Despite having the wealthiest owners in world football, Newcastle have found time and time again that the Premier League’s spending rules limit and harm almost any sort of transfer activity.
From being forced to sell top prospects and academy stars to emergency measures being brought in to limit third-party partnerships, it’s becoming increasingly obvious that the likes of Newcastle, Aston Villa and Brighton face an increasingly uphill battle to break the ‘Big Six’ monopoly within the world of PSR.
Ahead of the annual meeting between clubs, the Premier League is planning to make a new proposal to block clubs like Newcastle doing exactly what one of our ‘Big Six’ rivals were doing not long ago in a PSR loophole.
All 20 Premier League clubs are set to vote on introducing new legislation banning teams from selling facilities and teams to sister companies in order to comply with strict PSR.
Chelsea notoriously sold their women’s team and two hotels effectively to themselves, and were able to register the returns as income raised.
As a result, the club have been able to continue to spend heavily over the last two seasons without fear of repercussion, despite notorious flops like Pedro Neto and Mykhailo Mudryk costing the the Blues tens of millions of pounds.
Meanwhile last summer, we were forced to sell both Elliot Anderson and Yankuba Minteh in fear of having the PSR book thrown at us for overspending.
[The Times’](https://www.thetimes.com/article/25a9507e-5a5a-4b7f-ae06-8e3082ad34d1?shareToken=d833ea2a046f6a5dae27167bfe29e73c) Martyn Ziegler has noted that a number of clubs believe that changing the rules now is yet another example of the league’s more ‘established’ sides benefitting where others simply aren’t allowed to.
“It is also understood some clubs believe that as Chelsea have previously benefited from the loophole then others should be allowed the same opportunity”, Ziegler wrote.
Typically in votes concerning PSR, APT and other complex financial matters, we vote more in line with the likes of Chelsea, Manchester City, Nottingham Forest and Aston Villa: clubs who feel that they should be able to spend more liberally for the sake of positive competition.
However, for legislation to be ratified, all proposals must be approved by at least 14 of the 20 teams in the league. And a number of clubs, particularly those without wealthy owners like ourselves, could be eager to limit our spending and potential growth and may vote in support of the Premier League proposal.
In the past, motions like these have failed due to ambiguous wording, so ahead of this week’s meeting, we’re likely to see the meaning of this proposal amended before it gets put to a vote.