The other 14

We must not be conned once again by Man United by taking on Garner for an inflated fee and losing Branthwaite for buttons. We always seem to pay too much for their duds - Schneiderlin for example - while selling low for our best players such as Rooney or Lukaku. That stuff must end immediately.

Yes, the next few seasons might be tedious on the eyes but we must move to the Dock and stabilise.

Perhaps the recent dismissal of the £900M 'New Deal' package was the start of a rebellion against the way things are going in favour of the so-called Big Clubs — but then not so much when you look at how the vote was made up, the 10 clubs voting it down being Arsenal, Chelsea, Tottenham, Liverpool, West Ham, Aston Villa, Wolves, Nottingham Forest, Crystal Palace, and Bournemouth.

The upcoming power test this week will be on the anchored spending cap to be applied to the squad-cost ratio that will augment or replace PSR, not from next season but from the season after. This from The Athletic:

If anchoring was in effect last season, the cap would have been £518million, five times the £103.6m that Southampton, who finished 20th, earned in centralised revenues, with Chelsea spending more than that on wages, amortised transfer fees and payments to agents, with Manchester City not far behind.

Unsurprisingly, the idea is far more popular with clubs further down the revenue table. They see it as a way to stop the league's biggest earners from being able to outspend them at an ever-expanding rate. Without it, they fear the league's already fragile competitive balance would be further eroded.

For anchoring — or the squad cost rule, for that matter — to have any chance of being introduced, it must be approved by the Professional Football Negotiating and Consultative Committee, the body that brings the players' union (PFA), the EFL, FA and Premier League together to discuss matters relating to the employment of players.

All that is for the future, though, as the first hurdle that anchoring must clear is finding sufficient support within the Premier League, where a two-thirds (14-6) majority of the clubs is needed to change the rulebook.

The recent rows over the league's financial distribution offer to the rest of the pyramid and its rules on associated-party transactions have shown how hard it can be to clear that hurdle, with the 20 clubs less united on a whole range of issues than at any time in the last 30 years.

There was a one-minute slot on Today, Radio 4 at 7;30 this morning, one of the minority shareholders at the club was interviewed, he was very pessimistic about our finances.