Let’s rank PL/EFL Regulation violations in relation to the likely advantage gained:
1. Exceeding Profitability and Sustainability (P&S) limits: Breaching cumulative loss thresholds over a rolling three-year monitoring period. This allows a team to have an unfair advantage over opposition for every game of the season for multiple seasons.
2. Deceiving a match official: Simulating injury or diving to successfully engineer a penalty or opponent dismissal. This happens regularly and gets a team a real time and often decisive advantage
3. Time wasting and feigning injuries to run down the clock (AKA the Kim Hellberg effect). Gives a team a real time and often decisive advantage in a game.
4. Failing to pay "Football Creditors” : Defaulting on debts owed to players, staff, the Professional Footballers' Association (PFA), or other clubs. Allows a club to play players they can’t afford earning them an advantage in every game.
5. 30-Day Late Payment rule breaches : Accumulating 30 days or more of late payments to HMRC or for transfer fees within a 12-month period. Allows a club to play players they can’t afford earning them an advantage in every game.
6. Entering administration. Usually as a result of buying players a club cannot afford which gives them a clear advantage over their opponents.
7. Failing the Owners and Directors' Test (OADT) : taking a controlling interest (defined as 25% or more) while being a sanctioned individual, holding an interest in another club, or having unspent convictions for fraud, dishonesty, or hate crimes
8. Exceeding matchday loan limits: Naming more than five loan players in a single matchday squad. Again gives a team a clear advantage if they are successful.
9. Technical area misconduct: Managers or staff leaving their designated zone, throwing objects, or displaying dissent toward the fourth official. Enables Mikel Arteta and similar managers to manage and influence the full 90 minutes of every game more effectively
10. Mass confrontations: Failing to control players, resulting in team members surrounding, harassing, or invading the personal space of match officials. This intimidates the match officials and makes it more likely to get decisions in your favour.
11. Failing to act in "utmost good faith. Covers all sorts of cheating.
12. Spying on opponent training: Observing or attempting to record an opposing club's training sessions within 72 hours of a match. Possibly will give a team a minimal advantage but you are relying on seeing something that will have a bearing on a game and will not change between then and the match. This could actually be a disadvantage if you rely on something you’ve observed happening and the opposition decide to do things differently. Clearly considered by EFL as not too serious as they allow full on spying up to 72 hours.
13. Physical or verbal assault on officials: Threatening, spitting at, or physically attacking a referee or assistant referee.
14. Abusive language or gestures: Directing offensive, insulting, discriminatory, or aggressive language at opponents, officials, or fans.
15. Failing to fulfil a fixture: unlikely to gain an advantage unless you get away with it. However Blackburn’s match v Ipswich was controversially abandoned with 10 minutes left and Blackburn winning 1-0.
It's worth looking at the "Exceeding Profitability and Sustainability (P&S) limits" cases and comparing their punsihments with ours bearing in mind they all gained far greater advantages.
Everton: Deducted a total of 8 points across two separate PSR breaches during the 2023/24 season for exceeding the allowed £105 million rolling loss threshold.
Nottingham Forest: Deducted 4 points during the 2023/24 season. Because they spent a portion of the evaluation window in the Championship, their maximum loss allowance was restricted to £61 million.
West Bromwich Albion: Received a 2-point deduction from the EFL's Club Financial Review Panel (CFRP). They were found guilty of exceeding the Championship upper loss threshold for the three-year cycle ending in June 2025.
Derby County: Heavily penalized by the EFL in 2021 with a 21-point deduction. This total combined a 9-point penalty for P&S accounting irregularities alongside a 12-point penalty for entering administration.
Reading: Deducted a total of 6 points by the EFL for failing to comply with agreed P&S budgetary constraints over a multi-year period. Sheffield Wednesday: Received a 6-point deduction (initially 12 points before an appeal reduction) for breaching P&S rules regarding the disputed sale of their stadium.
Macclesfield Town: Handed multiple points deductions under EFL P&S and financial regulations before the club's eventual winding-up and liquidation.
Leicester City: Charged by the Premier League for alleged financial breaches committed during the 2023/24 season while playing in the Championship. While they successfully appealed an earlier charge regarding the 2022/23 season based on a jurisdictional technicality, they face ongoing legal battles regarding the subsequent timeframe. 6 point deduction.
Manchester City: Currently undergoing a massive independent hearing regarding 115–130 alleged financial rule breaches stretching between 2009 and 2018. While this includes extensive allegations of disguised revenue and non-cooperation rather than a standard, simple PSR overspend, it remains the largest financial case in football history – ZERO penalty.
Chelsea were fined £10.75m by the FA and handed suspended transfer ban over secret payments breaching Premier League rules.
Aston Villa were not been fined by the Football Association (FA) or the Premier League for breaching financial rules. Instead, the club complied with the Premier League’s Profitability and Sustainability Rules (PSR) by balancing their books through methods such as selling their women's team to their parent company, V Sports.
[Post edited 3 Jun 16:20]
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