Good news for fans of the smaller Premier League clubs as the bigger teams can no longer spend humongous amounts for squad building.
A vote was taken on Monday by the chiefs of the Premier League clubs. The vote was to determine the viability of enforcing a spending cap on teams in the league whenever they go into the transfer market.
This was considered after many months of teams being targeted by the league’s disciplinary board using the financial fair play rules as a weapon. Everton suffered points deduction, Nottingham Forest are still under scrutiny, while Chelsea and Manchester City are still being investigated.
They decided to introduce a spending cap to help with this issue, and took it to a vote. The majority voted in favour of the league pursuing a transfer and salary cap but a few teams had other opinions.
Big spenders Chelsea, Manchester United and Manchester City were against it, with the Blues totally avoiding the discussion altogether. Both Manchester clubs dissented and were joined by Aston Villa, who are fast becoming a high-spending side due to their recent successes.
The Premier League will return with models of the transfer and salary cap in June where the final vote will be taken on which models to adopt for the league.
“We will obviously wait to see further details of these specific proposals, but we have always been clear that we would oppose any measure that would place a ‘hard’ cap on player wages,” the Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA) said after the initial vote was taken on Monday.
“There is an established process in place to ensure that proposals like this, which would directly impact our members, have to be properly consulted on.”
Media reports that the proposed salary and transfer cap will amount to 85 percent of a club’s earnings. This still favours the bigger clubs with much larger global fanbase. However, it also brings the smaller clubs some succour as general earnings tend to not be too far from each other.
The Premier League is wrapping up and Arsenal are once again looking to beat City to the title. The defending champions have Tottenham Hotspur and Fulham up next, which are two tricky games that could affect their title race. Arsenal, meanwhile, have Bournemouth and Manchester United still ahead.
It is shaping up to be an interesting title race, which will be made more interesting with the final games of the season.
