At this point Aston Villa and Newcastle United supporters are shouting at the clouds, knowing complaints about a broken system laughing in their face are futile.
The Magpies specifically are being pickpocketed in plain sight, a club with the richest owners in world football selling to a team who have finished 17th in back-to-back seasons.
“Cry more” is the Big Six response, for it is easy to laugh from this position. As in The Sims, the ladder has been removed from the swimming pool, and the powers above are watching those below them tread water.
It is now five years since the Saudi Arabia-backed takeover and Newcastle remain far behind Tottenham Hotspur in the pecking order because the restraints in place may never allow them to get ahead.
At this rate, Newcastle are even going backwards. Sandro Tonali joining Tottenham after Anthony Gordon departed for Barcelona means £169m to reinvest, but it will be be difficult to attract players who view joining them as anything but a stepping stone to bigger things – or even Tottenham.
That Tonali was desperate to join the north London club, as The i Paper reported, is a damning indictment on the Newcastle project, which has stalled on the pitch and is struggling off it.
A horrendous summer transfer window last year did not help, but going into a new season fishing for Gordon and Tonali replacements is a sorry starting point for a club with ambitions of winning the Premier League by 2030.
And while Spurs take their summer spend north of £230m – having also signed Mateus Fernandes for £85m from West Ham and Jan Paul van Hecke for £52m from Brighton – recent rule changes and fines suggest both Newcastle and Villa cannot spend anywhere near as freely.
Uefa fined Newcastle £5.2m for breaching its financial rules, while Villa were fined £19.4m, with £12.9m of that amount suspended provided they decrease their squad cost ratio (SCR) going forward.
SCR is the new three-letter acronym for Newcastle and Villa fans to roll their eyes at in the Premier League, as it is replacing profitability and sustainability rules (PSR).
It also explains Spurs’ ability to dig deep into their pockets. “They’ll be outspending, you’d imagine, every team from at least eighth down,” football finance expert Rob Wilson, professor of applied sport finance at the University Campus of Football Business, told The i Paper this week.
Wilson also said in May that Villa are not as desperate to sell as they have been in recent years, but there is no chance, like Spurs, of them spending £100m on one player – let alone £177m on two.
All this despite, in the last three seasons, Villa picking up 199 league points, the fourth-most, while Newcastle are sixth with 175 and Tottenham are down in 13th with 145.
Flip that around for net spend since 2023-24, where Spurs top the lot, their £528m ahead of the other Big Six clubs while Newcastle are 11th (£110m) and Villa, remarkably, are down in 21st (£14m).
Villa have therefore won 54 more points and spent £415m less on incomings than Tottenham in the last three years.
In that time West Ham, Brighton and Nottingham Forest are also among the clubs to have spent more on players than Villa, who continue to fight in the face of these restraints thanks to head coach Unai Emery.
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Another Champions League campaign awaits, too, but the sense they have reached their ceiling under the Spaniard – especially after finally ending their trophy drought in Istanbul – is difficult to shake given they have been flying close to the sun for three-and-a-half seasons.
A drastic drop-off would be a surprise, but sustaining this level is difficult. In Emery they trust, but losing Morgan Rogers – whom they want £130m for this summer – would put them in a similar situation to Newcastle.
And whether it is this summer, next summer, or the summers to follow, the Big Six will only continue to poach from those below them even if they are above them. That is just how it works now. Newcastle and Villa know their place, and are at pains to fight it.
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