5 Premier League clubs in danger of breaching PSR & UEFA FFP this summer
Whoever said that football is a simple game clearly never read the Premier League‘s PSR rulebook or UEFA’s FFP guidelines.
Nowadays, it increasingly feels as though you need a degree in economics to wrap your head around the complex machinations involved in football finances and not falling foul of the rules and regulations.
Luckily for you, we’ve done some digging and tried to offer a summary of where we’re at in the summer of 2025.
We’ve identified five clubs that may need to make sales to meet the Premier League’s profit and sustainability and/or UEFA’s financial fair play regulations.
Aston Villa
Aston Villa are believed to have pocketed somewhere in the region of £100million from participating in the Champions League this season.
You don’t exactly need to be Kieran Maguire to work out that’ll leave a hole in the budget.
Failure to win at Old Trafford on the final day could have a colossal impact on the club’s immediate future. No wonder they were incensed at that officiating f*ck-up.
It’s been widely reported that Villa have been somewhere up against the limit of what they’re able to spend when it comes to PSR and that they’ll be required to sell ahead of the 2025-26 campaign.
Emiliano Martinez was in tears after his last match at Villa Park, so you can put two and two together and assume he’ll be among those sold.
Ollie Watkins, Morgan Rogers and Jacob Ramsey are among their most lucrative assets – could we see one or more of them follow Martinez out the exit door?
Manchester United
“If we do not act now, we are in danger of falling to comply with PSR/FFP requirements,” the club wrote to fans back in January.
“We are currently making a significant loss each year – totalling over £300m in the past three years. This is not sustainable.
“We will have to make some difficult choices. That has included a significant reduction to our workforce as well as cuts across many areas of spend across our club.
“We do not expect fans to make up all the current shortfall – but we do need to look at our ticketing strategy to ensure we are charging the right amount, and offering the right discounts, across our products for our fans.”
Needless to say, failure to qualify for any European football at all – for only the second time in the modern Premier League era – is far from ideal.
Football finance experts estimate that defeat in the Europa League final will cost the club up to £100million in revenue.
A lot has been made of Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s ruthless cuts to staff behind the scenes, but you imagine that some unpopular decisions will need to be made when it comes to balancing the books.
The club have already sanctioned £62.5million to meet Matheus Cunha’s release clause at Wolves and further reinforcements are expected.
It’s difficult to imagine them spending a great deal more without facing an almighty PSR/FFP headache in the future.
Marcus Rashford, Antony and Alejandro Garnacho are already reportedly on the sell list. It wouldn’t be a shock to see popular players, including Kobbie Mainoo and Bruno Fernandes, depart if the right offers come in.
Chelsea
Unlike the other clubs in this list, Chelsea have qualified for the Champions League for the first time in the madcap Todd Boehly era.
Of course, the financial boost that a return to Europe’s premier cup competition is massive and will go some way to alleviating the pressure.
But the Blues aren’t out of the woods just yet. Creative manoeuvres to be PSR compliant in recent months have included the sales of two hotels and the women’s team.
But UEFA won’t accept those measures, and back in April, The Times reported that Chelsea are facing a fine from the governing body over alleged breaches of their spending limits.
The report suggested that Chelsea could find themselves banned from the Champions League if they repeat the offence. One to keep an eye on.
Nottingham Forest
“If they don’t get Champions League, then I think maybe the situation changes because they’re going to have probably some kind of PSR issue,” football finance expert Stefan Borson told Football Insider last month.
“Probably some kind of Uefa issue as well if they were to say qualify for the Europa League, where you’re not going to get the Champions League revenue, but you do have a lot of the costs required to compete in that tournament and also compete in the Premier League, so they are going to have to move their wage bill up.”
Qualification for the UEFA Conference League will provide a boost to Forest’s coffers but it will only be a fraction of what they’d have received had they managed to stay in the top five.
Borson went on to state that creative profits-boosting player swaps, including the eyebrow-raising moves of Elliot Anderson and Odysseas Vlachodimos between Forest and Newcastle last summer, have “effectively disallowed” by UEFA.
That means that when it comes to UEFA’s FFP restrictions, Forest’s profit in player sales from last summer won’t total the £100million that was originally reported – at least in the eyes of the European football governing body.
Morgan Gibbs-White is one to watch on that front, then.
Wolves
One of the headline takeaways when Wolves published their latest accounts in March is that their total loss of £127.6million over the last three years exceeds the Premier League’s £105million limit.
However, the club stayed within the guidelines and avoided a penalty thanks to certain expenses – including investment on infrastructure, women’s football and community schemes – being exempt from the PSR figures.
It does appear that they got close to the limit, though, and might’ve been deducted points were it not for the lucrative sales of Ruben Neves and Matheus Nunes in the summer of 2023.
It’s also worth noting that Wolves extended their accounting period for the current financial year until the end of June, which might offer a clue as to where they’re at now with PSR.
For example, if the sale of Cunha to Manchester United goes through as expected in the coming days, that would count towards the current year’s calculations.
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