It was breathtaking stuff at Anfield on Sunday, enough to reinforce the Premier League‘s position as the global leader in the most popular sport on earth.
Two high-quality teams locked in battle, a pair of generational managers in charge and at the end of it all a result. Not a definitive one but at least a scoreline, a black-and-white conclusion to a day of drama that edged the Premier League title race towards its thrilling conclusion.
Don’t get used to it. At least not the last part, and definitely not in an era where financial fair play – or at least the Premier League’s convoluted version of it – is tearing at the fabric of what makes football so fantastic.
Take the relegation battle. Nottingham Forest have just concluded a hearing into their breach of Profit and Sustainability Rules (PSR), with a verdict due in around a fortnight.
Next week, Everton‘s hearing – into a second PSR breach – begins with the club set to learn their punishment some time in April. All the while games are being played and paying supporters are asked to suspend their disbelief at a Premier League table which will probably shift assuming points deductions follow.
As Sean Dyche has matter-of-factly pointed out: the initial, onerous 10-point deduction affected his players and the atmosphere at Goodison Park, all before an appeal board reduced this punishment to six points. How is that fair?
All of this legal wrangling raises the prospect of a final day relegation battle that might not be so final after all. Imagine this: Forest are deducted three points and go down but after an appeal heard in May (and an appeal feels inevitable given Everton’s success earlier this month), they have a point reinstated and stay up. It’s really not beyond the realms of possibility – and who would find that satisfactory?
Then we move on to the summer and a looming transfer window which looks potentially transformative for Newcastle United, the first of the Premier League’s clubs to signpost the PSR impact back in January when CEO Darren Eales candidly admitted it would likely force them to sell players in the future.
FFP has undoubtedly changed the landscape at St James’ Park and – looking at the team they finished with at Stamford Bridge on Monday – suffocated their season too, given they couldn’t sign the reinforcements they clearly needed in January.
Fans fret Bruno Guimaraes could be sold but really, who knows what sort of financial situation Newcastle are in? Not the fans. Not the paying public. PSR calculations and running totals are secret, after all, even to the extent that the size of Forest’s breach of the rules – which has now been tried by a commission – isn’t publicly known.
We only got to know Everton’s when the judgement was published after the event, and still have no idea how much they breached by in the 2022-23 season.
So, supporters – and it is always the fans who end up with their noses pressed against the glass – are left hanging. There’s no transparency, no running PSR totaliser and no possible way of knowing if your club is being run responsibly or not. Instead that privilege belongs to a few suits and various lawyers and accountants.
The problem Newcastle have isn’t the balance sheet. They have money, they have willing and – most importantly – they have a plan. A decent blueprint at that, good enough for their top executive Dan Ashworth to be poached by Manchester United, who want to copy several aspects of it.
But FFP rules mean even sensible, forward-thinking investment in the right areas is suffocated. As a source told i recently: “The money is there, the business plan towards sustainability is there. But the rules mean it might look like we’re taking a sideways step to take a step forward.”
Sympathy outside St James’ Park will be low on account of their Saudi connections but make no mistake, they are not alone. This season’s sensations Aston Villa could find their wings clipped next. Chelsea seem on the hook next season while the noises around Leicester are gloomy too.
“Football is in danger of becoming more spreadsheet than teamsheet,” football finance expert Kieran Maguire tells i.
“There’s an argument that it’s becoming a disappointing aspect of the game we love. People go to watch football to escape the drudgery of life, to escape admin and numbers and all of the tedium that comes with it but it’s increasingly becoming a very big part of it.”
It is a system in desperate need of reform and indeed change is coming – but not necessarily in a good way. On Tuesday clubs voted in favour of a new set of FFP rules, overhauling the current PSR calculations, which will match UEFA’s regulations by limiting clubs to spending 70 per cent of their revenues if they’re playing in European competition.
For those outside of Europe, it’s likely to be 85 per cent – an acknowledgement of the huge advantage teams playing in the Champions League and even Europa League have in terms of raising revenue.
Maguire warns that they are a major obstacle for clubs with ambitious owners prepared to spend. His rough calculations – and he stresses they are rough, with Newcastle’s revenue set to rocket in 2023-24 – have the Magpies as breaching the new rules by more than £30m based on last year’s accounts.
“The glass ceiling is being reinforced by these rules,” he tells i.
“Having a soft wage cap is far more beneficial to those clubs who are already established as being at the top of the tree in terms of income generation because they finished in the top four of the Premier League, they’re qualifying for Champions League and have global sponsorship deals on the back of that.
“It’s also indicative that owners are looking to make more money out of the game and one of the ways of achieving that is by having greater cost control which means balance of power moves more away from players and their reps and more towards the owners.
“The more profitable and valuable the clubs become, the higher the sale price is.”
No doubt those behind the plans will tell us they are all about sustainability, supporting the pyramid and ensuring competitive balance isn’t disrupted by wild spending.
But when some of the same clubs who voted through the proposals were required to rubberstamp a deal which would have seen the Premier League fund the EFL to the tune of £900m, they rejected it. Unlike the PSR calculation, it’s fairly easy to work out why.
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