General Premier League Thread 2023-24 Mod Note in op 27/6/23 And 21/05/24

That’s absolute madness from Newcastle, adding another injury prone striker to their squad. He only has a year left on his deal, wonder what the fee is?

It does seem to be a huge loop hole they are all using now.

So do Forest get in on the act??

If they don't, and they are charged again, can they use these deals as a defence, will the PL look at these deals like the Man City Sponsorship corruption??

Again it will be back to the Lawyers to decide…

Selling Fringe players to each other, at potentially over-inflated prices(although this is not the concern), for the exact same (or very similar) prices for the sole purpose to avoid PSR.

(How many deals normally go through in the past this early in the transfer window)

It's a loophole because there are no rules, Just like City's claims, there are no rules, for the owner's other company, to sponsor the stadium and/or shirt for 10s or 100s times the market value!!

We either want a fair PSR and nothing at all and stop punishing a few clubs who were honest and cooperated fully and took their punishment, that could have relegated them and really caused a financial problem.

Players is sold from Club A to B for 10M and another player from B to A for 10m.

Each club books an immediate 10M profit for selling, and only a loss of 2M for buying, as the player has a 5year contract so the fee is spread over 5years.

Each club make a net profit of 8M, and then repeats with another club or the same club.

All deals done at the start of the transfer window, which is not normally when player sales are made, because they need to meet the magic 30th June deadline.

Except there are rules against clubs having over inflated sponsorship deals from associated party's. You should look up the recent voting on it, and maybe the whole rule as it was brought in in 2021.

These transfers taking place now are just like any regular transfers that have taken place for the last 60 years. It's not a loophole. How is selling players a loophole? There's nothing legally wrong with them and what do you want to do to stop it? Stop clubs selling a player to a club they just bought from? That will never be allowed as it blocks the freedom of movement which is basically another bosman ruling.

You might thing it's dodgy, and it certainly does come across as a bit immoral, but it's not wrong. It does show which clubs are happy to fall onto the Man City / Newcastle side of the argument when it comes to PL rules though.

Selling players at inflated prices will be investigated though, as Juventus found out when they did the Rakitic-Arthur swap deal with Barcelona. I'm fairly sure that Spurs's current sporting director is still banned from working for Spurs, officially, as a result. Just like clubs are not allowed to sell their players to linked clubs with inflated prices and how clubs cannot have inflated associated party sponsorship deals.

Just mentioned above about how Patrici got banned for it.

But Juventus/Patrici were banned for inflated transfer prices that were unrealistic, it wasn't for selling players in a linked transfer. There's a difference.

For example when Sanchez & Mhki were swapped by Man Utd & Arsenal, there was no real uproar. Some people said that they were free transfers but others say that they were £35m each. You can't ban those transfers but you can have restrictions on the prices, to a degree.

But when Aston Villa pay the release clause for Maatsen, Chelsea can argue that they are receiving the release clause and it's fine and all above board.

Given the loopholes with PSR much as I think there should be a cap on players salary to at least try and level things out I don’t see how it can work as we’ve seen teams will just be more creative in how they pay renumeration.

Have a wage cap and allow say 2 or 3 academy players exempt from the cap to encourage investment in youth systems.

I said something similar a few months back.

Have Academy players wages & Academy player transfer sales exempt from PSR calculations. It shifts the focus to clubs now having to develop their own players to keep, and reward them for that by allowing them to have the big wages. And it forces everyone to move away from the model of half developing academy players just to they can be sold for accounting purposes so that they can buy some random Brazilian instead.

I know it’s a bit more complicated that’s why I suggested the rules should be specific to each club, the June date is completely arbitrary the reality is that Villa will get CL qualification money and Forest were due the money for Johnson.