Manchester United are expected to continue their opposition towards two new PSR rules – a squad cost ratio provision and ‘anchoring’ system – at a Premier League shareholder meeting today.
Unlike Everton, Nottingham Forest and Leicester City domestically and Chelsea and Aston Villa in Europe, Man United are yet to feel the wrath of football’s financial fair play enforcers.
An embryonic version of the current spending rules was introduced by UEFA in 2011, followed by the Premier League’s implementation of Profit and Sustainability Rules (PSR) shortly thereafter.
The rules have evolved somewhat over time, as has the willingness of the respective bodies to enforce them. The underlying principle, however, has remained the same: spend within your means.
Despite recording nearly £400m worth of losses since they last recorded a profit, United are broadly in favour of cost controls.
As one of the top two or three football ‘brands’ in the world, their revenue gives them huge headroom within FFP, PSR, or whatever the acronym of the day is.
United’s financial statements for 2024-25, released late last week, revealed turnover of £667m. Effectively, that is £667m that the Red Devils can spend before they even need to give PSR a second thought.
That means, for all their profligacy on the pitch and in the recruitment department in recent years, United can still behave like a predator in the transfer market and wage race.
For less established, nouveau riche clubs – such as Newcastle United and Aston Villa today or Man City historically – PSR is designed by the elite to reinforce football’s food chain. That’s the accusation, anyway.
In reality, there is probably, at the very least, an element of truth in that. However, PSR was not simply handed down from on high – clubs at Premier League and UEFA level agreed to them.
And with a new effort to recreate the financial rules, football’s appetite for cost controls is set to be tested once more.
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Man United oppose new squad cost ratio rule and anchoring system
In 2024-25, the Premier League trialled new financial rules: a squad cost ratio system borrowed from UEFA and an anchoring mechanism somewhat akin to a salary cap in US franchise sport.
The trial was on a non-binding basis. Effectively, the league was giving United and their peers time to adjust and propose revisions to the new spending rules. In 2025-26, they are doing the same.
The squad cost ratio rule is intended to limit clubs’ spending on wages, transfers and agents’ fees to a certain percentage of revenue plus profit on player sales.
Under anchoring, spending would simultaneously be limited to a multiple of what the Premier League’s bottom-placed club earns in TV revenue across a single season.
The current proposal is for a multiple of five. Last season’s 20th-place club, Southampton, earned just shy of £110m, which would theoretically have given every club a £550m spending cap.
For context, United spent £313m on wages and registered £193m in transfer amortisation last season, plus a further £170m in other overheads.
And though non-first team wages could potentially be excluded from the calculation, the specifics of both systems are yet to be ironed out.
United voted against anchoring last year at a Premier League shareholder meeting, alongside Manchester City and Aston Villa. Chelsea abstained.
But now, as reported by Matt Hughes for The Guardian, both anchoring and the squad cost rule are back on the agenda.
A Premier League shareholder meeting – to which Ineos will dispatch representatives – will take place in Covent Garden today.
A preliminary agreement on the details of the new rules is expected to be reached at the summit, with a formal vote at the next shareholder meeting in November.
If introduced, the anchoring and squad cost ratio rules will likely run alongside the existing PSR system, which limits clubs to losing a maximum £105m over a rolling three-year period, with deductions for things like academy, charity, women and youth team investment, and infrastructure spending.
There is believed to be increased opposition to the rules, partly due to the threat of legal action from player unions, who see the anchoring system as a potential violation of labour laws.
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What is Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s stance on PSR?
Under Premier League rules, a two-thirds majority vote among clubs is needed to make any changes to PSR. So what is the stance of Sir Jim Ratcliffe, Man United’s single largest individual shareholder?
While the club seemingly opposes anchoring, they have previously backed stricter cost controls in order to curtail the power of state and private equity-backed clubs like City and Newcastle.
But as a free-marketeer, Ratcliffe himself appears to be torn over rules that limit what a business is allowed to spend.
Previously, the chemicals billionaire has said United are “close” to the limit on PSR, though that has now been entirely disproven. For now, at least.
“If you start interfering too much, bringing too much regulation in, then you finish up with the Manchester City issue, you finish up with the Everton issue, you finish up with the Nottingham Forest issue – on and on and on,” the 73-year-old said following his partial takeover from the Glazers last year.
“If you’re not careful the Premier League is going to finish up spending more time in court than it is thinking about what’s good for the league. We have got the best league in the world, don’t ruin that league for heaven’s sake.
“[Anchoring] would inhibit the top clubs in the Premier League,” Ratcliffe said. “And the last thing you want is for the top clubs in the Premier League not to be able to compete with Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern Munich, PSG – that’s absurd. And if it does, it then ceases to be the finest league in the world.”
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