How the Premier League's financial rules are protecting the 'Big Six' and forced top-four gatecrashers Aston Villa and Newcastle into fire sales

PSR was introduced in 2013 and was essentially the Premier League's response to UEFA establishing Financial Fair Play (FFP) rules, which were rather nobly designed to deal with the existential threat posed to clubs by irresponsible owners and their reckless spending.

Although the systems were similar, the key aspect of the Premier League's regulations was that clubs could not lose more than £105 million over a three-year cycle - which made it a more forgiving framework than UEFA's, as the goal was to ensure that sides that hadn't qualified for Europe would still be able to compete on and off the field in England's top-flight.

Over the years, though, the feeling began to grow that the financial rules were actually hindering some clubs' hopes of climbing the Premier League ladder - not least because the limit on allowed losses was never adjusted for inflation.

The principal problem was that new owners weren't in a position to speculate to accumulate. For example, Newcastle may have been taken over by the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund (PIF) in 2021, but the club's outrageously wealthy owners weren't able to spend anything like as much money on new players as the Premier League's 'Big Six' (Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal, Spurs, Chelsea and Manchester City), because they weren't yet generating anywhere near as much revenue as the English game's traditional superpowers.

As Kieran Maguire of The Price of Football podcast tells GOAL, "Whatever the original intentions of the rules, they have effectively prevented clubs with new ambitious owners from replicating the likes of (former Chelsea owner) Roman Abramovich and (current Manchester City owner) Sheikh Mansour by investing huge sums in players and incurring huge losses to elevate their clubs into serial trophy winners."

This has rather inevitably led to accusations from disgruntled supporters of it being one rule for the 'Big Six' and another for everyone else - and the past summer has done little to alter that perception.

While we're still rather ridiculously awaiting a verdict in the Premier League's case against City for more than 100 breaches of its financial rulings, and Chelsea got away with a farcical fine for secret payments to unregistered agents and third parties over Abramovich-era transfers that played a massive role in their on-field success, both Newcastle and Villa have essentially spent the summer trying to rebuild squads rocked by the loss of key players.

After proving powerless to prevent Alexander Isak leaving for Liverpool last summer (albeit for a British-record fee), PIF were this summer forced to sanction the sale of their best forward, Anthony Gordon, and club captain, Bruno Guimaraes, as well as key midfielder Sandro Tonali. Villa, though, have been even harder hit by departures, departures that cannot be solely attributed to being lower down the food chain than the likes of Arsenal.

Indeed, six of the 11 players that started the historic Europa League final win over Freiburg on May 20 have since been sold "for the good of the club", as Emery put it, and while the exits of veteran duo Emiliano Martinez and Lucas Digne came as little surprise, Villa fans were understandably stunned to see Morgan Rogers snapped up by Chelsea, who haven't even qualified for this season's Champions League and then added insult to injury by sending Alejandro Garnacho in the opposite direction.

The supporters' sense of frustration was only further exacerbated by the sight of Spurs embarking on an unprecedented spending spree after finishing 17th in each of the past two seasons.

It should be noted that the main reason that Villa - who have, along with Newcastle, been among the biggest spenders in world football over the past five years - get themselves into financial bother with both the Premier League and UEFA was the fact that more than 90 percent of their income was going on wages for quite some time, and that they had, arguably until this summer, a well-earned reputation as poor sellers.

At the end of the day, though, for financial and historical reasons, neither Villa nor Newcastle are in a position to stockpile players in anything like the same way as Chelsea or City, who are in a league of their own when it comes to turning a profit on transfer flops.

"Players are like works of art in that they have no agreed value," Maguire points out, "and while UEFA have fairly strict rules that make it difficult for deals to generate profits if two players move in opposite directions within 45 days of one another, the Premier League rules are more relaxed.

"Consequently, some of the transactions we've seen this summer seem quite convenient and book profits for cost-control calculations."

The question now, of course, is whether replacing PSR with SCR and SSR will change anything - or simply maintain the status quo. Once again, the Premier League is offering a little more leeway than UEFA, as it is limiting a club's on-pitch spending to 85% of its football-related revenue and net profit/loss from player sales, whereas the threshold for teams competing in Europe is just 70%.

"We're giving more flexibility for clubs to invest over time to allow the chasing pack to compete," the Premier League's CEO, Richard Masters, explained. “And the squad-cost ratio is designed to do the same. I think we've got a very good competitive balance in the Premier League and I hope the SCR reinforces that.”

Indeed, the Premier League claims that by switching the focus to squad costs, "SCR gives clubs greater freedom to invest in other aspects of their operations" (Villa Park is already undergoing renovations!), while arguing that assessing clubs on a season-by-season basis, rather than over a three-year cycle will "enable more timely enforcement" and "encourage clubs to manage their finances responsibly in real time, rather than relying on longer-term financial balancing."

Interestingly, both Newcastle and Villa voted in favour of the new financial framework, but Crystal Palace chairman Steve Parish says it won't be long before the same people who "moaned about PSR" start taking issue with SCR and SSR. Parish rightly predicted that "with these new rules, selling is going to become a massive thing", which would mean consistently cashing in on academy products to generate pure profit to help with book-balancing - one of the principal gripes with PSR - could become even more commonplace in the coming years.

Parish also argued that the fact that Brentford, Brighton, Bournemouth, Fulham and Leeds, "probably the most aspirational clubs in the country", all voted against SCR should be seen as a massive red flag.

There is no denying, though, that something had to be done, and Masters has quite correctly pointed out that the removal of all cost-control regulations would cause chaos and lead to even greater financial disparity in England's top flight.

"I think our league would look very different without it,” he told talkSPORT. “Premier League clubs don't want that. They want financial regulation, even if they may all have a slightly different version of the financial rules that they would like for themselves. But Villa have been in Europe four times in a row, twice in the Champions League. They won their first trophy for a very long time and I know they would like to kick on from here, but they've had fantastic success.

"Newcastle, obviously a season of change as their players are leaving, but they're signing new ones and they've got a new manager (Matthias Jaissle). Who knows what's going to happen? That's the excitement of the Premier League. But everyone should be able to aspire within the Premier League and I think that has been proven over the last four to five seasons."

Several sets of supporters would doubtless disagree, given the club that has spent the most money on wages has won six of the last nine titles. Indeed, some would even go far as to say that the Premier League has a problem not just with competitiveness at this point, but also credibility.

However, Maguire says that "viewing figures and the tribal nature of fanbases would suggest otherwise. The mentality of most supporters is 'My club, right or wrong'. All that matters to them is winning, meaning how you get there tends to be forgotten quite quickly. Governance and ethical issues have never ended interest in the game, historically speaking."

So, don't expect the Premier League's popularity to be in any way affected by the ongoing cost-control controversy. While some supporters might think it's "corrupt as f*ck", the vast majority of those that follow the 'Big Six' are perfectly happy with the way things are right now - and thus more than likely to remain for the foreseeable future.

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