From Underdogs to Overboard: Leicester City vs. PSR
The reactions to Leicester’s financial imbroglio have run the gamet, from frustration to resignation to anger. Chris Whiting is in the latter camp, angry at a set of rules that are not fit for purpose.
I suppose I should start with an apology. Like most Leicester fans, I’ll admit to being impetuous in my condemnation of Everton when the Premier League came circling, and I’ll admit to being outright gleeful when they went after Notts Forest next. Now it’s happening to Leicester, it’s not so funny.
In the never relenting dizziness of supporting Leicester City, we find ourselves caught in yet another maelstrom. I say, ‘yet another’, because it dawns on me that should we go on to get promoted this season, it will be the third time consecutively that the club has gone up to the Premier League under some kind of cloud.
You can argue that Financial Fair Play (FFP) or Profit and Sustainability Rules (PSR) are unfair, and I will, but in our case, there still lingers an irritating but undeniable truth: despite not voting for them, the Foxes are still bound to play by these very rules.
The whimsical eulogies comparing Leicester’s plight to that of Icarus are wide of the mark, and quite frankly, pissing me off. They miss the underlying issues gnawing at the heart of the club and its fanbase. There’s a passive obliviousness, a collective blindness that allowed Leicester to stumble into this sorry state in the first place. It’s the same mindset that led us to relegation last year. Unjust or not, this is a wake-up call wrapped in a charge sheet.
Yet, on the other hand, I can’t help but share the victim mentality espoused by the club itself. From ingesting as much PSR related content I could find in the last few weeks, I can’t help but feel we’re being picked on.
The impossible chasm
The more I research about PSR the clearer it becomes that the scheme is simply the Super League through stealth, a double-edged sword wielded to safeguard the status quo of the self-proclaimed ‘Big Six’ and stifle any repeat of 2016.
I was listening to a recent episode of the Big Strong Leicester Boys with football financial expert Stefan Borson. He explained at one point that failing to reach Europe, as the club had become semi-accustomed to, for one season resulted in an immediate loss of £36m.
And then it hit me, under this system, clubs like ours are only ever one bad season away from crucifixion. One bad window, and the full force of PSR rains down on you like a hailstorm of shit. For the ‘other 14’, you have to be absolutely perfect if you want to close the gap, one misstep and you’re trampled on by hoards of big wigs and fat cats desperate to preserve the hegemony of football’s biggest brands.
The system is fundamentally flawed. When spending allowance is linked to revenue, but there is no meaningful redistribution of funds in the game, all it does is further entrench power among the ‘Big Six’.
And when, as per the Deloitte Football Money League, the highest revenue-generating English club outside the ‘Big Six’ raises around half of what the worst of the six does, it shows the impossible chasm clubs are being told they have to bridge without a significant underwriter.
Again, don’t get me wrong, Top, Rudkin and Whelan are at fault for leading us in to this mess, but when I look at the heavy-handed nature of the proposed punishments from the EFL and the Premier League, I’m left asking myself: what else were we supposed to do?
In response to concerns about FFP in 2022, the Foxes tightened their belts, slashing our transfer activities and allowing key assets like Kasper Schmeichel to depart without a like-for-like replacement. It’s not like we can force other clubs to buy our players, so after one bad season, our hands quickly become tied.
Of couse, in recent years, we have sold high-value assets like James Maddison, Harvey Barnes and Wesley Fofana, and although some of our recruitment has been poor, you could hardly accuse the club of being reckless with its transfer spending for failing to adhere to a completely arbitrary limitation.
Yet, I would argue, despite a late flurry in January of last year, the club did follow the spirit of the law in trying to comply where Everton and Forest did not. This austere path even led, in part, to the ultimate punishment of relegation.
Not fit for purpose
The anger directed at Rudkin and Whelan is warranted, but it’s a sentiment underscored by a larger dilemma. If a club is punished despite efforts to adhere to financial regulations, what message does that convey? Should we have just said ‘f*ck it’ and had that desperately needed refresh in the summer? Stayed up, then rolled over like Nottingham Forest did, so the points deduction we receive is lessened? Are the rules, then, mere shackles meant to burden clubs like Leicester while the financial juggernauts breeze through unscathed?
Still though, the powers that be are unsatisfied, presiding over a public spat with the club resulting not only in the threat of a hefty points deduction but also a heavy-handed transfer embargo and the artificial devaluation of the club’s assets. And all this in the name of ‘sustainability’?
These actions are the literal antithesis of what it means to preserve sustainability. What is sustainable about picking over the carcass of a club for daring to show ambition? And, all this before the club have even released the figures that will prove whether they’re in breach or not.
I hate to sound like ‘yer da’, but let’s bear in mind here, that Manchester City are expected to have broken 115 rules, and there’s been absolutely zero pre-emptive punishments against them. And then of course, there’s the Super League, a literal attempt to destroy the English football pyramid as we know it, and all the ‘Big Six’ received from the Premier League was a tut and a playful eye roll.
Whatever happens next, it’s clear to me that this is a time that demands introspection, both from within the club’s corridors of power and among the wider football community. These rules are not fit for purpose, and Leicester City will not be the last victims of English football’s cartel of greed, but, having agreed to abide by these limits, the club showed staggering incompetence at the highest level by falling short of them.
I’m angry. At Jon Rudkin, at Top, at Susan Whelan, at the EFL and at the Premier League.
All season, I’ve been waiting for something to go wrong, even with our incredible history, something about record-breaking starts and being 17 points clear felt too good to be true. And since our lead at the top had indeed started to slip away in all too familiar fashion, I was fraught with anxiety. But now, with the threats from football’s highest powers throwing their entire arsenal at ensuring the club are punished in some way or another, what is the point of going up anyway?
If football becomes a sport where success is decided by legal panels judging if we’re guilty of breaking illogical rules then I suppose the final question we’re left with is: should we care anymore?
READ NOW: It’s time for changes at the top at Leicester City
