Enough is enough. As Newcastle United fans, we’ve watched in disbelief and simmering anger as the Premier League’s so-called “Profit and Sustainability Rules” (PSR) have been applied with all the consistency of a jelly on a trampoline.
It’s a system that’s not about fairness or sustainability, but about protecting the established elite and maintaining the “cartel six’s” stranglehold on the game. It’s time PSR was binned, and we returned to a system where owners can back their clubs with genuine fresh investment.
We’ve seen the blatant hypocrisy unfold before our very eyes. Take Chelsea for instance. While we’re being told to trim our squad, watch our spending and only sign off ‘fit and proper deals’ that are constantly scrutinised, they’re playing financial Jenga with their balance sheet. Selling hotels to themselves, offloading the women’s team to an associated company for inflated figures – it’s a masterclass in exploiting loopholes.
Football finance expert Kieran Maguire has highlighted how these “related party transactions” allow clubs to artificially boost their revenue and create more “headroom” under PSR. It’s not ingenuity, it’s underhanded accounting that makes a mockery of the very spirit of the rules.
Then there’s Leicester City. While facing a potential points deduction for a PSR breach, they somehow navigated a complex appeals process, exploiting a jurisdictional loophole to initially avoid punishment for their 2022/23 accounts. While the Premier League has since tried to close that specific avenue, the very fact it existed, and was successfully exploited, screams of a system not fit for purpose.
And let’s not forget Manchester United, a club seemingly immune to the same pressures. Kieran Maguire has pointed out another glaring flaw: PSR, in its current form, applies predominantly to British entities. Man Utd’s listing on the New York Stock Exchange allows their financial scrutiny to be fragmented.
Losses can be conveniently distributed across different business arms, with a UK-based company like “Red Football” reportedly showing £100m less in losses compared to Man Utd’s consolidated figures. It’s a loophole that allows them to continue spending big, while smaller clubs, or those without such intricate corporate structures, are left scrambling.
This isn’t fairness. This isn’t competition. This is a rigged game.
While these clubs dance through financial minefields, perfectly legal on paper but morally questionable in spirit, Newcastle is left to play by a stricter, more damaging set of rules. We’ve had to sell promising talents like Elliot Anderson and Yankuba Minteh just to ensure we stay on the right side of these punitive regulations. Imagine the frustration for Eddie and his team, having to potentially sacrifice future stars, whilst others are pulling financial stunts to keep their spending sprees alive.
We’re sticking to the rules, trying to build something sustainable and exciting, only to be constantly hampered by a system that rewards those who find the cleverest ways to circumvent it.
PSR, in its current iteration, is nothing more than a tool to protect the existing order. It suffocates ambition, penalises legitimate investment, and allows the established “cartel six” to maintain their dominance by making it incredibly difficult for any emerging club to genuinely challenge them.
They won’t scrap it, of course, because that would jeopardise their comfortable monopoly. It would open the door for clubs with ambitious, wealthy owners to truly compete on a level playing field.
We need to go back to common sense. If an owner has the funds, and can back their club, they should be allowed to spend what they want. Let the market decide, not an arbitrary set of rules that are riddled with loopholes and applied with a baffling inconsistency. The Premier League should be a meritocracy, not a closed shop. It’s time to bin PSR and let football truly flourish