How The New Premier League Rules Affect Your Club

The Premier League have changed the rules for next season and it's going to affect everyone

That's right, they're making things fairer across the board. Nah, just kidding. The rich are getting richer and everyone else is screwed. Or are they

I'm Matt Froelich and here's how the Premier League's new rules affect your club

For years, the Premier League's financial rules, PSR, were about one thing, losses

How much could you lose over a three-year period before finding yourself in hot water

That ruling is now gone. And in its place for next season, the powers that be have introduced the squad cost ratio, SCR for short

which dictates that a club can spend 85% of their revenue on player wages, agent fees and transfers

On paper, it sounds like a sort of American salary cap, which it is

But since the total revenue differs wildly from club to club, it's sort of like they've already picked the winners and losers

To bring this new ruling into the realms of understanding for you, I've divided the Premier League into three separate groups

First, let's look at the untouchables, the big boys, the ones who stand to benefit and further solidify their position at the top of the English game

Now, according to the Deloitte Football Money League, six out of the top 10 highest revenue earning teams worldwide are in the Premier League

No surprises here. Man City, Arsenal, Man United, Liverpool, Chelsea and Spurs

But let's take Man United from last year as an example for this, where they finish 15th in the Premier League

85% of their £689m revenue leaves them with £585m to spend next year on their squad

If you take away their current wage bill of around £162m, you get a whopping £423m to improve their squad in the transfer window

And this is all because they've already got the money-generating stadium, worldwide fan base and global sponsorship deals

It's got very little to do with anything they've earned from finishing 15th

As long as they generate revenue, they are legally allowed to outspend everyone else

Forever. Unless they end up like Spurs in a sweat-inducing relegation battle that could see all of this fall apart

But that is a whole other topic and why I picked United as an example

Moving on, we have the second group, the dreamers, the overachievers, the ones who want to break the status quo

Aston Villa, Newcastle, even Everton. They're the ones who will fall into the trap that has been set, paying the price of ambition

Because if you only play in English football, your limit is 85%

But the moment you qualify for the Champions League, the limit drops to 70% to match UEFA rules

Think about how insane that is. To compete with the best in Europe you need a bigger squad and better players But the rules are now rewarding your success by slashing your spending power by 15 take aston villa for example with their revenue last year of 390 million pounds

their spending limit at 85 is 331 if they qualify for the champions league that drops to 70

around 273 million they've just lost 58 million quids worth of spending power for the crime

of being good at football and that's the trap you spend big you reach the top only to realize the

rules have been designed to make sure you can't afford to stay there they'll be forced to sell

their best player just to meet the 70% cap all whilst trying to stay competitive in order to earn

more in order to be able to spend more if Villa managed to bring in millions of fans worldwide and

build a new stadium after one season in the Champions League that would solve it but yes I

realize how utterly ridiculous and improbable that sounds. The reality of this second group

is that teams can push for a successful season when the timing's right and they are still well

enough equipped to absorb a few poor seasons, maybe a lower to mid-table finish, without sliding

into complete oblivion. The same can't be said though for our final group, the newly promoted

clubs each season or those slightly smaller sized clubs with 15 to 25,000 seater stadiums. For them

the 85% rule isn't just a beware of the dog sign it's a no ball games allowed sign just don't even

bother playing this is because they simply do not have the infrastructure fan base or ultimately

revenue to compete or consistently develop over the course of a few seasons how many times have

we seen a club punching well above their way only to crumble under the pressures of having to build

a squad for europe the following season on a smaller budget it always affects their league form

wolves had it a few years ago bernie is southampton a few years before that

leicester of course look at them now even nottingham forest in this current campaign

it's tough you need to go above and beyond in your recruitment to survive or compete whichever

way you look at it but if that happens and you overspend then you enter dangerous territory

and the looming question of what exactly is the punishment do you want more from 442 then why not

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in the description and sign up with your email. Well on the 1st of March each year assessments are

done. It is a footballing judgment day where if a club has failed to comply with the SCR rules

they find themselves in the amber zone. A 30% zone on top of their 85% so up to 115. Then we'll see

the club find according to how much they have overspent. It will also see their average zone reduced by the same amount for the following season So if they 15 over next year they have 15 less to go over For most clubs even the smaller ones fines are annoying but realistically

they're manageable in the multi-million pound figures of the modern game. The annoying thing

isn't only that they're being taxed for being ambitious, but the money they have to pay gets

divided amongst the rest of the clubs that are within the rules. So the smaller clubs are

overspending to reach the bigger teams, and then they'll have to pay them a tax for doing so

But that is not the end of the world. What is the end of the world is entering the red zone

This is when on March 1st, a club is deemed to have spent more than 115% of their revenue

And an immediate sporting sanction is handed down in the form of a fixed six-point deduction

which increases by one point for every 6.5 million spent over the red threshold

And like I said, this is in real time. This will apply to the league table immediately, potentially throwing the title race or relegation battle into absolute mayhem

Now, at this point, you may think it sounds all very doom and gloom. How on earth could everyone agree to this

Well, the truth is they didn't. Well, not everyone. During the meeting in November 2025 that confirmed these rule changes, each Premier League team had to vote on them

Yes or no, with a minimum of 14 votes needed to see the rule passed

How many did it get? Yep, you guessed it. 14 votes, which meant that six Premier League sides said no

and it is them who I've categorised into a bonus fourth group. They aren't the favourites to go down each year, actually far from it

but they also aren't really expected to consistently push the top eight for a European spot

The six in question, Bournemouth, Brighton, Brentford, Crystal Palace, Fulham and Leeds

Similar sized clubs these days, although historically and stadium wise, I think Leeds can count themselves a little bit bigger than the rest of those names

But why did they say no? Well, although clubs haven't and aren't required to come out and explain themselves

you can piece together bits of the puzzle. Firstly, these clubs are often cited as the most financially efficient in the league

and are praised for achievements on a modest shoestring budget. Their side of it is that SCR rewards size over efficiency

where a poorly run club with a huge stadium can still outspend a well-run club with a small stadium

That's fair enough. Secondly, the old PSR rules allowed these clubs to have peak spending years

Maybe they wanted to go on a big shopping spree after selling a star player. Maybe their form in the first half of the season means January reinforcements are needed to push for Europe or pull away from the relegation zone

They could spend big and then allow for a few leaner years to follow

But it was always about sporting success, pushing them to the next level to achieve big things on the pitch

SCR however is a ridded year by year ratio which is way more restrictive for these clubs with fluctuating income Thirdly they were worried and rightly so about the threshold being exploited and the big clubs just absorbing the fine or even a points deduction because well they can

Also, if one of those teams overspends, the fine gets paid to everyone else, so they'd be giving their rivals more money, like we mentioned

What's interesting though is that they're not the only ones against it either, as UEFA themselves have been showing concern that those Premier League clubs not in Europe with 85% to spend

will hoover up all the talent from around Europe and leave other leagues miles behind in terms of being able to attract top players

And to be fair, it's already kind of happening and the results are clear to see

This season, for the first time ever, a record nine English clubs took part in European competition

and all of them have qualified for the last 16 of their respective tournaments

six in the Champions League. So with that being said, it can't all be bad, can it

The Premier League are obviously hoping that these rules are a deterrent for overspending

meaning the math needs to be mathing and that clubs don't go bankrupt due to

in the words of former lead zoner Peter Rysdale, spending so much and living the dream

But they're also aiming to put emphasis on clubs acting sustainably and putting growth at the top of their priority list

So they can't just turn to a ludicrously rich owner to bail them out of financial trouble

and spend their way to success. For instance, if a relatively low revenue team like Brentford were bought by the richest person on the planet

they still couldn't spend two billion on a squad of superstars. They'd have to earn it first

And from that point of view, it's fair and it kind of makes sense. But let's be honest here

In an ideal world, we'd all want the success of our football teams to be based around their capability to prove it on the pitch

To see all the hard work of the coaches, staff and players at training come to fruition on a matchday, both individually and as a collective

Not because one team has an ultra mega super store inside their ultra mega super stadium

But look at the groupings. The top level get a shield, the ambitious get a ceiling and the small get a tax bill

as for how this will play out next year and in the years to come your guess is as good as mine but

right now it feels like the premier league have mapped out a running race where not everybody

starts on the same line the 85 trap hasn't made football more competitive on the ground level

it's just made the hierarchy legal but the future won't be decided by who has the best manager or

players but by who was already rich before the bank closed that's all for me for today make sure

you buy the latest copy of 442 in store right now where you can catch up of loads of cool stories

from the footballing world um as for squad cost ratio let me know what you think in the comments

are we going to be better off the psr worse off or is the game completely and utterly gone

that's all for me though i'll see you in the next one