The January 2026 Transfer Window Thread - Now Closed!

[magicdaps10]

It’s more appropriate to say that we are laying the foundations, and this takes a little time. We’re certainly doing more than dabbling; our next shirt sponsor is going to confirm this.

Are you guessing at the shirt sponsor or do you know?

 

[Flash]

And it’s not just pumping money in, because you can’t do that unless you get a model that increase income that then allows you to spend on the squad. They’re getting it right off the pitch foremost. We’re kind of pissing around in that area dabbling with celebs but are miles behind.

It’s not useful to compare ourselves to Wrexham. They’re a unique case and any team will find it hard to replicate what they’ve done. We’re making good steady progress to becoming a better team. And if you told me 18 months ago the trajectory we’d be on I’d have bitten your hand off.

 

[Flash]

Are you guessing at the shirt sponsor or do you know?

Joe’s Ice cream the snoop dog mural has been the clue hidden in plain sight

 

[Dr. Winston]

I don't think anyone is likely to replicate what Wrexham have done unless an even bigger star than Ryan Reynolds buys into a club. "Taylor Swift is a Jack" maybe.

For good or bad RR and Rob McElheny spotted an opportunity and they have exploited it extremely well. Reynolds is a savvy marketer but I've always thought that RM is the brains of the operation.

 

[Swans Jack]

It's going to be an interesting summer and I believe a better foundation player wise to build on even if we do sell players like Vipotnik and Galbraith....dare I say it even both.
As tough as I am on things(I prefer the word realistic) then even I can see the positives and encouraging foundation going into next season.

As strange as this sounds. I'm hoping we are building foundations so that the team is not reliant on 1 player. So for example, the prospect of Widell, Galbraith, Vig, Stamenic and hopefully few others mean, yes we are a selling club, but a club that gets stronger with each window and player sold. Ala Brighton, with there recruitment.

 

[Londonlisa2001]

Owners putting money in doesn’t change the FFP rules it’s the clubs revenue not the owners. And it could be for FFP reasons we delay the start of the payment until the summer when we’re in a better financial position.

I know it doesn’t, that’s why I said cash flow not FFP,

 

[Londonlisa2001]

In what way ?

If the club is currently on the edge of PSR limitations and the first installment payment would take them over the threshold then it makes absolute sense to ensure that payment is instead made in July.

There is no loan fee involved in this so the club will only need to pay salary.

When a club pays for a player, that is the timing of instalments, have absolutely no impact on PSR.

PSR is a profit based check not a cash flow based check.

In this particular case, the fee involved is widely reported as €3.5 which is £3m give or take a few quid.

The contract length is expected to be four years.

For PSR purposes that fee of £3m is spread equally over the total length of the contract. So it is charged at £750k per annum, or £62,500 per month (the calculation is done monthly although reported annually as per the financial statements with the caveat that clubs forecast in advance but that had no bearing here).

If Walta had been signed permanently now that would have had an efffect of charging 5/48ths of the fee to the club’s profit and loss account this year (which ends on 30th June).

That’s a total impact on PSR this year of £312,500. It makes no difference whatsoever if the fee is paid in one go or over 4 years, the cost to this year’s profit and loss account will always be £312,500. That’s because it’s a profit and loss measure not a cash measure.

The allowed loss for each three year period is £39m (caveat that I think it’s still at £41.5m as they increased it by a couple of million because of Covid and cost of living type stuff but that may have been removed so let’s assume it’s still £39m. That’s a rolling figure, so this year that we are in (year ended 30 June 2026) will be the third year of. Y/e 30/6/24, y/e 30/6/25 and this one. Plus it will be the second year of y/e 25, y/e 26 snd y/e 27 and the first year of the next set.
If revenue increases next season (which feeds into how much you can spend as it increases profit / decreases loss) then the two measures which take future years into consideration can be ignored.

So it’s only this year as the third of three that can be affected by loaning a player rather than signing one.

If we are so close to a £39m loss limit (or could be £41.5m as previously mentioned) that we don’t buy a player when it would have an impact of only £312k on the figures, then to be frank, we wouldn’t have been looking at signing Ward, or the two centre backs targeted or Nunes. And, in fact, we wouldn’t have brought in another midfielder at this point either.

The player's salary will be being paid anyway which also feeds into PSR but that has no effect as it feeds in whether you loan them or buy them (at the cost to you). I find it difficult to believe that a club will allow a loan for no fee but let’s say that they have for whatever reason so we can ignore that.

The reason I talked about owners putting money in was the possibility that it was a cash flow issue (not PSR). An owner can’t put money in to help PSR. The only thing that allows you to spend more is making more. So more commercial revenue, match day revenue, prize money, profits in player sales. We are obviously doing what we can on all those but particularly commercial and player profits.

It should also be mentioned that you can’t tell from financial statements what the PSR figures are because certain costs of a club that hit its profit and loss account are excluded. These include costs of infrastructure, the costs of academies, women’s football etc. what you can say is that the loss reported in the accounts is greater by some distance than the loss for PSR as those costs add up to at least a few million (the academy is about £2m or so per annum from memory).

Anyway, the likelihood of this being to do with PSR is remote for the reasons explained above although I have no doubt that that is the line being given.

 

[Risc]

When a club pays for a player, that is the timing of instalments, have absolutely no impact on PSR.

PSR is a profit based check not a cash flow based check.

In this particular case, the fee involved is widely reported as €3.5 which is £3m give or take a few quid.

The contract length is expected to be four years.

For PSR purposes that fee of £3m is spread equally over the total length of the contract. So it is charged at £750k per annum, or £62,500 per month (the calculation is done monthly although reported annually as per the financial statements with the caveat that clubs forecast in advance but that had no bearing here).

If Walta had been signed permanently now that would have had an efffect of charging 5/48ths of the fee to the club’s profit and loss account this year (which ends on 30th June).

That’s a total impact on PSR this year of £312,500. It makes no difference whatsoever if the fee is paid in one go or over 4 years, the cost to this year’s profit and loss account will always be £312,500. That’s because it’s a profit and loss measure not a cash measure.

The allowed loss for each three year period is £39m (caveat that I think it’s still at £41.5m as they increased it by a couple of million because of Covid and cost of living type stuff but that may have been removed so let’s assume it’s still £39m. That’s a rolling figure, so this year that we are in (year ended 30 June 2026) will be the third year of. Y/e 30/6/24, y/e 30/6/25 and this one. Plus it will be the second year of y/e 25, y/e 26 snd y/e 27 and the first year of the next set.
If revenue increases next season (which feeds into how much you can spend as it increases profit / decreases loss) then the two measures which take future years into consideration can be ignored.

So it’s only this year as the third of three that can be affected by loaning a player rather than signing one.

If we are so close to a £39m loss limit (or could be £41.5m as previously mentioned) that we don’t buy a player when it would have an impact of only £312k on the figures, then to be frank, we wouldn’t have been looking at signing Ward, or the two centre backs targeted or Nunes. And, in fact, we wouldn’t have brought in another midfielder at this point either.

The player's salary will be being paid anyway which also feeds into PSR but that has no effect as it feeds in whether you loan them or buy them (at the cost to you). I find it difficult to believe that a club will allow a loan for no fee but let’s say that they have for whatever reason so we can ignore that.

The reason I talked about owners putting money in was the possibility that it was a cash flow issue (not PSR). An owner can’t put money in to help PSR. The only thing that allows you to spend more is making more. So more commercial revenue, match day revenue, prize money, profits in player sales. We are obviously doing what we can on all those but particularly commercial and player profits.

It should also be mentioned that you can’t tell from financial statements what the PSR figures are because certain costs of a club that hit its profit and loss account are excluded. These include costs of infrastructure, the costs of academies, women’s football etc. what you can say is that the loss reported in the accounts is greater by some distance than the loss for PSR as those costs add up to at least a few million (the academy is about £2m or so per annum from memory).

Anyway, the likelihood of this being to do with PSR is remote for the reasons explained above although I have no doubt that that is the line being given.

Sirius would allow a loan with no fee if it's to allow a permanent sale at the price they wanted based on easy conditions met like us staying in the league this season. They want to cash in, we want to buy and this is the way the deal can be done without falling foul of financial regulations. It's obvious by doing this permanent now it would have tipped the scales the wrong way and this was the only way we could get the deal done now and they were happy with it as they are getting the money they wanted. As Ian said above, this is very common place now in football.

It's just a clever way of doing a deal without the immediate PSR burden, it's good to see as previous regimes at the club wouldn't have had the first clue what they were doing and we'd end up being in the same position we've been in pretty much every January before these guys took over, frustrated.

Very excited to see what the summer brings now, foundations now in place.

 

[Swansea93]

New sponsor, stadium bought and academy upgraded to Cat 1 in the summer?

 

[cadleigh]

When a club pays for a player, that is the timing of instalments, have absolutely no impact on PSR.

PSR is a profit based check not a cash flow based check.

In this particular case, the fee involved is widely reported as €3.5 which is £3m give or take a few quid.

The contract length is expected to be four years.

For PSR purposes that fee of £3m is spread equally over the total length of the contract. So it is charged at £750k per annum, or £62,500 per month (the calculation is done monthly although reported annually as per the financial statements with the caveat that clubs forecast in advance but that had no bearing here).

If Walta had been signed permanently now that would have had an efffect of charging 5/48ths of the fee to the club’s profit and loss account this year (which ends on 30th June).

That’s a total impact on PSR this year of £312,500. It makes no difference whatsoever if the fee is paid in one go or over 4 years, the cost to this year’s profit and loss account will always be £312,500. That’s because it’s a profit and loss measure not a cash measure.

The allowed loss for each three year period is £39m (caveat that I think it’s still at £41.5m as they increased it by a couple of million because of Covid and cost of living type stuff but that may have been removed so let’s assume it’s still £39m. That’s a rolling figure, so this year that we are in (year ended 30 June 2026) will be the third year of. Y/e 30/6/24, y/e 30/6/25 and this one. Plus it will be the second year of y/e 25, y/e 26 snd y/e 27 and the first year of the next set.
If revenue increases next season (which feeds into how much you can spend as it increases profit / decreases loss) then the two measures which take future years into consideration can be ignored.

So it’s only this year as the third of three that can be affected by loaning a player rather than signing one.

If we are so close to a £39m loss limit (or could be £41.5m as previously mentioned) that we don’t buy a player when it would have an impact of only £312k on the figures, then to be frank, we wouldn’t have been looking at signing Ward, or the two centre backs targeted or Nunes. And, in fact, we wouldn’t have brought in another midfielder at this point either.

The player's salary will be being paid anyway which also feeds into PSR but that has no effect as it feeds in whether you loan them or buy them (at the cost to you). I find it difficult to believe that a club will allow a loan for no fee but let’s say that they have for whatever reason so we can ignore that.

The reason I talked about owners putting money in was the possibility that it was a cash flow issue (not PSR). An owner can’t put money in to help PSR. The only thing that allows you to spend more is making more. So more commercial revenue, match day revenue, prize money, profits in player sales. We are obviously doing what we can on all those but particularly commercial and player profits.

It should also be mentioned that you can’t tell from financial statements what the PSR figures are because certain costs of a club that hit its profit and loss account are excluded. These include costs of infrastructure, the costs of academies, women’s football etc. what you can say is that the loss reported in the accounts is greater by some distance than the loss for PSR as those costs add up to at least a few million (the academy is about £2m or so per annum from memory).

Anyway, the likelihood of this being to do with PSR is remote for the reasons explained above although I have no doubt that that is the line being given.

Awesome post, thanks Lisa.

Rethinking my summer holiday plans now in light of that shocking news in the euro/sterling exchange rate.

 

[magicdaps10]

New sponsor, stadium bought and academy upgraded to Cat 1 in the summer?

I would take the shirt sponsor alone as a positive.
Stadium bought would be superb aswell and all 3 would be a real statement.

 

[Flash]

Anyway, the likelihood of this being to do with PSR is remote for the reasons explained above although I have no doubt that that is the line being given.

You're confidently stating that as fact, but you have no idea about any of the finances involved. We don't know the undisclosed fee, we don't know the wage structure of the loan deal and we don't know how much headroom there was in our budget cap.

Even the 300k figure you've plucked out of thin air is not an insignificant amount of money, it would be 1 or 2 players wages for 5 months. It could have absolutely made the difference in us getting him or not within the PSR rules, or allowed us to chase for another CB.

We're obviously close to or at the limit of the PSR rules given the amount we spent in the summer, and if we weren't we would have gone for a permanent signing off the bat. I don't see how that is so hard to believe.

 

[Cinio Dydd Sul]

I would take the shirt sponsor alone as a positive.
Stadium bought would be superb aswell and all 3 would be a real statement.

Why would the stadium purchase necessarily be a good thing? Aren't we just currently paying a peppercorn rent to the council but take all the profits (or losses) from all events at the ground?

Buying would make expansion easier but is that a realistic consideration at the moment?

 

[Swansea93]

Why would the stadium purchase necessarily be a good thing? Aren't we just currently paying a peppercorn rent to the council but take all the profits (or losses) from all events at the ground?

Buying would make expansion easier but is that a realistic consideration at the moment?

I’m sure it would help with PSR and sponsorship deals.

 

[Cinio Dydd Sul]

I’m sure it would help with PSR and sponsorship deals.

I dont see what difference that would make? Why would sponsorship increase based on who owns the stadium? We have the ability to do whatever commercial deals we want now as far as i'm aware?

PSR isn't a consideration because infrastructure costs aren't included.