ANALYSIS; Conclusion on Newcastle Premier League ‘argument’ “DONE”

The Premier League are not ‘very confident’ about their own PSR rules – which have ‘strange inconsistencies’.

That is according to Nick De Marco, the KC who previously acted for Newcastle United, after the barrister was part of the legal team who succeeded in helping Leicester City avoid a points deduction for an alleged PSR breach earlier this month. An independent panel found that the Premier League did not have the jurisdiction to punish Leicester because the Foxes had been relegated to the Championship when their accounting period ended on June 30, 2023.

The Premier League were left ‘shocked and disappointed’ by the outcome but Jane Mulcahy KC, who represented the top-flight, previously admitted that it was ‘not easy to construe these rules’ and that they were ‘not perfectly drafted’. The appeal board commented that the rules are, in relevant parts, ‘far from well drafted’, which follows on from an independent commission accepting that the regulations were put together in a manner that was ‘unsatisfactory, anomalous or exposed a gap’.

Premier League clubs have agreed to trial squad cost rules and top to bottom anchoring in shadow this season, but the existing PSR regulations, which limit losses to £105m over a rolling three-year period, remain in place.

“You have all these strange inconsistencies,” De Marco told the Times. “It’s remarkable to me that the Premier League didn’t think about this before and you can see from their rather over-the-top press statement that they don’t accept it.

“But their own argument to the panel was, ‘Look, we accept our rules are really badly drafted so can you help us out?’ Which isn’t the argument of someone who’s been very careful and is very confident about their own rules.”