Premier League now investigate PSR deadline day transfers between certain clubs…

The Premier League is to scrutinise a number of transfers that were made as the 30 June 2024 PSR deadline approached.

This was the final day for most clubs of their 2023/24 season accounting period.

It was also the final day of the latest three-year PSR accounting period (1 July 2021 to 30 June 2024) when a Premier League club can’t have lost more than £105m (though not all club expenditure counts towards PSR losses).

The last four days of June 2024 saw around a quarter of a billion spent on Premier League players.

Much/most of that money was spent on players from clubs that were speculated to be in danger of breaking PSR.

A number of these deals seeing deals back and forth between these clubs claimed to be in PSR danger.

The six clubs regularly speculated about with regards to the latest PSR deadline were Aston Villa, Chelsea, Leicester, Newcastle United, Everton, and Nottingham Forest.

The Guardian broke the story and commenting on what the Premier League is looking at:

The academy products Tim Iroegbunam and Lewis Dobbin were exchanged in separate deals between Everton and Villa for a reported £9m each. Then Villa, who recorded a £119m loss last season, sold the teenager Omari Kellyman to Chelsea for a reported £19m, with the Dutch defender Ian Maatsen moving the other way for £37.5m. Forest spent more than £30m on Newcastle’s 21-year-old midfielder Elliot Anderson while Chelsea completed the signing of Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall for £30m from Leicester.

There is no suggestion any of the clubs involved have breached any rules, although Maheta Molango, the chief executive of the Professional Footballers’ Association, has described the loophole as “nonsensical”.

“The clubs have been very clever to say that these are not swaps, they are just individual deals signed off pretty soon after one another,” said the football finance expert Kieran Maguire. “Generally speaking there’s nothing to stop them saying, ‘I’ve got a player who you want and vice versa. We think that your player is worth £5m more than mine, so we could agree that the prices are £10m and £15m or we could agree that they are £25m and £30m’. Either way, you get that extra £5m.

“That appears to be a driving force in relation to these transfers. And there is no such thing as a genuine price: Brighton have paid £32m for Yankuba Minteh from Newcastle and they have got no PSR issues. So if that’s the price for a 19-year-old, it could be argued that some the other deals don’t look overstated. But he has just had a spectacular season with Feyenoord.”

“Any transaction for more than £1m is potentially subject to a fair market value review,” said Maguire. “But the people trying to agree what a fair price for a player have got an almost impossible job. There’s no list prices for them because they are all unique – it’s not like buying an iPad.”

Nonetheless, the Premier League’s director of governance is expected to investigate some of the recent transfers having warned that clubs may be “requested to provide information and evidence to assist determination of whether the transaction should be considered as being conducted at arm’s length”. If not, “a fair market value assessment of the transfer to determine the value the transaction can be approved at will take place”.’

My conclusions

Reading the above, it sounds to me like the Premier League can look at whatever they like with regard to these transfers, but the reality is nothing they can do, even if they suspect there has been some ‘sharp practice’ at play.

This is not like when it is Associated Party Transactions, with common ownership of the buying and selling club.

As for the Newcastle United deals in particular.

Well, Yankuba Minteh went to Brighton and no player came the other way, plus no reason why the Seagulls would be doing us any favours. Also, what price do you put on potential?

Which brings me to Elliot Anderson.

If Newcastle United have sold him for £30m+, is that really a transfer fee that can be questioned in this day and age?

I think he is a really good prospect and very unlucky with injuries this past season, he was excellent in pre-season during the summer 2023 and Newcastle’s top scorer in those friendlies.

Put it this way, I don’t remember a single outsider saying anything doubtful about Newcastle United loaning Lewis Hall, with more or less cast-iron criteria that would make it £28m permanent signing now (July 2024). At that point, he was only 18 and had made 12 first-team appearances for Chelsea.

Elliot Anderson has made 54 first-team appearances for Newcastle United and at the very least, looks a Premier League player.

That Anderson deal also saw on the same day Odysseas Vlachodimos joined Newcastle United. The 30-year-old started only seven first-team days for Forest last season after arriving from Benfica and is Greece’s number one. I saw last summer it was reported he cost Forest £8m, so if that’s the case (or indeed whatever transfer fee he cost a year ago), then just so long as Newcastle isn’t claiming the keeper has increased in value compared to summer 2023, I don’t see what anybody can find fault with that fee.