All 20 Premier League clubs are reported to have satisfied Profit and Sustainability Rules (PSR) for the 2024–25 season.
A number of managers have spoken of the difficulties of avoiding PSR breaches but, according to The Times, there have been no issues in the accounts of any of the 20 teams in the division.
Both Everton and Aston Villa are understood to have benefited from the sales of their women’s teams to parent companies, following in the footsteps of Chelsea’s controversial decision to do so in June 2024.
Premier League rules permit the use of such sales when recording revenue, although UEFA does not.
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While Villa’s £55 million ($74.2 million) sale of their women’s team to their parent company helped avoid any Premier League breaches, that is not understood to be the case when it comes to UEFA’s own financial regulations.
Unai Emery’s side are said to have broken UEFA’s squad cost rule, which restricts spending on player wages, transfers and agent fees to 70% of their revenue.
Villa’s battle against the squad cost rule has been ongoing for a number of years—they were fined £5.2 million last summer—and another failure to meet the requirements is set to bring about another significant financial punishment.
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PSR regulations have become increasingly unpopular since their introduction in 2025, with the use of ‘loopholes’ like selling women’s teams and other club assets further eroding faith in the system.
As a result, Premier League officials are chasing a change to the rules and squad cost regulations are set to be among the reforms. England’s top flight will initially take a softer stance of restricting spending to 85% of revenue—Villa’s first breach of UEFA’s squad cost rule last summer came when Europe’s governing body set its limit at 80%.
Meanwhile, talks have also been held over a process known as ‘anchoring.’
The basic concept of anchoring is to tie every club’s spending to the broadcast and sponsorship revenue brought in by the team that finishes bottom of the division. All teams would be permitted to spend no more than five times that amount on wages, transfers and agents.
Those with the largest spends, namely Manchester City, Manchester United, Arsenal, Liverpool and Chelsea, are the only group thought to be in any danger of reaching the spending limit, although figures from the 2023–24 season showed all 20 teams in the league would have already been under a hypothetical anchoring cap.
