There was an air of despair over a handful of Premier League clubs last summer. The financial years were coming to an end in English football’s top division and the pressure was on to make a profit before it was too late. Player sales were a must if a breach of the Profitability and Sustainability Rules (PSR) was to be avoided before June 30.
Newcastle United’s affairs at the time were a microcosm of chaos. They reluctantly agreed to sell Yankuba Minteh, their then teenage winger, to Brighton & Hove Albion for £30m, before sanctioning the departure of homegrown striker Elliot Anderson to Nottingham Forest for £35m.
“We had no other choice,” their head coach Eddie Howe told reporters in October about those two departures. “We couldn’t violate the PSR, couldn’t get a points deduction, and the only two deals we had on the table at the time were the two deals we were doing.”
Newcastle, who had spent £320 million in their first two and a half years under their Saudi Arabian owners, did not want to sell either Minteh or Anderson. You wouldn’t suspect that they wanted to pay Forest £20m for Odysseas Vlachodimos, a third-choice goalkeeper who had not yet played for them in the Premier League under Howe. However, Anderson’s sale was dependent on Forest, who had breached PSR last season and came close again and got something in return, leaving Newcastle with nowhere to turn.
Newcastle did not want to lose Minteh to Brighton (Mike Hewitt/Getty Images)
Others were at it too: Aston Villa, Everton, Chelsea and Leicester City all forged their own mutually beneficial deals to pursue compliance. Nearly £200m, most of it pure profit, was jointly banked by these six clubs in the final weeks of June and Tuesday brought confirmation that the trade had been worth it.
A 14-day review period of the 2023-2024 accounts and PSR calculations had raised no red flags within the Premier League and, unlike last January when Everton and Forest were both charged, there was no reason for disciplinary action.
Leicester’s case remains more complex than others, with the Premier League still believing they are on the hook for at least one charge, amid the back and forth legal challenges, but 2024, the year of the asterisk, has left its mark .
The three PSR charges heard last season – two for Everton and one for Forest – resulted in a combined deduction of 12 points, the kind of shock therapy that was difficult to ignore.
It may never be known how close Newcastle and others came to exceeding their spending threshold last season. Clubs’ 2023-2024 accounts, due at the end of March, will give us clues, but the lack of transparency in the PSR process makes it difficult to provide fully informed analysis.
Clubs should instead be judged by their actions and those foolish days at the end of June revealed fears that ultimately stemmed from the penalties meted out to Everton and Forest a few months earlier. That threw the entire Premier League into turmoil, increasing the motivation to make a quick profit in the transfer market after the season.
Howe admitted as much: Newcastle did not want to sell Minteh or Anderson. Certainly not both. But as Howe, the frontman of that organisation, accepts, there was “no other option” but to accept £65 million in transfer fees for the duo if a PSR breach was to be avoided.
Was Chelsea that close to the edge? That is unclear, but their compliance was as much due to the sale of two hotels forming part of the wider site of their Stamford Bridge stadium to other companies owned by BlueCo, Chelsea’s parent company, as to the late sale of defender Ian Maatsen to Villa for £37.5 million. Others didn’t have the luxury of real estate transactions that boosted their numbers.

Maatsen’s transfer to Villa helped Chelsea meet PSR, but not as much as the sale of two hotels (Matt McNulty/Getty Images)
PSR still has its vocal detractors, such as Villa co-owner Nassef Sawiris, who told the story Financial times in June that the regulations were restrictive and “not good for football”, but last season there was a warning that overspending would still entail sports costs. Everton and Forest became the bad boys that no one wanted to emulate.
That was evident with the sudden moves in June, and the caution has continued into this season.
Manchester United, traditionally one of English football’s strongest financial forces, have made it clear they have little room to strengthen the hand of new head coach Ruben Amorim after heavy losses in recent times. Newcastle also remain under financial constraints, with only around £60 million spent this season. Villa’s net spend for the season, meanwhile, stood at around £26 million going into the current winter transfer window.
Those three clubs could have spent more, but learned last season that penalties would be inevitable in the long term.
It would not be appropriate to congratulate the Premier League on its strong governance when 115 allegations of financial misconduct still hang over four-in-a-row title winners Manchester City and Leicester’s case remains unresolved, but it became clear last season that the rules had to be followed. Unpleasant. Points deductions would be posted for any club that doesn’t follow the rules.
“The Premier League maintains that the only appropriate sanction is a sporting sanction in the form of a points deduction,” it argued in Everton’s first PSR hearing, which initially handed down a 10-point penalty, later reduced to six on appeal . That exact phrase was repeated when Forest faced an independent commission.
PSR has its inconsistencies and imperfections, and could well lead to more messy, disjointed transfer activity before the financial years end at the end of June.
But over the past 12 months – and no new charges this week – clubs have made it clear that it is a sanction that must be taken seriously.
(Top Photos: Getty Images)