“W“We want to move to a new system that people can trust and follow,” Premier League chief executive Richard Masters said last week, “and perhaps move away from the normalization of asterisks on league tables and long-standing regulatory issues.”
That’s certainly true. That doesn’t mean we’re going back to the days of unregulated competition and unregulated spending, but any competition is undermined when points earned one week are routinely stripped by the committee the next. It looks quite likely that at least four clubs will have points stripped this season. When the sport is no longer decided on the pitch, that’s a problem.
Leicester are a huge motivator for all clubs who aren’t super clubs. Their 2015-16 Premier League title win is a fantastic example of what can be done with relatively modest spending. It’s a dream that’s been sold: build your team incredibly well, have six players simultaneously having the best seasons of their lives, and enough elite players have a slightly shaky season, and the league is yours.
But there are no fairy tales in football. Leicester’s title win came two seasons after they won the Championship whilst breaching Financial Fair Play rules, for which they were fined £3.1m in 2018. Their story since has become a warning of what can happen for clubs surviving on the budgetary limits.
Leicester’s three big-spending signings in the summer of 2021 all failed to deliver: centre-back Jannik Vestergaard was a regular last season but struggled in his first campaign, forward Patson Daka showed flashes of brilliance but was never a consistent performer and midfielder Boubakary Soumare was loaned out to Sevilla.
The impression at the time was that Leicester, who finished fifth for the second consecutive season, were downsizing because the club’s owner, King Power, whose main business is running airport shops, had run into financial difficulties during the pandemic. That may have been true, but it turns out there were legitimate concerns about compliance with the Premier League’s Profitability and Sustainability Rules (PSR).
The following season, Wesley Fofana and Kasper Schmeichel left the club. Harry Sautter, Wout Faes and Victor Christiansen joined, but it was the first time in nine years that Leicester had paid less for players than they earned back. (That’s not necessarily a bad thing: in 2013-14 they traded Ben Marshall for Riyad Mahrez and made £550,000.) Their net transfer profit for the 2022-23 season was around £22 million, but the result was relegation. To make matters worse, it seems these measures were probably not enough to bring the club into compliance with the PSR.
Wages are the real issue, with the club’s payroll consistently the seventh highest in the Premier League, resulting in losses of £92.5m in 2021-22 and £89.7m in 2022-23. Their wage-to-revenue ratio of 116% is much higher than the two teams who suffered points deductions for PSR breaches – Nottingham Forest (94%) and Everton (92%).
The charges were filed in March and the club’s own accounts also acknowledged that they “may exceed the profitability and sustainability loss limits for the three years to 2023-24”, an admission that has probably influenced their futile attempt to argue that the Premier League has no jurisdiction over them as EFL clubs.
Football finance blog Swiss Rumble estimates that even taking into account the generous allowable deductions, the club could still exceed the three-year loss threshold of £105 million by around £29 million. Swiss Rumble Project Unless Leicester somehow make a £12 million profit this season, it will be another breach.
This suggests that a deduction of at least six points is likely this season. 40 points is rarely needed to stay in the league these days – the traditional target for clubs in danger of relegation – but given the potential deductions, Leicester will probably have to earn that total to avoid relegation. To make matters worse, the threat of further sanctions next season limits the scope for squad strengthening.
So far, the club has seen the departures of Keinan Dewsbury-Hall and Kelechi Iheanacho, the release of Marc Albrighton and Dennis Praet, the loan of Sautter to Sheffield United, the signings of forward Abdul Fatau, centre-back Caleb Okoli and midfielder Michael Goulding, the addition of Bobby Decordova-Reid on a free and the loan of Facundo Buonanotte from Brighton, leaving a net outlay of around £1m.
After newsletter promotion
Fatau, on loan from Sporting Lisbon, was very talented at times last season and was impressive in the FA Cup win over Chelsea, but Decordoba-Reid is the only new signing with any Premier League experience, which must be a concern as the euphoria that often accompanies a promoted team has already worn off following a change of manager and PSR issues.
Given that Enzo Maresca and his patient, possession-based style of football were never universally embraced by Leicester fans, his move to Chelsea may not have been as painful as it might have been, but there is a sense that momentum is being lost, no matter how promising Steve Cooper’s performances at Swansea and Nottingham Forest were.
The Welsh manager’s tactically diverse approach may suit a relegation battle, but it would be a huge mess. All the usual pre-season caveats apply, but Leicester have had a rough season, losing 1-0 to Palermo and Augsburg before being beaten 3-0 by Rennes. Even without the threat of points deductions, they are expected to struggle this season.
But this is not just a Leicester problem; it is a problem with the structure of modern football. Of course they will be punished if they break the rules that other teams have followed, but Masters is certainly right that uncertainty is harmful. Surely a system like Spain’s, which requires teams to present a balanced budget rather than punishing infractions retroactively, would be preferable. Leicester’s past three seasons have been marred by the knowledge that the PSR was closing in on them.
But what’s worse is that it tarnishes their fifth-place finish and gives the impression that non-super clubs must adopt a cavalier attitude to the rules in order to compete.
