Which Clubs Have Issues with Profitability and Sustainability Regulations?

Up Against The Wall

Most football fans will have noted down 14th June as the start of the Euros, but it was also the date that the transfer window opened. This is more important than ever this year, as the vast majority of clubs will only have until the end of June to make the player sales that will help them comply with the Premier League’s Profitability and Sustainability Regulations (PSR).

The other side of the coin is the usual football chat around the transfer market with many fans obsessing about who their club is going to buy. Some of them simply cannot understand why their club doesn’t acquire all the players on their wish list, but this is also partly driven by the restrictions imposed by PSR.

Apart from a few accounting nerds, nobody had been overly concerned about PSR in the past, but the regulations began to show their teeth last season, as the Premier League imposed points deductions on both Everton and Nottingham Forest for financial breaches.

The question is which clubs are most at risk in terms of PSR?

To answer this question perfectly, we would need to have access to the accounts for the most recent 2023/24 season, but unfortunately these will not be published for many months.

Approach

However, if we look at the situation in the Premier League as at the end of 2022/23, we should get a reasonable indication of each club’s position, based on the actual results for 2021/22 and 2022/23, i.e. the first two years of the PSR 3-year monitoring period.

We will then estimate the figures for 2023/24 for those clubs that appear to have the largest challenge.

Finally, we shall take a view on how much those clubs will have to raise in player sales this month, having taken into consideration sales to date.