Just over a year ago, Premier League clubs went into spending overdrive and used the 2023 January transfer window (and, crucially, the breathing room after the winter World Cup in Qatar) to rack up record-breaking fees as more than £800 million was spent.
Chelsea’s acquisitions of midfielder Enzo Fernández (£106.8m) and forward Mykhailo Mudryk (£62m, rising to £89m) were the headline deals as they spent around £300m on their own, but almost every club got involved: Arsenal (£55m), Liverpool (£35m), Newcastle United (£40m) and Aston Villa (£25m) sensed an opportunity and tucked in, while relegation-threatened Southampton (£55m) and Leeds United (£35m) also threw cash at their problems in vain hope of improvement (which didn’t work for either.)
Fast forward 12 months and the situation could barely be more different. Premier League clubs have so far spent around £50m, with Tottenham‘s £20m move for Genoa defender Radu Dragușin accounting for about half of that figure, and 11 of 20 clubs have had no incomings at all. So, why has the market been so dry?
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Clubs are running scared of FFP and PSR
FFP (financial fair play) has long been an issue for clubs, forcing any involved in UEFA competition to spend a little more wisely than they’d perhaps like. Now the Premier League has a new watchdog on the block: PSR (profit and sustainability rules). This dictates that clubs must not lose more than £105m over the course of a three-year period. It’s hardly a new initiative, but with heavy losses sustained over the COVID-19 period, the rules were temporarily relaxed so it sort of filtered into the background.
We’re firmly out of that period now, though, and the first two clubs have been charged with breaches: Everton (twice, including a 10-point deduction) and Nottingham Forest. The other 18 Premier League sides no doubt decided to check and recheck their financial reports upon seeing that news, and if they were toying with the idea of one more signing, maybe decided to err on the side of caution. After all, a points deduction can be absolutely devastating.
So with clubs tightening the purse strings, the usual level of cash isn’t flowing through the sport. The knock-on effect of that — either down in the lower leagues of England or across Europe — is that clubs aren’t making big moves. Indeed COVID-19-hit clubs outside the Premier League even harder, to the point where they really need Premier League cash in order to make any transfers at all.
