Seeing how English Premiership Football clubs spend during the summer months is quite telling as it reveals where they think they have a weakness and need to strengthen. This is why this money spend chart can also be quite confusing and why questions by their supporters should be aimed at the club.
New financial regulations imposed by UEFA will limit the way clubs are able to spend on their squads. From June, expenditure in areas including wages, transfers and agents' fees will only be able to add up to 70% of a club's revenue.19 Mar 2025
Owning a football club is no different from a business as the club needs to make money in order to be able to spend on their squads each year. The ruling this year issued by the European football body known as UEFA is a club cannot spend more than 70% of it's revenue on new players ,wages and agents fees. This is more about being sustainable and not relying on the owners deep pockets. The previous ruling allowed clubs to spend €5m more than they had earned over a 3 year assessment period. This will impact teams how they do their business going forward as this removes roughly 1 years total revenue spend which is in some cases hundreds of millions.
This is why the likes of Liverpool this year have shown how to balance the books having spent over £300m this summer ,but according to the books spent £92m having sold some of their players to other teams.
Some teams are run more of a business than others and the likes of Brighton have been leading this approach for a number of years now. Brighton is known for producing talent via their academy and this season have started having banked £30m in profit. I have not included the other teams in a negative as I believe they will still spend before the transfer window shuts due to having no other choices, but to strengthen their squads.
The one team that stands out again for all the wrong reasons is Manchester United mainly due to their spend making no financial sense. Top of the pile having spent the most and from what it looks like in the wrong areas. The team having blown £214m and of that £7m was on defense and the rest on attacking players. How this makes sense when last season the Manchester United had conceded the most goals by their club in a season ever. 58 goals is not a good record so one would imagine to improve that stat then they would strengthen their defense, but no they bought forwards and attacking players.
OPTA who is a stat based predication football data site has forecast Manchester United finishing in 12th spot and this is hard to argue against. The facts is the problem still remains at the club and that is a leaky defence which is the same as last season. How is this spend going to change their season from that of last season?
If you were a shareholder in a business and saw the budget being spent in the wrong areas you would be confused and asking the right questions because this looks like a wasteful use of resources. The season will tell us what we probably already know.