Newcastle: what has changed

Fees clubs paid for managers, and compensation clubs received for releasing them, are now counted where they have been reported or filed. Six clubs' estimates move by less than a percentage point; none crosses a line.

• Manchester City are at 74.4%, from 73.7%, with Enzo Maresca's reported £17.2m fee spread over his three-year contract.
• Chelsea are at 88.3%, from 89.1%, with the £17m reported from City for releasing Maresca.
• Brentford are at 81.6%, from 82.3%, Ipswich at 97.9%, from 97.1%, Newcastle at 81.7%, from 81.3%, and Crystal Palace at 78.1%, from 77.8%.
• Loan fees received that the accounts print outside player sales widen the ranges at Bournemouth, Forest, Ipswich and Villa; no central figure moves for them.
• Brentford's range now ends just below 85%, and Newcastle's now reaches just above it.

Also moved:Manchester CityChelseaBrentfordIpswich TownCrystal Palace

We had averaged each club's profit on player sales over three financial years, but the rule averages the sales made in the six most recent transfer windows, which for the March 2027 test start in February 2024. Sales between February and June 2024 now count, among them several made before the June 2024 deadline of the previous rules, and ten estimates move: Chelsea's to 88.6%, from 92.5%, and Newcastle's to 81.3%, from 84.9%, the largest.

• The period the rule averages: the profit or loss on player sales over the six most recent transfer windows, divided by three, not over three financial years. For the March 2027 test the period starts on 2 February 2024, so sales from then until each club's 2024/25 year began now count.
• Brentford: David Raya's sale to Arsenal, which Brentford booked in June 2024, now counts, and Mark Flekken's sale to Bayer Leverkusen in June 2025 is no longer counted twice.
• Figures for later tests: where an article gives a club's figure for a later year, it is now worked out window by window; where we have not yet done that, the figure is withdrawn while we recheck it.

What moved: Chelsea 92.5% → 88.6%; Newcastle 84.9% → 81.3%; Aston Villa 77.4% → 74.4%; Nottingham Forest 99.3% → 97.6%; Brentford 83.8% → 82.3%; Everton 73.3% → 72.3%; Manchester City 73.8% → 73.1%; Tottenham 80.4% → 80.9%; Leeds 68.6% → 68.3%; Manchester United 56.9% → 56.8%

Also moved:ChelseaAston VillaNottingham ForestBrentfordEvertonManchester CityTottenhamLeedsManchester United

Corrections found while checking our inputs against the clubs' own pages: thirteen signing, sale and contract dates now follow the club's own completion announcement, three fees agreed in euros now use the official exchange rate on the day the deal completed, and one contract end is corrected. Two estimates move: Crystal Palace's to 77.8%, from 78.1%, and Everton's to 73.3%, from 73.4%.

• Dates: where a club's own announcement of a completed signing, sale or new contract gives a different day from the one we held, the club's day now counts. Thirteen dates at Chelsea, Everton, Bournemouth, Brighton and Crystal Palace move, by between one day and about a month, and each contract's length is measured again from its corrected start.
• Fees in euros: three fees agreed in euros are now converted at the European Central Bank's rate on the day each deal completed: Dan Ndoye's and Ousmane Diomande's at Nottingham Forest, and Anthony Gordon's sale by Newcastle.
• Crystal Palace: Quinten Timber's contract runs to 2031, as the club announced, not 2030, so his fee is spread over one more season.

What moved: Crystal Palace 78.1% → 77.8%; Everton 73.4% → 73.3%

Also moved:Crystal PalaceEvertonChelseaBournemouthBrightonNottingham Forest

When a club sells a player it once bought, the club that sold him first may be owed a share of the fee: a sell-on. We counted a sell-on as a cost to the club paying it, but had no proper way to count it as income for the club receiving it. This release adds that, applies it to two sell-ons, and corrects the fee Everton paid for Iliman Ndiaye. Newcastle's figure moves from 84.7% to 84.9%.

• The rule averages each club's profit on selling players over three seasons. A sell-on a club receives on another club's later sale is part of that profit, in the club's own financial year, even though it sells nobody. We now record it that way: the full amount, with no selling costs taken off, and without treating it as the sale of one of the club's own players. A payment a club's accounts show for clauses on former players is counted the same way, as a cost.
• Where both clubs are among the twenty we cover, the amount one club records as paid must match, deal by deal, the amount the other records as received. Each club's side is placed in its own financial year, which can differ, as clubs' year ends differ.
• Newcastle owe Everton a share of the profit on Anthony Gordon's sale to Barcelona in May 2026. Reports put it at 15% of Newcastle's profit, about £3.1m, though they disagree on how it is worked out. We now count it at both clubs, as a reported figure rather than a confirmed one: a cost to Newcastle and income to Everton. Across the two clubs it nets to zero.
• Coventry City's accounts say that after their 2024/25 year end the club received £4.0m and paid £0.8m under sell-on and similar clauses on former players. The accounts do not say which players. We had entered the net amount as if it were one sale of Viktor Gyökeres, with selling costs taken off. We now record both amounts as the accounts print them, for no named player. Coventry's figure does not move at the precision we publish.
• Everton paid Marseille €18.5m for Iliman Ndiaye in July 2024, with up to €2.5m more in add-ons reported but not known to have been paid. We had recorded £20m, which was Marseille's own earlier fee for him. At the exchange rate of the day the guaranteed fee is £15.7m; the add-ons are noted but not counted. The lower fee raises Everton's costs for the rest of the squad slightly and raises its profit when he was sold to Manchester City this September. With the Gordon sell-on, Everton's central figure stays at 73.4%.
• Newcastle's central figure is now 84.9%, in an assumption range of 79.1% to 88.8%. It is below 85% on the central estimate, and the range spans the line: the estimate does not reliably tell which side of 85% Newcastle are on.

What moved: Newcastle 84.7% → 84.9% (range 79.1 to 88.8%); Everton 73.4% → 73.4% (range 68.9 to 77.0%; 84.9% before player trading, from 84.4%); Coventry City 64.6% → 64.6%

Also moved:Coventry CityEverton

Last season's commercial revenue is not in any club's filed accounts yet, so we estimate it. Until now each estimate was a judgement of ours. From this release every club's estimate is made by one published method, fitted on 81 filed year-on-year changes, with an assumption range sized from how far such forecasts have missed in the past. Seventeen estimates move. No club changes side of a threshold.

• The rule counts a club's commercial revenue for last season, 2025/26. Those accounts are filed between late 2026 and spring 2027, so for 19 clubs the figure is an estimate. We had built each one by hand, from the last filed figure and our own view of the club's season, and gave each a margin of 7% either way.
• The new method starts from the club's last filed commercial revenue and grows it by a rate that depends only on the size of that revenue: larger commercial businesses have grown more slowly in percentage terms. The rate is 19.3% for a club starting from £20m and 6.8% for one starting from £350m. It is fitted on 81 changes taken from filed accounts, every figure read on the page.
• We chose the method on one test only: how well it would have forecast commercial revenue in past seasons. It was compared with assuming no growth and with a rule that also used each club's own last change. We did not look at what any method did to a club's squad cost ratio, or at which side of 85% it left a club.
• The margin of 7% either way was too narrow. Past forecasts of this kind have missed by more, and by more for small clubs than for large ones. The new assumption range is sized from those misses and is wider on the upper side for smaller clubs. Most clubs' published ranges are wider as a result.
• Four clubs' assumption ranges now span the 85% line: Bournemouth (central figure 85.5%, range 79.5 to 87.8%), Brentford (83.8%, 79.5 to 87.5%), Newcastle (84.7%, 78.9 to 88.6%) and Tottenham (80.4%, 76.4 to 85.6%). For these the estimate does not reliably tell which side of the line the club is on.
• Sunderland and Ipswich Town changed division, where the size rule does not apply. Sunderland's estimate is the typical change of nine promoted clubs and Ipswich's the typical change of six relegated clubs. Both are provisional until their accounts are filed. Coventry City's and Hull City's ratios do not move: the rule counts its £15m minimum for both, and their own commercial revenue is below it. Our estimate of that revenue does change: it is now each club's last filed figure with no growth assumed, provisional until their accounts are filed.
• Manchester United does not move: its 2025/26 figure is filed. Leeds now has the cost of its merchandise taken off, as the rule requires and as at every other club; that cost is estimated, not filed.
• Two figures measured before player trading now sit a fraction of a percentage point from a line: Manchester City 84.9%, from 87.1%, which is 0.1 percentage points below 85%, and Chelsea 114.4%, from 115.5%, which is 0.6 percentage points below 115%. Both margins are smaller than the uncertainty in the commercial estimate, so the estimate does not reliably tell which side of either line the club is on before player trading. No published ratio changes side of a threshold.
• We have withdrawn our estimate of what the five-year amortisation cap would add at Chelsea if it reached the eight registrations signed before it. Two ways of calculating it give different answers, and we will publish neither until they are reconciled.
• From this release we write movements and margins of a ratio in percentage points and sporting deductions in league points, so the two are never confused.
• The forecasts of record are frozen and scored as frozen. The forecasts we published before this release stand in the track record as published and will be scored against the 2025/26 accounts as they were. The estimates of this release are held in its own timestamped record and will be compared with the accounts when they are filed.

What moved: Arsenal 59.5% → 59.9%; Bournemouth 85.5% → 85.5% (range 79.5 to 87.8%); Brentford 84.2% → 83.8%; Brighton 79.5% → 79.1%; Chelsea 93.2% → 92.5%; Everton 73.3% → 73.4%; Nottingham Forest 103.4% → 102.3%; Fulham 104.0% → 102.7%; Ipswich Town 95.8% → 97.1%; Leeds 67.4% → 68.6%; Liverpool 74.0% → 72.9%; Manchester City 75.4% → 73.8%; Newcastle 83.9% → 84.7%; Crystal Palace 78.9% → 78.1%; Sunderland 63.4% → 60.8%; Tottenham 82.3% → 80.4%; Aston Villa 76.0% → 77.4%

Also moved:ArsenalBournemouthBrentfordBrightonChelseaEvertonNottingham ForestFulhamIpswich TownLeedsLiverpoolManchester CityCrystal PalaceSunderlandTottenhamAston Villa

We now measure every contract from the day a player was registered to the day the contract ends. A player who signs in August on a "five-year deal" has a contract of four years and ten months, because contracts end on 30 June. We had spread his cost over five full years, which made each year's charge a little too small. On that change every club's ratio rises, by 0.1 to 0.9 points. Five clubs also move because we now read the accounts of the group the rule describes, not the club company alone. No club's central figure crosses a threshold.

• The cost of signing a player is spread over the length of his contract. We had used the length as announced, in whole years. We now use the time between the registration date and the contract's end date.
• 504 contract lengths changed. For 190 of them a source states the end date. For the other 314 we have derived it as the 30 June that the announced length points to, which is when contracts in English football end, and we mark those dates as derived until we have a source for each.
• No length changed by as much as half a year. The effect is a few weeks per player, added up across each squad.
• Bournemouth's central figure moves from 85.2% to 85.5%, in an assumption range of 80.1% to 87.7%. The range still spans the 85% line, so the estimate does not tell which side of the line the club is on.
• Brentford (84.1%) and Tottenham (82.3%) move closer to the line. Neither is above it at the central figure.
• The same rule now applies to the contract a loan with an obligation to buy would create. One published figure moves on it, Fulham's, by 0.1 points.
• The rule tests a club together with its football companies. At Brighton and Sunderland the women's team is a separate company whose revenue the rule counts, so their ratios fall, by 0.3 and 0.2 points. At Ipswich the group's accounts remove a fee the club charges its own parent, so its commercial revenue is lower and its ratio rises by a further 0.9 points.
• Newcastle's group includes the women's team and a fan zone beside the stadium that opened in August 2024. We count the women's team's revenue in full and the fan zone at its profit, which lowers the ratio from 84.7% to 83.9%. This rests on our reading of the rule. The rule counts matchday food and drink in full, and if the League treats the fan zone that way the figure is lower, so the assumption range now runs from 80.7% to 86.0%.
• Manchester City's women's team sits in another company of the same group. We add its ticket and broadcasting income, which lowers the ratio by 0.3 points. We do not add its sponsorship income, because the accounts do not show that it comes from outside the group.
• A women's team's company often receives money from its own club. We count only what comes from outside the group, and nothing extra where the team is already inside the accounts we read.
• For seven clubs the group's accounts cannot yet be applied, because the documents do not print what is needed or, at Manchester United, because the change is large enough to need a release of its own. Their figures are unchanged on this point and each club's article says so.
• A check that used to require whole years for a summer signing now requires each length to agree with its dates. It still refuses the error it was written to catch.
• A new check stops a club's European revenue being switched off by mistake. It compares each club's record with the list of clubs in the league phase of their competition.
• We read every figure we take from the clubs' accounts against its page again. Twelve did not match. None of them is used in the ratio, and all are corrected. One, Nottingham Forest's amortisation for 2023/24, had been quoted in our article and was corrected there on 4 October.

What moved: Arsenal 60.4% → 60.7%; Aston Villa 75.7% → 76.0%; Bournemouth 85.2% → 85.5%; Brentford 83.9% → 84.1%; Brighton 79.7% → 79.5%; Chelsea 94.0% → 94.3%; Coventry 63.5% → 64.1%; Crystal Palace 78.0% → 78.5%; Everton 72.8% → 73.3%; Fulham 106.0% → 106.4%; Hull 66.4% → 67.0%; Ipswich 94.1% → 95.8%; Leeds 67.0% → 67.4%; Liverpool 73.9% → 74.0%; Manchester United 58.8% → 59.0%; Newcastle 84.2% → 83.9%; Nottingham Forest 102.5% → 103.4%; Sunderland 63.2% → 63.4%; Tottenham 82.1% → 82.3%

Also moved:ArsenalAston VillaBournemouthBrentfordBrightonChelseaCoventry CityCrystal PalaceEvertonFulhamHull CityIpswich TownLeedsLiverpoolManchester CityManchester UnitedNottingham ForestSunderlandTottenham

We rebuilt the matchday income that the rule counts for every club. The rule takes last season's gate receipts per home match and multiplies by this season's home matches. We had not counted the matches properly and had not written down how we estimated the receipts. Both are now done: the matches are counted from archived match reports, and the receipts follow a published method. Fourteen clubs' squad cost ratios move, eight down and six up, and no club crosses a threshold.

• Home cup ties. The rule counts the average number of home FA Cup and League Cup matches over three seasons, rounded up. Twelve clubs had too few. Newcastle and Chelsea each played 13 in three seasons, so the rule counts five a season.
• Last season's home matches. The rule divides last season's receipts by every home match played. Eleven clubs' counts were wrong. Newcastle played 31 home matches, not 24; Crystal Palace 28, not 24; Chelsea 26, not 28.
• Last season's receipts. Most clubs have not filed 2025/26 accounts, so the figure is an estimate. For thirteen clubs it now starts from the last filed year, adjusted for the change in cup and European home matches and for 5% growth. Arsenal's earlier figure, raised for a European run that was no longer than the year before, is withdrawn.
• The largest movements are Tottenham, 79.4% to 77.6%, and Newcastle, 77.7% to 79.4%. At Fulham and Brentford the corrections cancel and the figure does not move.
• Manchester United's records take five small corrections to a signing date, two fees and two contract lengths, worth less than a hundredth of a point together.
• Every figure on the site is now rounded once, from the model's exact value. Three printed ranges change by a tenth of a point as a result.
• The method is set out in "How we estimate matchday revenue". A separate review of agents' fees on signings since the last accounts is under way and may raise these figures; we will report its result.

What moved: Tottenham 79.4% → 77.6%; Newcastle 77.7% → 79.4%; Crystal Palace 73.6% → 74.9%; Liverpool 70.6% → 69.6%; Everton 71.7% → 70.7%; Arsenal 55.8% → 56.6%; Chelsea 88.6% → 88.0%; Manchester United 58.7% → 58.1%; Aston Villa 71.9% → 72.5%; Brighton 77.8% → 77.4%; Nottingham Forest 96.7% → 97.0%; Bournemouth 83.0% → 82.8%; Coventry 61.2% → 61.0%; Manchester City 74.1% → 74.2%

Also moved:TottenhamCrystal PalaceLiverpoolEvertonArsenalChelseaManchester UnitedAston VillaBrightonNottingham ForestBournemouthCoventry CityManchester CityFulhamBrentfordLeeds

A further check of the transfer records behind every figure: players recorded as costing nothing, sale fees that included add-ons, contract terms and extensions, and fees a selling club owed to a player's former club. It also corrects the date at which departed players' remaining cost is measured for clubs whose year does not end on 30 June. Thirteen published ratios move, by between 0.1 and 1.0 points; no club crosses the 85% or 115% threshold.

• Aston Villa's ratio rises from 70.8% to 71.7%, because Middlesbrough are owed a fifth of Villa's profit on Morgan Rogers, about £20m, which the figures had counted as Villa's.
• Fees owed to former clubs are now deducted on the largest sales where a reliable report states them, which also raises Newcastle (Bruno Guimarães and Alexander Isak) to 77.7%, Bournemouth (Antoine Semenyo) to 83.5% and, with a sale fee that had been recorded in euros as pounds, Brighton to 78.1%.
• Every player sold for a fee while recorded as costing nothing is now checked; those who were in fact bought are either restored to their cost or listed with the most the gap could matter.
• Sale fees are now the guaranteed fee wherever the clubs or a reliable outlet state it, with add-ons kept separate; Chelsea's ratio rises to 88.6% and Liverpool's to 70.6%, and Crystal Palace's falls to 73.0%.
• Contract terms and extensions were corrected where a reliable source dates them; smaller moves follow for Tottenham, Arsenal, Nottingham Forest, Leeds, Coventry City and Ipswich Town.
• For Arsenal, Liverpool and Coventry, whose accounts end on 31 May, the remaining cost of players who have left is now measured at that date rather than 30 June; Arsenal's ratio falls to 55.7%.
• Where no reliable source exists yet, the figure is kept and the most it could matter is recorded.

What moved: Aston Villa 70.8% → 71.7%; Brighton 77.2% → 78.1%; Newcastle 76.7% → 77.7%; Bournemouth 83.1% → 83.5%; Chelsea 88.4% → 88.6%; Liverpool 70.5% → 70.6%; Crystal Palace 73.1% → 73.0%; Nottingham Forest 96.9% → 96.7%; Tottenham 79.3% → 79.4%; Arsenal 55.8% → 55.7%; Leeds 64.6% → 64.5%; Coventry City 61.3% → 61.2%; Ipswich Town 88.9% → 88.8%

Also moved:Aston VillaBrightonBournemouthChelseaLiverpoolCrystal PalaceNottingham ForestTottenhamArsenalLeedsCoventry CityIpswich Town

The tables of past seasons in the Newcastle and Aston Villa articles, and every club's table of player-sale profit by season, are now checked against the filed accounts automatically. No current-season figure changes.

• Each past season's row is now rebuilt from the filed accounts and the FA's published payments to agents for the matching period, and a row that cannot be rebuilt is marked unavailable rather than estimated.
• The check found that Newcastle's and Aston Villa's tables of past seasons do not match the filings, including one amortisation figure that no filing contains.
• Every input to Newcastle's figure now records where it comes from, whether a filed page, a regulator's publication, the club, the press or a modelling assumption, as the first club of twenty.

Also moved:Aston Villa

Every club's turnover, staff costs, profit on player sales and squad book value has been checked line by line against the filed accounts it was taken from. Five clubs had figures that were rounded, estimated or taken from a third party; they now carry the exact filed figures, and two published ratios move.

• Newcastle's staff costs were taken from an analyst's reading of the accounts, £2.2m above the filed £241.3m; with the filed figure its ratio falls from 77.1% to 76.7%.
• Aston Villa's squad book value had been estimated where the accounts give it exactly; with the filed figure its amortisation falls by about £0.5m and its ratio from 70.5% to 70.4%.
• Arsenal, Brighton and Liverpool carried rounded sale profits or book values; the corrections move their ratios by a thousandth of a point or less.
• Three clubs' company numbers pointed to unrelated companies and are corrected; company numbers and filed figures are now checked automatically against the source records.

What moved: Newcastle 77.1% → 76.7%; Aston Villa 70.5% → 70.4%; other figures unchanged at published precision

Also moved:Aston VillaArsenalBrightonLiverpool

Every club’s departures are now declared from sources, window by window, and reconciled against its ledger in both directions. All 20 clubs were migrated to the new check, and it is enforced: a departure missing on either side refuses the run.

• A declared departure with no matching sale in the ledger refuses; a sale in the ledger missing from the declaration refuses. Dates that differ by more than a week, or fall in a different financial year, refuse.
• Free transfers, releases, retirements and contract expiries are exits, not sales, and are never counted as departures.
• Migrating each club from its sources found missing sales, wrong dates and misclassified exits at several clubs. Each was corrected under its own record before the club was declared.

What moved: Chelsea 103.1% → 101.5%; Fulham 101.3% → 102.0%; Nottingham Forest 99.5% → 99.6% (missing sales, sale dates and the Jota Silva sale); Newcastle 76.7% → 77.1%; Brighton 77.6% → 77.8%; Brentford 84.2% → 84.5%; Everton 73.5% → 73.3%; Manchester United 58.6% → 58.7%. Others unchanged at published precision.

Also moved:ArsenalAston VillaBournemouthBrentfordBrightonChelseaCoventry CityCrystal PalaceEvertonFulhamHull CityIpswich TownLeedsLiverpoolManchester CityManchester UnitedNottingham ForestSunderlandTottenham

Sunderland added, and a full reconciliation against the 18 September baseline: every movement since then explained and recorded here, and one missing Newcastle sale added.

• Newcastle: Sean Longstaff’s £12m sale to Leeds United in July 2025 was missing from the ledger, found by the Leeds rebuild’s cross-club check.
• Movements since 18 September, each already corrected in its article with a dated note, recorded here: Manchester City 82.1% → 78.9% (players’ share of wages widened after a player-by-player estimate came in lower, and two contract extensions found); Everton 72.4% → 73.5% (fee sweep, and two four-year contracts from the club’s own announcements); Chelsea 104.0% → 103.1% (extension audit).
• A stale register of claims made in the Forest article was cleared, and one remaining superlative removed.

What moved: Sunderland enter at 61.5% (range 57.4 to 65.5%); Newcastle 77.3% → 76.7%.

Also moved:SunderlandManchester CityEvertonChelsea

Every transfer fee in the series checked against a source that publishes the base and the add-ons separately, and the squad-share comparison rebuilt on a like-for-like basis. Engine code unchanged; the data moved.

• Twenty-two fees were stored at the total rather than the base, across eight clubs of fourteen: Bournemouth 5, Manchester City 4, Chelsea 3, Crystal Palace 3, Newcastle 3, Everton 2, Arsenal 1, Aston Villa 1. Six clubs were clean, and all six were built from detailed window records rather than season summaries.
• The largest proportional case was a deal where 70% of the reported fee was contingent: £3m guaranteed against a £10m reported package.
• One earlier correction had run the wrong way, moving a base to a total against a club announcement of a record fee. Both sides of that transaction now move together.
• A loan fee included inside a reported transfer fee was being capitalised. A loan fee is an expense of the season it is paid.
• The independent per-player wage build was being compared against the wrong base. It is a 2026/27 squad snapshot, while the share here is taken of an FY25 filed cost and then rolled forward, so dividing one by the other gives the share plus the roll-forward. Netting it off reverses two of four conclusions: Arsenal needs no recut, and Tottenham is outside its range on the low side rather than inside it.
• Manchester City’s squad-share range widened from 80 to 88% to 70 to 88%, reaching the independent build without moving the centre onto it, because the two figures allocate the same filed total by different methods and the disagreement bounds the range rather than relocating it.
• The range widening stands. Its evidential basis has since been narrowed: a per-head comparison cited in support of it is no longer treated as valid evidence, because City’s filed football headcount combines players with football staff and is not a player-only denominator.
• Two of this series’ own ledgers disagreed on the same transfer, £48m against £47m. Nothing in the engine compares a purchase row with the counterparty’s disposal row, so a cross-ledger gate is the outstanding build.

What moved: The fee sweep moved eight club ratios by between −1.3 and +0.13 points, with no compliance-state change. Manchester City moved separately from 82.1% to 79.3%, mainly because the squad-share range widened from 80 to 88% to 70 to 88%.

Also moved:ArsenalAston VillaBournemouthChelseaCrystal PalaceEvertonManchester CityTottenham

A component error that could not reach an output, and therefore could not be caught by any test on a published ratio.

• A loan-out row used the SIX-year accounting amortisation charge inside the temporary-transfer waterfall instead of the FIVE-year charge A.1.22(c) requires for the ratio.
• Output-invisible: the loan receipt was fully absorbed against the player’s amortisation under either value, so the surplus to the transfer amount was nil either way and no headline moved.
• Test 1k asserts the INTERMEDIATE component directly, being the rule amortisation, the amount the waterfall applies to it, and the nil surplus, rather than the final ratio. Verified to fail on the original value.
• The general lesson: a suite that tests only published outputs is blind to an error inside a downstream-absorbed component. Where the rule and the accounts prescribe different treatments of the same figure, the component itself has to be asserted.

What moved: no published estimate changed. The version bump records a behaviour change rather than a figure change

A contract term that was internally consistent, passed every check, and contradicted its own source.

• Gate 17: a summer signing’s nominal contract term must not be fractional where the source reports a whole-year deal.
• Test 1i as the regression fixture.
• The January convention was deliberately left unasserted. Whether a January five-year deal is carried as 5 or 5.5 is a definition this engine has not settled, and asserting it would have failed four clubs on a matter of definition rather than fact.

What moved: 77.6% → 77.2% regulatory, 98.6% → 98.1% underlying

The first club whose position improved on audit, and the first loan OUT to matter more than any loan in.

• Loan-out wage relief modelled through a named bridge entry where the player’s wages were never in the filed base.
• The A.1.29(g) waterfall exercised on a player whose loan fee offsets against his own amortisation with nothing reaching the transfer amount.
• A widely reported fee found to be the club’s own figure plus contingent add-ons, the fourth such case, and one quoted inside the reporting of the player’s own loan.

What moved: 80.6% → 77.6% regulatory, 102.4% → 98.6% underlying