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FootBiz newsletter #123: PL and EFL wrestle with regulation as new rules loom
Will sceptical Prem clubs succeed in fighting off anchoring and SCR rules? Plus a round-up of the 34 teams qualified for the World Cup
Ed Malyon & Matt Hughes
November 18, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 9 minutes
Legendary NFL head coach Bill Belichick may be more famous for his girlfriend’s exploits than his sporting results these days, but one of his best-known coaching maxims from his historically successful time in New England was that “the best ability is availability”.
For English football, perhaps we could adapt that and promote the idea that the best ability might be sustainability.
English football’s health (or sickness, depending on how you see it) is coming under the microscope briefly once again as we head into the Premier League’s owners meetings on Friday.
Finance blogger Chris Weatherspoon, who was recently scooped up by The Athletic, took the opportunity to remind everyone of the sustainability crisis that the PL and EFL currently face.
“You'll hear a lot this week about English football not needing cost controls, and a decrying of regulation. Some figures you won't be given:
PL club losses since 2018-19: £3.3bn
Number of profitable EFL clubs in 2023-24: 7 (out of 71)
Combined EFL loss in 2023-24: £501m”
Not good. Very not good.
The eye-popping losses are why the long-mooted anchoring and squad cost ratio (SCR) amendments to the Premier League rulebook are clearly needed, even if their opponents have become louder and more insistent in recent weeks.
It appears the efforts of those opponents may not have been in vain, as it remains in the balance whether there will actually be a vote when Friday’s meeting arrives.
Since the Premier League got too embarrassed at being seen to ‘lose’ votes in 2023/24, they have shifted their strategy to not even holding them if the chance of perceived defeat is real. It is why the chatter around these meetings has almost become more important, a guiding factor not just on whether progress will happen but whether it will even be tabled as an option.
Brighton and some mid-table clubs are believed to be opposed to anchoring rules
While most clubs agree on the need for rules of some sort, both of these have found resistance among different groups of owner as well as other stakeholders.
Opposition for anchoring, which entails limiting spending as a multiple of the lowest-revenue club, has come from the biggest spenders, some mid-table clubs and the PFA — as well as a number of major agencies.
While the PFA threatened legal action almost two years ago on the grounds that tying the amount of money that can be spent on player costs to another club’s income is a de facto salary cap, on the eve of the vote the players’ union has received support from three of the big beasts of player representation: CAA Base, CAA Stellar and Wasserman.
Under the Premier League’s anchoring proposals each club would be limited to spending five teams the amount received in central media revenue and merit payments by last season’s bottom club, which was Southampton last season who picked up £109.2m, pegging the upper limit at £546m, a figure only Chelsea and Manchester City currently approach.
The proposed sanction for busting the limit is a six-point deduction, a worthy punishment but only on the second breach, with an additional point deducted for every £6.5million of overspend.
Manchester City, Manchester United, Chelsea and Aston Villa have opposed anchoring all along, and The Times reported on Friday that they have been joined by Brighton, Brentford and Bournemouth, leaving the Premier League short of the 14 votes required for it to be introduced. The Times even suggested that the vote could be pulled as a result, but Premier League sources insisted to FootBiz yesterday that anchoring remains on the agenda for Friday’s meeting and that they expect a vote to take place.
The Premier League also pushed back against the agents’ claims, with a source saying that 10 leading player agencies had been consulted over a period of 18 months. Assuming the votes happen, a defeat on anchoring would be a setback for the Premier League but they are more confident of winning the vote to introduce SCR, not least because nine of their clubs already comply with stricter rules set for European competitions by UEFA, where the player spending cap 70 per cent of total revenue.
EFL clubs are losing money at an alarming rate
Your Friday morning FootBiz will have the latest on whether we think a vote will actually happen or not, while down in the EFL there is opposition to their own radical proposals for sustainability from a group of League One clubs who wanted to introduce a £4.7m salary cap and a luxury tax for those who overspend, per The Guardian.
18 third-tier clubs, led by Peterborough and Reading, wrote to the EFL chair Rick Parry earlier this month advocating a fixed squad salary allowance in an attempt to curb losses that averaged £5.2m in the division last season.
They also proposed a 100% tax on every penny of overspending above the cap, creating a fund that would be redistributed to clubs who complied. It is a good idea but not necessarily a new one; luxury taxes are commonplace in American sport, with Major League Baseball and the NBA using them to enforce salary caps to differing degrees.
The Guardian reported that Parry acknowledged the letters, but a meeting of the EFL Board last week concluded that it would not support the proposals and once again the PFA and agents would have something to say.
But there is increasingly an acknowledgement that the status quo cannot continue. AFC Wimbledon put out an eye-opening statement to fans last week acknowledging that their finances will “become very tight by the end of the season”.
“Despite the constant generosity of our fans and bond holders, competing in the EFL at Plough Lane with our current structure is not currently sustainable.
“Stadium revenue growth is unlikely ever to be enough to achieve break-even sustainability in League One or Two. Our underlying financial challenges have been tempered by significant player sales over the last three years, but we cannot rely on this every year.”
Clubs are heading into a financial hole that they don’t know the way out of.
David Kogan, the incoming regulator, must find solutions
Meanwhile, the new independent football regulator, led by David Kogan, must find a ‘New Deal’ for football to more fairly redistribute the riches enjoyed by the Premier League clubs.
PL clubs resent the idea of sending more money down to EFL teams that they feel will just fritter it away on player wages. EFL clubs resent that the top-flight clubs continue to spend exorbitant amounts every transfer window while century-old teams lurch into financial crisis over sums that would be trivial to the gilded elite.
Kogan’s urgent responsibility is not just to broker that deal and fix the flow of money but also to try and institute some sort of regulatory framework where clubs can put together a business model that means every team in the Championship — for example — doesn’t operate at a loss.
Given the inability for these leagues to govern themselves, and their constituent clubs’ inability to agree on a path forward, the increasingly pressing message to Kogan is another famous maxim from Belichick’s coaching heyday:
“Do your job.”
