Premier League clubs struggling to comply with Profitability and Sustainability Rules (PSR) – such as Manchester United, Newcastle and Aston Villa – will have an extra 10 days to offload players before the 30 June deadline after they unanimously agreed to open the transfer window early this summer.
In a significant change brought about by Fifa’s decision to open an “exceptional registration window” ahead of the Club World Cup, the Premier League have opted to operate two transfer windows this summer.
The first window will open on Sunday 1 June and close on Tuesday 10 June before closing briefly and reopening on Monday 16 June. The second transfer window will run as normal before closing on Monday 1 September.
The Premier League have to shut the window for almost a week in the middle of June due to Fifa regulations, which permit domestic leagues to allow transfers for a maximum of 89 days each summer. The annual limit is 16 weeks with the Premier League window also opening for four weeks in January.
All 20 Premier League clubs voted unanimously in favour of having two transfer windows at a meeting in Mayfair on Thursday.
In doing so club executives went against the wishes of their own technical directors by deciding to keep this summer’s transfer window open until 1 September.
The i Paper has learned that at a meeting of top-flight technical directors last month, 19 out of 20 agreed with a proposal to shut the window early this summer on 14 August, two days before the start of the season, but they have been overruled.
While the technical directors are understood to have concluded that closing the window before the start of the season was preferable for footballing reasons, improving player morale and the cohesion of their squad, club executives were reluctant to move out of alignment with the rest of Europe for financial reasons.
The Premier League have previously opted to shut their transfer window early ahead of the 2017-18 campaign in an experiment which was not deemed a success.
Most of the top European leagues will also close their windows on 1 September, although the Saudi Pro League window will remain open for a further two weeks, leaving Premier League clubs vulnerable to having players targeted after they can be replaced.
The Premier League window opened on 14 June last year leading to a flurry of transfer activity before the end of the month, the accounting deadline for the 2023-24 season for PSR purposes.
In the last 10 days of June, six clubs with PSR issues – Chelsea, Newcastle, Villa, Leicester, Nottingham Forest and Everton – traded 15 players worth a combined £323m.
This was a significant increase on the £198m of player sales in June 2023, and an even bigger rise on the figure of £75m from 2022.
With this year’s window set to open on 1 June and the above clubs still lacking much PSR headroom, another early flurry of transfer activity is expected, particularly as United have joined them on the brink.
United’s most recent accounts showed losses of £113m for the 23-24 season, taking their three-year aggregate losses to over £300m, and with manager Ruben Amorin wanting to overhaul his underperforming squad the club desperately need to sell players to give them the leeway to buy.
Christian Eriksen and Victor Lindelof will leave Old Trafford on free transfers, Chelsea have an obligation to buy Jadon Sancho unless they pay United a £5m penalty, while Marcus Rashford, Casemiro, Antony, Altay Bayindir, Tyrell Malacia and even Joshua Zirkzee could be made available for sale.
Newcastle and Villa are also expected to be busy this summer so will benefit from the longer window.
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