Transfers in a PSR world | OneFootball

I may get shot down as a conspiracy theorist but if I can imagine this scenario, it doesn’t take much for the boffins/accountants at the big/rich clubs to work this out.

PSR has created a spending ceiling that all clubs must abide by.

We have seen some clever accounting trickery by some clubs but by and large, most teams have to follow it.

If only Newcastle United had seen the future and invested in a whole chain of hotels…

Imagine Newcastle United (or any team not in the “Premier League Big Six”) have a transfer budget of £100m.

It could be more, it could be less, but we are using round numbers for simplicity.

Let’s also say your average Premier League player costs £50m. So, Newcastle can afford two players per transfer window assuming no sales. So far so good.

If I am Chelsea, I am sitting thinking to myself…imagine if we started paying more for players and increasing the value/market price. It wouldn’t impact us much because we have such a huge budget but the other 14 teams (not ‘Premier League Big Six’) suddenly can’t afford two players/window. They can now only afford one.

The perverseness of PSR is that the ‘Premier League Big Six’ clubs all BENEFIT from increased transfer fees by pricing the rest of the league out of top talent.

I said earlier that this goes for any club not in the traditional big six, however, we are really talking specifically about clubs who aspire to be at the top of the tree. The Newcastles and Villas of the world.

PSR not only stops their owners injecting large amounts of cash into the club, it also allows the Chelseas and Liverpools to inflate the transfer market and ensure the others can’t even buy the players they want with the budgets they do have.