FootBiz newsletter #3: Leicester taking the PSR, Premier League spending review and how to fix Barca

Well, that wasn’t quite as quiet a week as we had envisaged.

Even once the transfer window is closed, the never-ending firehose of football news continued to drench us and we’re only just getting around to towelling off.

Once you’d got your transfer overflow out of the way - your Osimhens, your Toneys, your other players signing for their contingency plan - there was a spate of legal and financial stories that could have ramifications much further down the line.

The Premier League is increasingly under the spotlight even as they pause their playing schedule for nearly two weeks.

But this isn’t the sort of news cycle the league relishes, and while we have plenty of analysis of Prem spending and their latest legal battles, we also wanted to take a step back this week and look at some bigger footballing questions beyond the English leagues - like what the hell are Barcelona playing at? - and others which we’ll be broaching next week.

There’s also some reader feedback near the bottom, Vini Jr. with a strong statement for Fifa, some multi-club murmurs and other bits and bobs for you to get stuck into.

As ever, this newsletter is free but the premium content is paywalled so if you want to read it, upgrade your subscription and let’s get going!

Without further ado…

Table of Contents

• Leics is more?

• Prem’s (other) legal woes

• Unsafe bet

• Has the spending bubble burst?

• Toney’s tax win

• M&A Murmurs

• How a 17th century farmhouse could fix Barça

• World Cup questions

• FootBiz feedback

• Marketing professional?

Leics is more?

We had a ton of questions this week about the Leicester judgement, with many people - including our own Kieran Maguire - having expected the Foxes to get a severe punishment of up to 9 or 10 points.

Firstly, we really want to hear from the FootBiz community on the stories they want covered and why - so thank you for getting in touch.

But how did they do it? And what comes next?

Well, Matt Hughes has been hammering the phones to dig into what really happened here, and his full breakdown of the story will be in the inbox of premium subscribers today, including crucial details on whether Leicester will face future punishments and how this may or may not affect Manchester City’s case.

Click the button below to make sure you’re getting that and all of our premium analysis.

While we’re thankful to all readers of the newsletter, our best content remains behind the paywall because, unlike some football clubs, we can’t simply flog a hotel to pay our running costs 😁😁😁 

Prem’s (other) legal woes

The Premier League has bolstered its legal team from a couple of in-house paper-shufflers a few years ago to a squadron of more than a dozen battle-hardened lawyers in 2024.

Originally conceived as a streamlined entity whose purpose was simply to administer a football competition, the league’s swollen legal force is a response to the increasingly litigious nature of English football and its top teams.

Their work will become even more scrutinised after the Leicester judgement, as Matt describes in his piece, but also after another piece of news that dropped this week that Everton had appealed against a £4.9m legal bill for last season’s PSR case that resulted in them having points deducted - and won.

The Blues ended up paying just £1.7m of the bill, per The Times, after their lawyer, Celia Rooney, fought the “grossly excessive” costs.

It wasn’t lost on some colleagues in the legal profession that Rooney, of Blackstone Chambers, has previously worked on behalf of the Premier League.

Not only did the Premier League’s lawyers bill their time at nearly double the hourly rate of Everton’s (£940 vs £550) but the cost of producing evidence including witness statements and documents was more than five times higher and 19 times higher for the league than for Everton respectively.

“The sum is in line with what would be regarded as reasonable and proportionate by way of contribution to the PL’s costs in High Court proceedings with the characteristics of this case,” the judgement concluded.

The appeal board also told the Premier League to pay Everton £200,000 in costs associated with their successful appeal.

How big are the bills being racked up to fight Manchester City’s 115 charges?

Unsafe bet

Sponsorships expert Ricardo Fort wrote his first piece for us on football’s excessive reliance on revenue from gambling companies.

The real question now, with such a dependence on this sponsorship deals, is how football leagues, clubs, broadcasters and competitions can wean themselves off that pipeline of cash.

Has the spending bubble burst?

Football finance expert Kieran Maguire took some time out of his busy schedule to do a deep dive into Premier League transfer spending, now that English football’s top flight has spent some £30bn since breaking away from the Football League in 1992.

The findings? Well, there are plenty.

But Kieran explains why talk of any bubble bursting could be misguided, why the Saudi Pro League’s spending spree of 2023 may function like a Keynesian multiplier and the profound effect of the Bosman ruling of 1995.

Premium subscribers have already read his piece in their inbox, and you can join them for as little as £2.99 per month or £30 per year by clicking here.

Toney’s tax win

It wasn’t long ago that Ivan Toney seemed destined to sign for one of the Premier League’s biggest clubs and play in the Champions League. A hard-working English centre-forward with an all-round game, he had risen through the pyramid to star for well-run top flight upstarts Brentford.

This week, Toney signed for one of the Saudi Pro League’s biggest clubs to play in the Asian Champions League.

It should be said here, to some degree the England striker is counting the cost of a betting ban which ate key months out of his career when he was playing his best football. Just as noteworthy, the 28 year-old is also a victim of his much-lauded journey via Peterborough and Northampton Town. Yes, he brilliantly climbed through the lower leagues to reach the summit but, in doing so, is now considered too old by many clubs to justify a significant outlay.

Miguel Delaney wrote about this phenomenon in The Independent recently, how top clubs are skipping the middle-man and buying young, while fewer players of ‘peak age’ are involved in big-money transactions these days, and that trend extended to Toney this summer.

Brentford, with their Premier League status at stake, had no real reason to accept a low-ball offer, and as such the level of interest we might have expected to materialise for a player of his ability simply never did, even as his contract ticked down.

There is commiseration, however, in his compensation. Per Fabrizio Romano, who is very into the Saudi Pro League, Toney’s basic weekly wage at Al-Ahli will be around £400k, with bonuses that could raise that to £500k. To earn that in England, given British tax law, would mean a Premier League club paying him a PSR-busting £1m per week.

My personal opinion is that Toney’s style would not age particularly badly and he could remain effective into his 30s, but Arsenal and Chelsea - both in the market for a centre-forward all summer - ended up both choosing to start the season without buying one rather than unloading the required £40m fee to sign a proven Premier League No. 9. Man United signed a much younger Joshua Zirkzee for the same price.

As I understand it, he also won’t be able to move back to England for two years unless he wants to pay a significant tax bill to do so. It was one reason Jordan Henderson ended up signing for Ajax on his return from a brief spell with Al-Ettifaq rather than heading back to the Premier League.

From League 1 to the equivalent of £1m per week is some journey though.

M&A Murmurs

Those who are looking to buy multiple clubs at once are in luck right now.

Not only is the entire 777 collection of clubs available, including:

• Genoa C.F.C.: Italy, majority ownership

• Standard Liège: Belgium, majority ownership

• Red Star FC: France, majority ownership

• Vasco da Gama: Brazil, majority ownership

• Sevilla FC: Spain, minority stake

• Hertha BSC: Germany, minority stake

• Melbourne Victory FC: Australia, minority stake

But it sounds like FC Metz (French Ligue 2, recently Ligue 1) and FC Seraing (Belgian Challenger League, recently Pro League) are also available in a bundle deal with a club in Senegal.

How a 17th century farmhouse could fix Barça

€1.5bn in debt, selling off all the future revenue they can and facing any number of investigations into their desperate financial moves (as well as a corruption investigation for the Caso Negreira) - you would think Barcelona are a crisis club.

Well, they are. But as long as they refuse to accept it and keep mortgaging anything that isn’t nailed down in order to spend €60m on a new midfielder (who they previously gave away for free) they aren’t confronting their issues.

I asked Rob Draper, formerly chief football writer of the Mail on Sunday and long-time La Liga follower how to fix Barca with so many issues mounting.

His answer - in long and in short - is La Masia.

Behind the paywall: How to fix FC Barcelona 

World Cup questions

Vinicius Jr. has been braver than he should have to be since signing for Real Madrid.

Subject to multiple incidents of racial abuse, his defiance has made him even more of a magnet for discriminatory behaviour both in the stadium and online.

As one of La Liga’s biggest stars, his voice carries all over the world and he took the fairly big step of calling for the 2030 World Cup (to be hosted by Spain, Portugal and Morocco) to be moved if the issues are not addressed.

"If things don't change by 2030, I think [the World Cup] needs to be moved because players don't feel comfortable and safe playing in a country where they might experience racism. 

“It's complicated, but I believe and want to do everything to change things because there are many people in Spain, or even the majority, who are not racist, but there is a small group that ends up affecting the image of a country that is so nice to live in,” he told CNN.

"We have a lot of room for change until 2030. I hope that Spain can evolve and understand how serious it is to insult a person because of the colour of their skin," he said.

It probably doesn’t need to be said but it’s incredibly rare for a player to come out and say things like this about the country he plays in

Given Fifa’s track record we won’t hold our breath.

FootBiz feedback

Per the SPL discussion in the last newsletter

Marketing professional?

Any marketing sorts who are looking for a new role might be interested in this vacancy at the Premier League while creative and advertising types might want to consider this great-looking strategist role at Manchester United.