Based on a busy early summer of player trading between a small group of clubs before the 30 June cut-off – as well as football finance experts’ analysis of recent accounts – the clubs closest to PSR limits were understood to be Leicester City, Aston Villa, Newcastle United and Everton.
Many of the deals before the 30 June deadline involved home-grown academy product players, as they represent ‘pure profit’ in PSR terms.
For example, a player signed for £80m on a four-year contract is essentially worth £20m for every year they play at the club due to amortisation of the transfer fee.
But selling an academy product – who typically cost little or, in most cases, nothing – can be included in one year’s reporting and is considered ‘pure profit’.
Villa were particularly active before the accountancy deadline, selling Brazil midfielder Douglas Luiz to Juventus and Omari Kellyman to Chelsea, with Blues defender Ian Maatsen moving in the opposite direction for a fee of about £35m.
They needed to sell players to comply with the rules, having reported a loss of £119.6m in their accounts to 31 May 2023.
Newcastle boss Eddie Howe said the club reluctantly let youngsters Elliot Anderson and Yankuba Minteh join Nottingham Forest and Brighton respectively in order to remain compliant.
-Howe referenced the club’s summer transfer dealings in his news conference on Tuesday morning, when asked if the club was in danger of breaching PSR.
“No, I don’t believe we are [on that list],” he said.
“The breaching of financial fair play for us was something that we fought really hard against in the summer to not be in that position – and that’s why the departures of the ones we didn’t want to happen had to happen.”
Chelsea, who spent £747m in the 2022-23 season alone, sold their women’s team to the club’s parent company on June 28 2024 – two days before the end of their financial year – in order to boost their finances.
The Blues’ sale of two hotels next to Stamford Bridge to a sister company for a fee of £76.5m was cleared by the Premier League in September.
