Premier League club ‘at risk of new PSR financial rules points deduction’

According to reports, Leicester must wait nervously to discover whether the Premier League will charge them for breaching profitability and sustainability rules.

The Foxes – who are ranked 19th in the league table – were one of several teams due to submit their financial accounts for the 2023-2024 season on New Year's Eve.

This was due to the club – who secured promotion to the Premier League this season – having suffered financial losses over the past two years. According to The Guardian, Ruud van Nistelrooy's side will discover their fate on January 13.

Should Leicester receive a points deduction from the league – similar to Nottingham Forest and Everton in the past – it would be a major blow to their survival hopes.

In September, the club narrowly escaped a points deduction in the Premier League after the newly promoted club appealed a PSR decision. The club recorded pre-tax losses of £92.5m and £90m for the 2022 and 2023 financial years respectively.

The Foxes, who are in a battle for survival this season, were staring down the barrel of a sanction after the league referred them to an independent committee in March for suspected wrongdoing.

Leicester subsequently challenged the committee's jurisdiction to hear the case, which related to a period when they were in the Championship and not the Premier League, but the body rejected this earlier this year.

The King Power Stadium side then took the matter to an independent appeals committee, which later reversed the committee's decision and ruled that the club had not breached the PSRs for the assessment period ending June 30, 2023.

A statement released by Leicester in September then added that the appeals committee also found 'deficiencies in the drafting of the Premier League rules'.

Clubs in the UK are allowed to report losses within a certain limit, beyond which they face sanctions such as fines or points deductions.

Leicester's financial problems are linked to significant expenditure in recent years, both in terms of transfer fees and player wages.

They appeared to be on the verge of a fate similar to that of Everton, who received two separate points deductions for financial overruns over successive three-year periods.

Everton initially received a penalty of ten penalty points reduced to six on appeal for violations in the period 2021-2022.

However, they were later penalized with an additional deduction of two points for the subsequent period in 2022-2023.

Leicester, who were sued by the Premier League in March, are under scrutiny for breaching the £105m loss limit for the financial period ending 2022-2023.

The case against Leicester City was subsequently postponed after the club mounted the legal challenge, arguing that the Premier League did not have the jurisdiction to sue them while they were competing in the Championship.

Premier League rules limit clubs to losses of £105m over three years if all those years are spent in the top flight.

Because Leicester played in the Championship last season, their allowable losses for the current three-year cycle will be reduced by £22 million, due to the English Football League's stricter spending limits.

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