Premier League has charged LCFC with an alleged breach of PSR

[ClaphamFox]

1 minute ago, urban.spaceman said:

And again

He may well have been. But based on previous cases, six points sounds about right so he's hardly going out on a limb...

[Ric Flair]

I think we could be awarded 12 points and still not be a shoe in for promotion.

[TheGoldenGod]

The video has been uploaded to Talksports Youtube now. The way Simon gets so irate and upset about what we've done and how we've gone around it actually makes me want to defend my club...purely because of the piss it's boiled

[MancFox24]

3 hours ago, urban.spaceman said:

Martin Samuel’s article back in August is a really important read

 

 

The Leicester City bit:

 

One look at spiralling Leicester exposes ugly truth behind the PSR lie

 

Aston Villa will return to the swampy middle and Newcastle United are struggling to become the force they should be, but it is probably the fate of Leicester City that is making fans finally see the truth about Profitability and Sustainability Rules (PSR).

 

Leicester went into this weekend labouring in the bottom half of the Championship. Rules have been introduced so that they could now be deducted points for past financial infringements while down there. Who knows where this ends? Maybe League One, if the spiral cannot be addressed. Leicester made mistakes and have been punished for them; and punished for them; and punished for them. They are a shadow of the club that gave many of us our biggest thrill watching football.

 

Take away the successes of your own team, and what is the greatest achievement you have witnessed in football? For many it would be Leicester winning the Premier League in 2015-16.

 

It wasn’t supposed to happen. “Champions of England, you’ll never sing that,” taunted the supporters of a handful of clubs, and we believed them. We would never see the league won again, unless it was in the colours of an elite participant. And along came Leicester.

 

For one brief, brilliant season, anything truly was possible. Every supporter of a club outside the privileged band remembers how that made them feel. So to see them relegated for the second time since, to see them pursued and penalised for their mistakes, for daring to have ambition, exposes the truth behind the PSR lie.

 

Leicester City players and manager celebrating Premier League victory.

Leicester are a shadow of the title-winning 2015-16 team

 

LAURENCE GRIFFITHS/GETTY IMAGE

 

It is not about debt. It was never about debt. Newcastle, majority-owned by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, would not have debt. This is about investment, ambition, competition. PSR is a barrier to entry, a basic tenet of competition law. Barriers to entry protect incumbent firms and restrict competition in a market.

 

In football’s case it is an incumbent elite, and they have a lot of fans and influencers out there to make their protectionist case, hiding behind dark warnings of bankruptcy or a threat of monopolisation — when the monopolies already exist. But these barriers to entry are working too well, and now people are beginning to see what happens to any club that dares to rise and make a challenge. Villa’s squad has been denuded, before them Wolverhampton Wanderers. Newcastle’s ambition is thwarted at every turn. But Leicester are the ones. Watching that club taken down so dramatically, so soon after delivering the greatest Premier League season, people start to see through the rules.

 

It is no surprise the elite are the biggest supporters of PSR, the ones putting constant pressure on Richard Masters and the Premier League. There are serious gains to be made. And not just preserving places at the top. Take Tottenham Hotspur. Daniel Levy is among the most prominent advocates of PSR. His club are, if not exactly up for sale, certainly open to suggestions. There was talk of interest from Qatar, as always, and it is believed somewhere between £2 billion and £3 billion is the magic number. That, however, is predicated on Tottenham being a top-six presence, and regular Champions League participants. Over the past decade, if we include this season, Tottenham have played in the Champions League in six of ten campaigns.

 

Yet what if Newcastle were unfettered? Could Tottenham make a claim to regular Champions League football in the coming years if Newcastle joined Liverpool, Arsenal, Manchester United, Chelsea and Manchester City in financially outmuscling them? Would Villa, Nottingham Forest and others now outside the elite become bolder spenders, given the chance? Newcastle, without restraint, might make Tottenham an upper mid-table proposition for buyers rather than one of the elite. And that might wipe as much as £1 billion off what the Enic Group is believed to want for Tottenham.

 

All the more reason for the wealthy establishment to support PSR. Not as a barrier to debt, but a barrier to entry. And at last people are realising. Once again, we should be grateful to Leicester.

 

And from July (I think)

 

Leicester victims of PSR quadruple jeopardy

Leicester City would like to make a managerial change; that much seems obvious. Ruud van Nistelrooy won four league matches in his tenure, two of which came after relegation, against teams that, like Leicester, were already down. They cannot move, however, because of Profitability and Sustainability Rules (PSR). Leicester already fear a vindictive 12-point deduction in the Championship next season, and paying off Van Nistelrooy would make their financial predicament worse. Any player who may be considered an asset, such as goalkeeper Mads Hermansen, will have to be sold, weakening them further. Russell Martin, considered a managerial target, has now taken the job at Rangers, and there is a worry that two other candidates, Danny Röhl, of Sheffield Wednesday, and Sean Dyche, may be lost to them too.

 

Bournemouth v Leicester City, Premier League - 25 May 2025

Leicester may be stuck with Van Nistelrooy next season as they look to navigate PSR rules

GRAHAM HUNT/PROSPORTS/SHUTTERSTOCK

Leicester erred with Van Nistelrooy, and that’s what PSR does — it cements mistakes in place, with no second chances. So Leicester will be relegated, suffer a points deduction in the league below and conduct a fire sale of what little talent the club do possess, while being stuck with a manager who has shown little aptitude for the job. No one is arguing the club have not been run poorly, but PSR ensures they get no opportunity to change course. This isn’t double jeopardy, it’s quadruple jeopardy. It is almost as if the Premier League won’t rest until it kills a club, just to show it can.

 

I maintain the position I’ve had since 2023. The club handled it terribly and repeatedly made mistakes. The Premier League and EFL are corrupt, their financial rules are anticompetitive and are designed to entrap and repeatedly punish any club who tries to compete. The club is absolutely right to fight this in the courtroom and the longer they have to do that, the more it reinforces my argument about these leagues being corrupt and anticompetitive. 

I'd have more sympathy for this argument if we'd invested the money sensibly. Instead, we gave out contracts like we were dealing in Monopoly money and ended up with players on contracts well above what they were worth. Our wages to turnover ratio was too high when we were successful, so when we missed out on Europe by finishing 8th, we were left with a squad that needed refreshing but with no funds to do it. Understandably the fringe players who were on ridiculous contracts refused to move, our most valuable players in Tielemans and Maddison refused to sign new deals and we've spiralled ever since. 

 

I have sympathy with the argument that PSR is a barrier to ambition. But it shouldn't take away responsibility from the people negotiating the deals who gave players like Bertrand and Vestegaard huge contracts well beyond our means and what they were worth.

[Foxin_Mad]

It doesnt really matter as this sack of shit team are not going to be anywhere near promotion. The only concern perhaps is relegation. 

[Les-TA-Jon]

15 minutes ago, MancFox24 said:

I'd have more sympathy for this argument if we'd invested the money sensibly. Instead, we gave out contracts like we were dealing in Monopoly money and ended up with players on contracts well above what they were worth. Our wages to turnover ratio was too high when we were successful, so when we missed out on Europe by finishing 8th, we were left with a squad that needed refreshing but with no funds to do it. Understandably the fringe players who were on ridiculous contracts refused to move, our most valuable players in Tielemans and Maddison refused to sign new deals and we've spiralled ever since. 

 

I have sympathy with the argument that PSR is a barrier to ambition. But it shouldn't take away responsibility from the people negotiating the deals who gave players like Bertrand and Vestegaard huge contracts well beyond our means and what they were worth.

And we've had a fair bit of time since 2021 to course correct - and yet have since signed Souttar, Kristiansen, Coady, Edouard, Ayew, Skipp, De-Cordova Reid, Coulibaly as standout terrible deals. 

[sly1]

Get it done ,let's move on ffs

[Pliskin]

4 hours ago, davieG said:

I'd rather wait until January before writing Marti off even then it depends if they can shift the dross and recruit some decent replacements.

I’ve written him off already, 5 wins in 16 is it? Is hideous. There are shortcomings in this team, but it’s better than that….. he’s the wrong fit for me, and he won’t ever work unless he gets essentially a whole new team. Which won’t happen. So we need a manager in my opinion that will work the the teams skillset, and develop from there.

[VLC86]

9 hours ago, Trav Le Bleu said:

Not defending the club particularly, but surely the reason we got a poor manager was because we had the deduction looming over us? Same for player signings.

 

Had the charges been sorted during close of season, as they should be for anyone (doing it mid-season is just ridiculous), then I think we'd have been able to recruit a better standard than we did.

 

So, maybe we did break the rules. Sort it out then!

We had only played about 11 games when Ruud joined and were we not outside the bottom 3? Obvious to anyone watching we were royally ****ed but still.

[MPH]

4 hours ago, ClaphamFox said:

He may well have been. But based on previous cases, six points sounds about right so he's hardly going out on a limb...

 

for me the concern isn’t just the losses we accumulated, it’s also the fact we failed to produce our financial records by the time we were supposed to.. people are calculating point deductions based just on the losses, but they’ll look seriously at the other charges too, I’d imagine. I’m sticking with the  9 points I thought sever months ago

[Fox forever]

2 minutes ago, MPH said:

 

for me the concern isn’t just the losses we accumulated, it’s also the fact we failed to produce our financial records by the time we were supposed to.. people are calculating point deductions based just on the losses, but they’ll look seriously at the other charges too, I’d imagine. I’m sticking with the  9 points I thought sever months ago

We had no requirement to supply our accounts until March 25,  3 months after when PL wanted them. When the independent commissions ruled in March 25 we were under PL jurisdiction for period ending June 24 we supplied them straight away. That is our defence 

[ClaphamFox]

12 minutes ago, MPH said:

 

for me the concern isn’t just the losses we accumulated, it’s also the fact we failed to produce our financial records by the time we were supposed to.. people are calculating point deductions based just on the losses, but they’ll look seriously at the other charges too, I’d imagine. I’m sticking with the  9 points I thought sever months ago

I suspect we’ll strongly contest the other charges and even if we are found guilty of submitting accounts late, a fine is far more likely than an additional points deduction.

[TeamRocket]

So when man city getting done?

[Fox forever]

17 minutes ago, TeamRocket said:

So when man city getting done?

Who knows but like us need to be found guilty first 

[Les-TA-Jon]

1 hour ago, Pliskin said:

I’ve written him off already, 5 wins in 16 is it? Is hideous. There are shortcomings in this team, but it’s better than that….. he’s the wrong fit for me, and he won’t ever work unless he gets essentially a whole new team. Which won’t happen. So we need a manager in my opinion that will work the the teams skillset, and develop from there.

Don’t want to derail the thread, but is it? 
How much better would we be with some other manager? A few more wins here or there? I doubt we’d be top or anything. 
 

any other manager still has to contend with total lack of goalscorers, imbalanced squad full of a bunch of wantaway/stale/unmotivated players. 

[MPH]

1 hour ago, ClaphamFox said:

I suspect we’ll strongly contest the other charges and even if we are found guilty of submitting accounts late, a fine is far more likely than an additional points deduction.

 

normally, I’d agree with you… it feels like they are desperate to pin something on us. We’ve squirmed out of a few things , last couple of years..

[gurru991]

I could live with a six point deduction & feel that a playoff spot would still be possible if the club made a couple of decent transfers in the Winter window. It's painfully obvious that we need goal scorers if we are going to win any games.

[Pliskin]

7 minutes ago, Les-TA-Jon said:

Don’t want to derail the thread, but is it? 
How much better would we be with some other manager? A few more wins here or there? I doubt we’d be top or anything. 
 

any other manager still has to contend with total lack of goalscorers, imbalanced squad full of a bunch of wantaway/stale/unmotivated players. 

It depends on what type of manager you have and their ability to manage their staff. 
 

Enzo was able to turn the heads of players who wanted away. It’s how you appeal to their desires, if they can contribute, but want away, you can sell it as an opportunity for them to play themselves to another club. 
 

It’s down to your management style, no matter how demotivated you are, the right coach can turn you around….. 

 

As I’ve said, it’s my opinion that Marti is trying to get the team to play to his philosophy, and not on a way that suits the profile of the players. 
 

Nothing will change, we won’t get any better, and the performances on the pitch rest solely on Marti’s head. The slow laborious buildup, the lack of desire to get the ball to the wide players and isolate their fullbacks…. The lack of chances created despite having two of the best wide players in the league. There’s a lot wrong with this team yes, but there’s also a lot of this team that have gotten out of this league fairly easily before. 
 

Marti isn’t the right fit… he will eventually be sacked in my opinion, perhaps not until we’ve failed to go up, or until it looks like we’re on the verge of going down. But he will be sacked. 
 

He should have gone after the Norwich game, that was a red herring and the decision not to remove him sooner will come back to bite us. 

[ClaphamFox]

16 minutes ago, MPH said:

 

normally, I’d agree with you… it feels like they are desperate to pin something on us. We’ve squirmed out of a few things , last couple of years..

The PL may be desperate to pin something on us, but fortunately for us it won’t be the PL that decides on the outcome of our case.

[Gamble92]

4 hours ago, TheGoldenGod said:

The video has been uploaded to Talksports Youtube now. The way Simon gets so irate and upset about what we've done and how we've gone around it actually makes me want to defend my club...purely because of the piss it's boiled

Yet he was absolutely fine with Chelsea selling a hotel to themselves by the way 

[1969]

That’s the same Simon Jordan who admitted deliberately breaking the rules by altering the time shown on a fax so that he could register a player signed after the transfer window closed. He just spouts click bait nonsense. 

[Md9]

If we are to just to take a points deduction at this time will that be it ? Would we be more likely to sign some more players in jan( dreaming I know)

it’s getting boring now every time we come up to a transfer window and this shite pops up every time 

[davieG]

2 hours ago, Les-TA-Jon said:

Don’t want to derail the thread, but is it? 
How much better would we be with some other manager? A few more wins here or there? I doubt we’d be top or anything. 
 

any other manager still has to contend with total lack of goalscorers, imbalanced squad full of a bunch of wantaway/stale/unmotivated players. 

Agree, I know it's not been great but we're still only 4 points off of a play-off spot, January cant' come quick enough then we'll see how serious Top is for change and how Marti copes with a couple of players that suits his style which from his description is nothing like Enzo.

[wurmer]

2 hours ago, 1969 said:

That’s the same Simon Jordan who admitted deliberately breaking the rules by altering the time shown on a fax so that he could register a player signed after the transfer window closed. He just spouts click bait nonsense. 

One good thing about this whole ridiculous situation, that we’ve pissed off Jordan.

 

teeny tiny microscopic silver lining.

[ClaphamFox]

3 hours ago, Md9 said:

If we are to just to take a points deduction at this time will that be it ? Would we be more likely to sign some more players in jan( dreaming I know)

it’s getting boring now every time we come up to a transfer window and this shite pops up every time 

We haven’t admitted the charges in the hope of leniency and a quick resolution - we’re contesting them. So this is very likely to drag on beyond January.