cap on the maximum amount the club could spend on staging games was lifted on Sunday to allow all sections of the stadium to be staffed for what could be the last sold-out game until a new owner can be found.

Unless the government loosens the financial straitjacket, team officials said privately, the club may not be able to fulfill its remaining schedule. New, unexpected crises have made its day-to-day operations only harder.

Corporate credit cards, used by staff members to conduct regular business, were suspended as banks considered the impact that doing business with Chelsea might have on them. Some freelance staff members and consultants were told by Chelsea that they could no longer be paid. Players have asked their agents if their paychecks will continue if the money runs out. Others have resigned themselves to leaving, since Chelsea is, for the moment, forbidden from signing them to new contracts.

On Sunday, the only merchandise available to fans was provided by hawkers outside the stadium grounds. Inside the arena, some bars and restaurants were available only to fans who had paid for hospitality before the government imposed its sanctions last week on Abramovich as punishment for his ties to the Kremlin and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The Premier League, meanwhile, was facing its own hard questions. Among them: How could a figure like Abramovich — whose links to Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, were hardly a secret — be allowed to enjoy the trappings of fame and popularity associated with owning one of its clubs, a rare sporting asset of global significance, for so long?

Sunday’s guest, Newcastle United, arrived with its own baggage. Only a few months ago, the Premier League had approved the sale of Newcastle — over the opposition of human rights groups — to a group led by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund. In the months since, the volume of questions about Saudi human rights abuses and its own war against a neighbor has grown only louder.

From a Premier League perspective, then, the timing of the Chelsea-Newcastle matchup — a collision of its two most pressing public relations concerns — could not have been worse. On Saturday, the league, which had allowed arms dealers and human rights abusers to own teams, disqualified an owner for the first time, ruling that Abramovich — despite his 19 years as an owner — no longer had the right to serve as a club director. On the same day, Saudi Arabia confirmed that it had put to death 81 people, the kingdom’s largest mass execution in years.

Among the thousands who had turned up to see their favorite teams, though, there was little talk of sanctions and death sentences. Newcastle had fans dancing in the streets in October to celebrate the sale to Saudi Arabian interests, hoping the kingdom’s wealth could quickly push the club back up the standings alongside rivals like Chelsea. On Sunday, a few of their number strolled into Stamford Bridge taunting their rivals and singing, “We’re richer than you.”

After the match, Newcastle’s manager, Eddie Howe, shut down any questions related to his ownership’s human rights record, including the executions on Saturday and Saudi Arabia’s ongoing war in neighboring Yemen. Likewise, Chelsea’s Thomas Tuchel did his best to steer away from politics. Comparing Newcastle and Chelsea, he said, would not change the situation Chelsea finds itself in. “I don’t want to point the finger,” he said.

Yet even as the British government said oligarchs like Abramovich had “the blood of the Ukrainian people on their hands,” Chelsea’s fans continued to be fiercely loyal to the man that pushed them to the top of world soccer.

They had chanted Abramovich’s name during a moment of silence for the victims of war in Ukraine during a game earlier this month, and then did so again at Norwich on Thursday night, only hours after the sanctions against him — and Chelsea — were announced. Some did so again on Sunday, though the vast majority refrained from feting the man whose wealth had bought them so much success.

Newcastle may be best placed to profit from Chelsea’s crisis, and it has already reaped the dividends of its new Saudi wealth. The team spent more in the January transfer window than any other club in Europe, and it arrived at Chelsea unbeaten in seven games — a run of form that has allowed its fans to set aside concerns about relegation out of the Premier League for next season.

Instead it is now Chelsea that could be facing dramatic decline — and even financial ruin — if it can no longer continue to afford one of the biggest payrolls in soccer. Since he arrived, Abramovich has used about $2 billion of his personal fortune to supplement Chelsea’s accounts. Now that the gusher of money has been turned off, Chelsea must find £28 million (about $36 million) a month from its now limited income stream.

Reveling in that uncertainty, Newcastle fans reminded their hosts of their newfound status at regular intervals during the game. “Chelsea are bankrupt everywhere they go” was just one of several chants directed at Chelsea supporters. Chelsea fans retorted that it was only a matter of time before the British government would come for them.