The hypocrisy is staggering, but nobody dares say it

Manchester City are about to sell a largely unproven midfielder for £52m, a year after buying him for a fraction of that. The Premier League calls this 'sustainable' while Everton are docked points for trying to survive. It is not a competition; it is a hierarchy enforced by numbers that oligarchs bend at will.

The numbers don't lie, but they do mislead

City's £52m fee for Tijjani Reijnders is the latest sleight of hand. They pay £20m for a player, watch him sit on the bench, then ship him to Saudi Arabia for a profit. This is not trading; it is laundering. The Premier League's Profit and Sustainability Rules (PSR) were designed to stop exactly this kind of financial doping, yet every window exposes their impotence.

Compare that to Everton. They dared to spend above their means to challenge the top six, and were punished with two points deductions. Their punishment is a testament to the league's selective enforcement. City have spent more in a single window than Everton have in a decade, yet the only investigation they face is a slow, bureaucratic one that seems designed to go nowhere.

Let's be clear about what PSR actually does

PSR is not a tool for fairness; it is a charter for the status quo. It protects the big clubs from competition, not the sport from insolvency. The rules were drafted with the help of Arsenal, Chelsea, and Manchester United—clubs that feared a nouveau riche threat. They set the limits based on their own revenue streams, which are inflated by decades of success and global marketing. New money can't catch up because it is immediately told to spend less.

  • Everton's stadium: 52,888 capacity, generating matchday revenue that is a fraction of City's commercial empire.
  • Man City's global brand: Abu Dhabi ownership, shirt deals with airlines, and a marketing machine that makes them a top-10 global club.
  • The Reijnders sale: pure profit on the books, a loophole that rewards selling players for inflated fees, not developing talent.

But wait, they say, 'City are just being smart'

The apologists will argue City are simply navigating the rules as they are written. That is true, but it is precisely the problem. The rules are so riddled with loopholes that any club with a creative accountant can circumvent them. City's 'smart' dealings are a direct assault on the spirit of the law. They are not playing the game; they are rewriting it to suit their own ends.

The counter-argument insists PSR is working because clubs are tightening belts. Yet look at Chelsea—they sold £200m of academy players last summer to balance the books, gutting their youth system in the process. Is that sustainable? No, it's cannibalistic. The rules encourage clubs to sell their future to fund the present. Nobody in the Premier League offices seems to care.

Here is the prediction: City will never be punished

By 2027, City will have won another Premier League title, and the 115 charges against them will have been quietly settled with a fine that is a rounding error in their budget. Everton will still be fighting to stay up, while paying for a stadium that the Premier League encouraged them to build. The PSR will be reformed—not to be stricter, but to codify the loopholes that City exploit. The illusion of fairness will be maintained, and the game will go on.

But this is not written in stone. The next time a club like Everton is docked points for spending what they need to compete, watch the reaction. The fans will not accept it. They will see through the sham. And when they do, the Premier League will have a crisis on its hands. The silence from the top is deafening, but it cannot last forever.

Filed under: Opinion | LA Premier League Home