Yahoo News Leicester City 'shambles' blasted as champions face Premier League points deduction peril
A Leicester City hero has blasted the “absolute shambles” player spending rules that threaten to undermine the EFL champions’ next Premier League campaign even before it has started.
The Foxes clinched the Championship title by thrashing Preston on Monday night and are now ready to retake their place in the top-flight after suffering relegation a year ago.
But a hero of Leicester’s 2000 League Cup triumph has slammed the rules - and claimed clarification was needed because “I don’t think anyone understands the rules”.
Tony Cottee, a £500,000 Foxes recruit in 1997, scored 13 league goals in 1999/2000 - the most in the top-flight in a single season by a Leicester City player until Jamie Vardy bagged 24 in the title-winning campaign of 2015/16.
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The Premier League have charged City over an alleged breach of their profitability and sustainability spending rules - or FFP - meaning the club could face a points deduction next term if found guilty.
And that has angered Cottee, who also played 184 games for Everton, who have twice been hit with points sanctions this season and narrowly avoided relegation because of their eight-point penalty.
He said: “With the PSR and all the rules that have been brought in - and there’s going to be new regulations coming in the summer - I’ve got no idea. No-one knows what’s going on; it’s an absolute shambles… and this is all being caused by the Premier League.”
Under the current rules, top-flight clubs are permitted losses of £105m over a three season period, and even less if they have been promoted from the Championship in that time.
In an interview for Best Anonymous Casinos, Cottee adds: “At the moment, Everton are battling against the Premier League. They’re challenging their second points deduction, and quite rightly so.
“How you’re only allowed to lose £35m in one season, I don’t get that, because if you’re trying to buy a new player, you’re trying to buy a Dominic Calvert-Lewin, it’s going to cost you £56m. So that’s one player. When these rules were brought in, players weren’t going for £100m. There’s been huge inflation. They’ve got to sort the rules out; just clear the decks and sort out the situation.
“You’ve got my old club Leicester, you’ve got Chelsea, you’ve got Man City, you’ve got Everton, you’ve got Forest – all these clubs are in situations that need clarification. Get it sorted out and put some proper modern rules in because that’s the key to it. Put the rules in; everyone knows where they stand, and let’s just make the Premier League what it has always been. Get it back to being the best league in the world.”
The Premier League has already agreed to replace its profitability and sustainability rules from the 2025-26 season with a squad cost control, which will limit clubs to spending 85 percent of their total revenue on wages, transfer payments and agents’ fees. But it is also looking at a system of “anchoring” - tying club spending to the income of the lowest paid outfit in the league.
Cottee has also slammed the fact that teams appealing against points deductions could learn their fate after the season has ended, saying: “What idiot thought that was a good idea?”
He added: “All of the points deductions and that – no one wants to see that. Just to compound it all and make it even more stupid, they’ve allowed it to be that potentially the act that the latest ruling could be after the season’s finished. I mean, what? What idiot thought that was a good idea?
“How can you have rules where someone’s going to challenge something and we’ll give you a decision after the last game’s been played? It’s complete nonsense. They’ve made themselves look really, really foolish, and that needs to be changed.
“You’ve got to have rules and dates in place that work for everyone, and we can’t have this in the future. There’s no way in a million years we should ever have to worry about the last day of the season being played, and then there might be a change or a points deduction that could alter the league.
“Once you’ve played that last game, once that last final whistle goes, Sunday, the 19th of May, that is the end of the season. You cannot have things going on after that. Whoever thought that was clever, I don’t know.”
