The Premier League are to look into PSR panic transfers with Newcastle under the microscope

The Premier League's unfit-for-purpose Profit and Sustainability Rules created chaos last weekend as several clubs in danger of breaching the three-year loss limit scrambled to raise funds to avoid points deductions.

That limit has been in place since 2013 and was set at £105million over a three-year rolling period but has never been changed in line with inflation and the increasing cost of transfers meaning club's are forced to try and comply with an increasingly oppressive limit each year.

This year several clubs, including Newcastle United had to get creative with ways of trying to beat the system which gave birth to "quasi-swap" or "mutually beneficial" deals which were essentially player swaps in the form of two separate transfers of similar amounts.

Now it looks as though the Premier League is to look into the deals pushed through before Sunday's deadline with Newcastle's two outbound transfers to come under scrutiny.

Serena Taylor/Getty Images

Newcastle haven't breached any rules

Newcastle sold Yankuba MInteh to Brighton for £33million and Elliot Anderson to Nottingham Forest for £35million to plug their £60million gap, but those deals could now cause them just as much trouble as they would have been in had they not completed the deals.

The Guardian are now reporting that the Premier League have seen their arse over the fact that clubs have managed to avoid points deductions by gaming the system and are will look into the deals between the six clubs beleived to have been at risk of sanctions.

However, football finance expert Kieran Maguire told The Guardian that no rules have been breached.

“The clubs have been very clever to say that these are not swaps, they are just individual deals signed off pretty soon after one another.

“Generally speaking there’s nothing to stop them saying, ‘I’ve got a player who you want and vice versa. We think that your player is worth £5m more than mine, so we could agree that the prices are £10m and £15m or we could agree that they are £25m and £30m’. Either way, you get that extra £5m.

“That appears to be a driving force in relation to these transfers. And there is no such thing as a genuine price: Brighton have paid £32m for Yankuba Minteh from Newcastle and they have got no PSR issues. So if that’s the price for a 19-year-old, it could be argued that some the other deals don’t look overstated. But he has just had a spectacular season with Feyenoord.”

PSR: Rip it up and start again

The Premier League know how many clubs feel about the current PSR rules, which is why next season will see two additional methods trialled side-by-side, which from our view will only serve to make things harder for clubs the season after, but for now, the current rules remain in place, despite being horrendously outdated, so the Premier League shouldn't be shocked that clubs are trying to find ways around it.

Next season when 'squad cost rules' and 'anchoring' are to be trialled it should allow clubs to spend more based on their own financial circumstances, which is great in theory. But what happens if those rules are binned after the trial and clubs that took full advantage are left in a big hole when things revert to the current state of PSR?

If we absolutely have to regulate clubs' spending powers, which as supporters of the club with the richest owners we obviously don't want, then the current rules need scrapping completely and we need to start from scratch. A clean slate for everybody, new rules that make sense and move on from there as FFP/PSR and all of the changes since its inception has just warped the entire thing.