Premiership Tightens Up Financial Rules

Premier League clubs have agreed to a rule change that will see them subject to financial regulation with immediate effect, leaving Liverpool, Portsmouth and West Ham under pressure to satisfy their auditors if theu are to avoid intervention. The new regulation allows the league to step in and agree a budget for running a club and even impose a transfer embargo if it believes the club are in danger of falling into administration. For example, if the rules had applied in the summer, there might have been an intervention at Portsmouth.

Premier League clubs have agreed to a rule change that will see them subject to financial regulation with immediate effect, leaving Liverpool, Portsmouth and West Ham under pressure to satisfy their auditors if theu are to avoid intervention. The new regulation allows the league to step in and agree a budget for running a club and even impose a transfer embargo if it believes the club are in danger of falling into administration. For example, if the rules had applied in the summer, there might have been an intervention at Portsmouth. Next season will see the introduction of a quota system that will require clubs to register 25-man clubs with at least eight ‘home grown’ players. To be home grown a player has to have been trained for three years under the age of 21 years by a club within the English and Welsh professional system. Thus, Cesc Fabregas, who joined Arsenal as a fifteen year old, would qualify as a home grown player, but Owen Hargreaves, who spent his early years with Bayern Munich, would not.

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