PSR is giving Premier League clubs an easy excuse for their own stupidity

Watch as academy players are turned into financial pawns used to get clubs out of their own stupidity

Transfers used to be fun, or were they ever?

At the very least, the transfer window used to bring a sense of optimism and intrigue for football fans. Will we finally address our longstanding issue in central midfield? Can we find a talismanic striker? Or that tricky winger to unlock defences?

It was about how your team could be improved. How the wait for the new season was filled with hopes and dreams of better days ahead.

2024 is no longer that vibe.

Instead, what we are witnessing is a new age, where transfer dealings are not actually about improving what you have at all. It is all about ducking and diving out of penalties by any means necessary.

Everton, Aston Villa and Chelsea have all been a part of this very transparent, back-scratching exercise. Whilst they, especially Chelsea, have denied being in danger of failing to meet the Premier League’s Profit and Sustainability rules by the 30th of June, it is very hard to look at what has happened over the past week as anything other than a desperate attempt to avoid sanctions.

For those who have not been keeping track of this train of desperation, Lewis Dobbin has joined Aston Villa from Everton, Ian Maatsen has joined Villa from Chelsea, and Omari Kellyman has joined Chelsea from Villa.

On their face these deals already look weird. Why are Aston Villa, a club who have just attained Champions League football buying a youngster who had under 300 league minutes last season?

Why are Chelsea letting Ian Maatsen, a talented homegrown fullback who only recently started in a Champions League final, leave whilst in return, spending nearly £20m on a youngster that does not address any of the problems they face?

For Chelsea, the irony being that PSR fear coupled with the think tank of Paul Winstanley and Laurence Stewart makes the Kellyman transfer not radically abnormal for the club over the past 12 months. However, it is the most cynical and transparent out of any of them.

We will likely be showered by a usual litany of briefings about how Kellyman was a long-standing target and one that fits into some holistic wishy washy vision, but do not be hoodwinked into looking at this transaction as anything other than a self preserving exercise.

The losers are the young players being turned into pawns merely to save wealthy clubs from their own stupidity. Kellyman now is thrown into the washing machine of Chelsea’s ongoing melodrama. Will he sink or swim? Find out on the next series.

His arrival is a box-ticking exercise, it is not remotely about the things you or I care about when we talk about what a good transfer could do on the pitch. That is unfair to the player, whose development might suffer, when in a better world could have continued to be nurtured at Villa Park.

The second obvious blight of PSR is the way it has majorly incentivised clubs to sacrifice their own academies at the alter of it.

Kellyman is probably no better than the talent Chelsea have internally IF they were given an opportunity. But the club are making it abundantly clear now the “pathway” into the first team is only going to inevitably lead to you making funds for other shiny toys.

The ongoing doubt over Conor Gallagher and Trevoh Chalobah is the highest profile of any PSR-led business this summer, but the next generation of Alfie Gilchrist, Leo Castledine, Tyrique George and Josh Acheampong might find themselves in a similar position soon.

As reported in The Athletic, Chelsea are not slowing down on their “aggressive” pursuit of youngsters from elsewhere. And as also reported in the same piece, the academy talent that hasn’t been sold off yet, will be tasked with competing with this new influx, and those deemed not good enough will be sold.

Of course, this mindset is never attributed to players the club have recently bought for good money. Will Mykhailo Mudryk be tasked with proving his worth? Will Axel Disasi, Enzo Fernandez or Robert Sanchez?

Because if you suddenly flip that logic, the conversation becomes uncomfortable for the decision makers at Chelsea. Ask supporters who were the top performers from last season, both Gallagher and Chalobah would likely be in that list.

Away from Chelsea’s own culpability in all this, which is real. PSR feels like an equal excuse for clubs to hide behind, but also one that is quickly eroding things within the game that should be instinctively protected.

How is it that Aston Villa after qualifying for the Champions League are in a worse financial position than they were before doing so? How is it that Newcastle United, after also qualifying for Europe’s elite competition, find themselves scrambling to sell some of their most important players?

For all people demand financial equality within the game, all it ever seems to be doing is halting the ambition of clubs trying to break through, whilst protecting the established rule for whom ultimately still benefit. And if it ends up eating up academies, or giving clubs an easy way to avoid penalties by selling homegrown talent, how is the game improving?

But there is also an argument to this. That clubs like Chelsea have put themselves into this position. Their greed in the transfer market has overlooked what they have internally. The blinding believed wisdom that someone who costs £60m will always be better than the player you could develop for nothing.

There will always be those who defend transfers for transfers own existence. Partly because their whole career is built upon them remaining relevant, but where does this take us when player trading is simply an act to avoid points deductions? And by extension, give clubs more leeway to make stupid choices that lead them back to the same place within 12 months?

PSR might end up being the snake eating its own tail and destroying the Transfer Industrial Complex which to many, might seem like a long-awaited panacea.

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