When it comes to Premier League clubs and Financial Fair Play there is no perfect answer.
What is beyond doubt though, is that the current situation is a sham.
Premier League clubs have moved from PSR (Profit and Sustainability Rules) to SCR (Squad Cost Ratio).
They have achieved the impossible. The shift to SCR has made things even worse.
Premier League clubs looking to close the gap in terms of long-term competitivity with the usual half dozen? From very unlikely to now…impossible?
It seems bizarre that it is never talked about but only eleven months ago a huge opportunity was missed.
Why not have rules in place that allow all 20 Premier League clubs to spend exactly the same amount of money in a particular season?
What could be fairer than allowing every club to spend the same maximum amount of money on the squad (on wages, transfer fees, whatever)?
If all Premier League clubs were allowed to spend the same, why would that be unfair?
In November 2025, the then 20 Premier League clubs met and had three Financial Fair Play proposals to vote on, proposed changes to kick in for this 2026-27 season and beyond.
The three votes were on: top to bottom anchoring (TBA), squad cost ratio (SCR) and the sustainability and system resilience (SSR).
SCR passed 14 to six, just scraping through with the minimum 14 votes needed.
SSR passed unanimously.
Before those two votes though was the TBA (top to bottom anchoring), this received only seven votes in favour, with 12 against and one abstention.
The top-to-bottom anchoring (TBA) would have limited any club’s spending on squad costs to five times the amount received in central income by the league’s bottom club.
In other words, all Premier League clubs would have had the same limit on the amount of cash they could spend on the squad.
What we got instead was SCR, each Premier League club able to spend 85% of their individual club revenues on squad costs. So if you have double the revenues of another club, you are allowed to spend twice as much as them on wages and transfer fees.
UEFA have their own SCR system which limits all clubs to spending at the most 70% of their individual revenues on squad costs.
It is all a stitch up in reality between UEFA and certain Premier League clubs, as well as pretty much all of the other established financially dominant clubs on the continent. SCR put in place to ensure that it is all but impossible for other clubs to establish themselves long-term on any kind of similar financial footing.
For the Premier League clubs (with obvious usual exceptions) it was a massive missed opportunity not to bring in top to bottom anchoring.