Premier League could scrap PSR replacement plan, says barrister De Marco
Premier League clubs could scrap plans to replace controversial PSR rules with a squad cost ratio and so-called “anchoring”, according to leading sports law barrister Nick De Marco KC.
Top-flight clubs were on course to introduce the new spending rules next season but shelved those plans in February amid uncertainty caused by Manchester City’s partially successful legal challenge to APT (associated party transaction) rules.
The Premier League has been trialling the squad cost ratio and anchoring in shadow form and the expectation was that their implementation was simply being delayed.
But De Marco, who successfully appealed Leicester City’s PSR charges last year, believes they could be abandoned altogether.
No certainty
“My understanding is that there is no certainty at all that squad cost rules will come in in this country,” he told a panel discussion held by Mishcon de Reya’s Sports Law Academy this week.
“They were meant to get through the Premier League recently and a number of clubs seemed to be not that happy about them and perhaps preferred to stick with the old ones even.
“They’re certainly not going to come in next season but we don’t now know whether they’re going to come in at all.”
De Marco is representing the PFA in a challenge to the Premier League’s plans for anchoring, in which clubs’ spending is limited to a multiple of the lowest team’s central revenues.
The players’ union believes it is a de facto salary cap and therefore anti-competitive. De Marco and the PFA blocked a previous attempt by the EFL to introduce a cap in lower divisions.
Premier League cost rules
“One of the current big potential issues of anchoring is that it is a type of salary cap,” the Blackstone Chambers barrister added.
“The Premier League at the moment is refusing to get the consent of the players’ union, the PFA, saying it’s unnecessary to get their agreement.
“The law is different in Europe to the US, that labour exemption is not established in the same way. You can’t have one without the other.
“If you want to have a closed system, salary cap, immune from competition law then you may have to have much more collective bargaining that we currently have.”
Nottingham Forest and Everton both received points deductions last season for breaching PSR (profitability and sustainability regulations), which limit clubs’ losses to £105m over a three-year period. De Marco represented Forest.