Analysis
What holds each club's squad cost ratio down
Every club's figure under the Premier League's new spending rule leans on something besides its everyday business: profit from selling players, or the revenue the rule credits for league position and Europe. For the first test, in March 2027, almost all of that support is already earned. The question is what each club leans on when it starts to roll off.
Figures as of 2 November 2026, Orange Engine release V2CL · Latest figures · What the engine does not capture
A club’s figure under the Premier League’s squad cost rule is its squad costs divided by revenue. But the revenue in that sum is not only what the club earns from tickets, television and sponsors in a normal year. The rule adds two things that are not the everyday business: profit from selling players, and revenue it credits for where the club finished in the league and for playing in Europe. Take either away and the figure rises.
How far it rises varies a great deal. At Aston Villa the figure is 74.2%. Without the profit from player sales it would be 96.9%, and without the credit for league position and Europe as well it would be 138.5%. At Coventry, 63.5% becomes 65.7% and stays there. The chart sets every club on both measures at once.
Four groups
Across the chart, how many percentage points of the ratio come from league position and Europe; up the chart, how many come from player sales. The lines sit halfway between the tenth and eleventh clubs on each axis, so “high” here means above the middle club, not above a level set by the rule.
Leans on player sales. Newcastle, Chelsea, Nottingham Forest and Everton. Forest’s figure is 97.5%; before player trading it would be 124.5%, and the credit for position and Europe adds only 4.6 points. Chelsea is at 91.3%, 115.4% before trading. Newcastle is at 81.7%, 108.8% before trading. For all four, the sales are what keeps the figure where it is.
Leans on both. Aston Villa, Brighton, Bournemouth, Brentford, Crystal Palace and Manchester City. Brighton’s 79.1% would be 109.5% before trading and 132.2% without the credit for position and Europe too. Bournemouth is the one club in this group above 85%, at 85.4%, with a range of 78.3% to 86.9%: the estimate does not reliably tell which side of the line it is on. Without either kind of support it would be 137.2%.
Leans on league position and Europe. Arsenal, Liverpool, Sunderland and Manchester United. These clubs sell little, by the rule’s measure: player sales are worth between 2.9 and 6.7 points to them. Their headroom comes from where they finished. Arsenal’s 60.7% would be 92.7% without the credit for position and Europe; Liverpool’s 73.6% would be 100.8%.
Leans on neither. Fulham, Ipswich, Tottenham, Hull, Leeds and Coventry. This group splits in two. Hull, Leeds and Coventry are well under 85% with little support, so they do not need any. Fulham and Ipswich are above 85% on their everyday business alone, at 105.3% and 97.9%, and the rule gives them little to lean on: Ipswich, Hull and Coventry are promoted clubs, which the rule credits at 15th place, the same floor every club has, so they get nothing for position. Tottenham, at 80.9%, sits between: before player trading it would be 89.5%.
| Club | Group | Squad cost ratio | Player sales, points | League position and Europe, points | Before player trading | Without both |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Newcastle | Player sales | 81.7% | +27.0 | +9.3 | 108.8% | 118.1% |
| Chelsea | Player sales | 91.3% | +24.1 | +8.1 | 115.4% | 123.5% |
| Nottingham Forest | Player sales | 97.5% | +27.1 | +4.6 | 124.5% | 129.2% |
| Everton | Player sales | 72.5% | +12.5 | +2.6 | 85.0% | 87.6% |
| Aston Villa | Both | 74.2% | +22.7 | +41.6 | 96.9% | 138.5% |
| Brighton | Both | 79.1% | +30.4 | +22.7 | 109.5% | 132.2% |
| Bournemouth | Both | 85.4% | +19.6 | +32.2 | 105.0% | 137.2% |
| Brentford | Both | 81.6% | +25.3 | +13.8 | 106.8% | 120.6% |
| Crystal Palace | Both | 78.2% | +22.1 | +16.5 | 100.4% | 116.9% |
| Manchester City | Both | 74.4% | +12.0 | +21.7 | 86.4% | 108.1% |
| Arsenal | Position and Europe | 60.7% | +4.3 | +27.7 | 65.0% | 92.7% |
| Liverpool | Position and Europe | 73.6% | +6.4 | +20.8 | 80.0% | 100.8% |
| Sunderland | Position and Europe | 60.5% | +6.7 | +17.9 | 67.2% | 85.1% |
| Manchester United | Position and Europe | 56.9% | +2.9 | +15.1 | 59.8% | 74.9% |
| Fulham | Neither | 105.3% | +10.9 | +8.8 | 116.2% | 125.0% |
| Ipswich Town | Neither | 97.9% | +11.1 | +0.0 | 109.0% | 109.0% |
| Tottenham | Neither | 80.9% | +8.7 | +1.3 | 89.5% | 90.8% |
| Hull City | Neither | 66.4% | +7.2 | +0.0 | 73.6% | 73.6% |
| Leeds | Neither | 68.6% | +4.3 | +1.2 | 72.9% | 74.1% |
| Coventry City | Neither | 63.5% | +2.2 | +0.0 | 65.7% | 65.7% |
Each figure is rounded once by the engine, so a step in the table can differ by 0.1 from the difference between the two figures either side of it.
For March 2027, the support is already earned
It would be easy to read the chart as a list of risks: the clubs on the right need a good season, the clubs at the top need to sell. For the League’s first test, on 1 March 2027, that reading is mostly wrong, because the rule measures both kinds of support from things that have largely already happened.
League position is credited at the best of three figures: the club’s finish last season, its average finish over the last three seasons, and 15th place (Rule A.1.29(a)). Where a club finishes this season does not enter the 2026/27 test’s credit for position at all.
Europe counts where the club qualified for a UEFA competition this season and has got past its qualifying stage. The distribution it is credited with is the highest of last season’s distribution from that competition, its average over three seasons, and an estimate for reaching the round of 16 (Rule A.1.29(e)); the extra home matches are the guaranteed ones or a three-season average (Rule A.1.29(d)(iii)). Once a club is in the league phase, losing every game does not take the credit away.
Player sales count as the profit or loss on sales over the six transfer windows before the test, divided by three (Rules A.1.13 and A.1.53). For the test of March 2027 those windows run from summer 2024 to January 2027. Five have closed. Only the January window is still to come, and a sale there can add to the figure, or subtract from it if a player goes for less than his value in the accounts.
So for this test, Arsenal’s credit for finishing high is fixed, and so is most of Forest’s profit from sales. What the chart measures is how much of each club’s figure rests on those earned supports rather than on the business it runs every year.
Where the exposure arrives
The next test, in March 2028, takes its league position from the 2026/27 finish, credits Europe only to the clubs that qualify for 2027/28, and counts sales over a new set of six windows, from summer 2025 to January 2028. The two oldest windows in today’s figure, summer 2024 and January 2025, drop out.
That is where the groups start to matter. A club that leans on player sales has to keep selling at a profit, or its support falls as the old windows roll off. A club that leans on league position and Europe needs to keep finishing where it has been finishing. A club that leans on both needs both. And a club above 85% that leans on neither, as Fulham and Ipswich do, has no support to lose and none to lean on: the figure moves only if its costs or its everyday revenue do.
None of this is a forecast. The figures here are for the 2026/27 test as the engine estimates it today; we have not estimated the 2028 test club by club.
How to read the points
The points are points of the ratio, not money. A pound of sales profit is worth more points to a club with smaller revenue, and to a club whose ratio is already high, so Villa’s 41.6 points from league position and Europe and Arsenal’s 27.7 are not comparable sums of money.
The split also depends on the order the two supports are taken out. Here player sales come out first, the same order as on the 2026/27 table. Taken in the other order, each club’s two numbers would change; the figure without both would not.
The credit for league position counts only the payment above 15th place, because every club in the League gets at least that. The credit for Europe counts the UEFA distribution the rule allows and the gate receipts from the extra home matches. Everything else the rule adds to revenue stays in, including its floor for commercial revenue and its rules for television fees.
Sources and caveats.
The figures. The Orange Engine, release V2CL, the 2026/27 squad cost ratio for the League's test of 1 March 2027: each club's ratio, its figure before player trading, and its figure without the credit for league position and Europe, from the same release as the 2026/27 table. The points are the engine's own, rounded once.
The rules. Premier League Handbook 2026/27, Appendix 2: Rule A.1.13 (the Annualised Transfer Amount), Rule A.1.29 (the revenue the rule counts, limbs (a), (d)(iii), (e) and (g)) and Rule A.1.53 (the Relevant Period). Our reading of "the relevant UEFA Club Competition", the competition the club is in this season, is set out in the Orange Engine.
What the groups are. A description of each club's figure against the middle club of the twenty, not a rating of risk and not a prediction.
Independent estimate, not an official calculation, and not advice. Figures produced 3 November 2026.