Could Liverpool sign Ollie Watkins? A piece of tantalising summer transfer news in one respect, although also representative of the debate that will go right to the heart of the Premier League annual general meeting this week.
Profit and sustainability rules [PSR] have dominated season 2023-2024 – and as the summer window opens, it is still live.
Aston Villa, the Premier League’s new representative in the Champions League, are at the centre of the question and by extension leading players at the club like Watkins – Villa’s 27-goal striker last season.
In any other circumstances, selling Watkins would be unthinkable ahead of this, Villa’s first European Cup season since 1983.
What makes it plausible is the PSR factor.
The losses Villa posted in March for last season, £119.6 million, place them in PSR breach danger. Not all that loss figure will represent a PSR loss.
Nevertheless it is not hard to see why the club have proposed on the AGM agenda raising the permitted losses under PSR from £105 million to £135 million for this final three year monitoring period under the current rules.
Without player sales this summer perhaps Villa could breach and the first whispers of Liverpool’s interest in Watkins – real or otherwise – surfaced this week.
Whether that is accurate or not is one question – the very fact that selling Watkins is a scenario Villa might have to entertain is another which the Premier League will be forced to deal with.
