Is Arsenal compliant with UEFA's squad cost rule?

On this site's estimates, Arsenal's squad cost is 57.5% of adjusted revenue of £738.7m. UEFA's squad cost rule caps that at 70%, which for Arsenal is £517.1m, leaving £92.2m of headroom. That puts them inside UEFA's limit. This is the club's domestic-basis squad cost estimate read against UEFA's lines; UEFA's own cost definition and calendar-year measurement period differ, so the figure UEFA calculates will not match exactly.

How does Arsenal's UEFA position differ from their Premier League SCR position?

The same 57.5% is measured against two different lines. The Premier League's Green Threshold is 85% (£627.9m for Arsenal), which leaves them inside it domestically. UEFA's limit is 70% (£517.1m), which leaves them inside it in Europe. Both regulators reach the same conclusion about this club, but they are still separate assessments. UEFA measures to the calendar year and the Premier League to the season, and the two count costs slightly differently.

What happens if Arsenal breach UEFA's squad cost rule?

UEFA sanctions a squad cost breach with fines, conditional or suspended fines, and restrictions on registering new players for its competitions - never points deductions, which are the Premier League's remedy alone. In June 2026 the CFCB fined Aston Villa EUR 22.5m (EUR 7.5m payable, EUR 15m suspended for three years) and restricted their registration of new players for the 2026/27 Champions League; Chelsea were fined EUR 3m. A UEFA penalty has no effect on Arsenal's Premier League position, and vice versa.

Arsenal · UEFA Champions League 2026/27

Arsenal under UEFA's squad cost rule

Because Arsenal are in the UEFA Champions League, they answer to two regulators at once. Their estimated squad cost is 57.5% of adjusted revenue of £738.7m. Against UEFA's 70% limit of £517.1m that leaves +£92.2m — UEFA: Within the 70% limit Against the Premier League's 85% Green Threshold of £627.9m it leaves +£203m — Premier League: High spending power

Arsenal: the figures behind both rules

Estimated revenue (football) reported £691m
+ Player trading profit/loss (3-yr average) +£47.7m
Latest single season was +£81.2m not used alone
= Adjusted revenue (SCR basis) £738.7m
85% SCR limit £627.9m
Estimated squad cost estimated £424.9m
Headroom vs 85% limit +£203m
Red Threshold (115% of adjusted revenue) £849.5m
Headroom vs Red Threshold +£424.6m

UEFA squad cost rule (UEFA Champions League) — a separate regulator's rule, running alongside the domestic one

UEFA limit (70% of adjusted revenue) £517.1m
Headroom vs UEFA limit +£92.2m

UEFA: High spending power

High spending power - squad cost is 57.5% of adjusted revenue

For reference, Transfermarkt's current squad market value is £1,207m (source) — a transfer-market valuation, not the same thing as squad cost. It's shown purely as a sanity-check on the scale of the composed wage/amortisation figure above, not as an input to the SCR calculation itself.

Premier League SCR vs UEFA squad cost rule, side by side

Both rules cap squad cost as a share of revenue, and both start from broadly the same family of costs. Everything else about them differs — who enforces them, over what period, and what happens when a club goes over.

Premier League SCR	UEFA squad cost rule
Regulator: the Premier League Assessed at the Accounts Confirmation Test	Regulator: UEFA's Club Financial Control Body (CFCB) Applies only while the club is in a UEFA competition
Green limit: 85% of adjusted revenue = £627.9m	Limit: 70% of relevant income = £517.1m
Upper limit: 115% Red Threshold = £849.5m Green threshold plus the club's own allowance, which ratchets	Upper limit: 100% A fixed line — UEFA's allowance does not ratchet with past breaches
Arsenal's figure: 57.5% High spending power	Arsenal's figure: 57.5% Within the 70% limit
Headroom: +£203m vs the 85% limit	Headroom: +£92.2m vs the 70% limit
Accounting period: the season Confirmed at the Accounts Confirmation Test after the accounts are filed	Accounting period: the calendar year The current period ends 31 December 2026; CFCB decisions expected late June 2027
Sanction: a levy in the 85%–115% band from 2027/28, then points deductions beyond the Red Threshold Six points plus one for every £6.5m over	Sanction: fines, suspended fines and squad-registration restrictions Never points — UEFA cannot touch a domestic league table

Why the two figures differ

The two rules are close cousins, not the same rule at two thresholds. The cost definition differs. UEFA counts all player and head-coach employee costs, amortisation and impairment of player registrations, and agent fees. The Premier League counts player and head-coach wages, amortisation and agents' fees. Same family of costs, but the two bodies draw the boundary in slightly different places.

The calendar differs. UEFA measures a calendar year and sets its costs against calendar-year "relevant income". The Premier League measures a season and sets squad cost against adjusted football revenue for that season. A club that sells in January lands the profit in a different measurement period under each rule.

The regulator differs, and so does the consequence. One body's pass is routinely the other's breach, and neither decision binds the other. Aston Villa's 2025 fine came from UEFA; the Premier League took no action over the same accounts.

An important caveat on the figures above. This site holds one squad-cost estimate per club and reads it against both sets of lines, which is why Arsenal's ratio shows as 57.5% in both columns. UEFA's actual cost definition and calendar-year measurement period differ from the Premier League's, so the number UEFA calculates for Arsenal will not be exactly this one. Treat the 57.5% as the club's domestic-basis figure held up against UEFA's threshold — a good guide to which side of the line they sit, not a reproduction of UEFA's own arithmetic.

What a breach would mean for Arsenal

On these estimates Arsenal clear both lines. They are inside UEFA's 70% limit with £92.2m to spare and inside the Premier League's 85% threshold with £203m. Nothing is owed to either regulator. The tighter of the two constraints is UEFA's, so it is the 70% line that would bite first if the wage bill grew.

Neither outcome affects the other. A club can settle with UEFA and still face the Accounts Confirmation Test, or pass the Premier League's test and still be fined in Nyon.

The 2025 and 2026 precedents

UEFA has now sanctioned squad cost breaches twice, and both rounds show the shape of the remedy: money and registration limits, structured to reward a club that brings the ratio down.

July 2025. The CFCB settled with a group of clubs over squad cost and football-earnings breaches. Aston Villa were fined €11m, with a further €15m conditional on compliance across a three-year settlement period — a UEFA sanction, not a Premier League one. Chelsea were fined €31m in total across football-earnings and squad-cost breaches, with up to €60m more conditional. Al Jazeera, Sports Illustrated.

30 June 2026. Ruling on calendar-2025, the CFCB fined Aston Villa €22.5m (£19.4m) — €7.5m payable and €15m suspended for three years, conditional on continuing to cut the ratio — and added a restriction on registering new players for the 2026/27 Champions League. Chelsea were fined €3m (€1m payable, €2m suspended). Newcastle United and Nottingham Forest were also fined. Sky Sports.

Note the direction of travel in both cases: a payable fine, a larger suspended one, and a squad-registration limit — never a points deduction. That is the whole of UEFA's toolkit here, and it is why a UEFA breach and a Premier League breach are not interchangeable risks.

Key dates

UEFA's limit fell from 80% for calendar 2024 to 70% from calendar 2025, where it now sits. The current measurement period — calendar 2026 — ends on 31 December 2026, and CFCB decisions on it are expected in late June 2027, matching the timing of the June 2026 round.

The Premier League runs to a different clock. Arsenal's SCR position is assessed per season at the Accounts Confirmation Test, once the club's accounts for that season are filed. A breach of the 85% Green Threshold there cuts the following season's allowance by the size of the breach, which lowers the Red Threshold the club is measured against next time.

So Arsenal face two assessments, several months apart, on overlapping but non-identical figures — and can be judged compliant by one body and in breach by the other on the same spending.

← Arsenal's full SCR page

UEFA's squad cost rule vs Premier League SCR, in full →

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The other Premier League clubs in Europe

Liverpool Manchester City Manchester United Aston Villa Brighton & Hove Albion Sunderland Crystal Palace AFC Bournemouth

Note on this club's figures. Basis: FY2024/25 accounts (year ended 31 May 2025), Arsenal Holdings Ltd, as reported at arsenal.com/news/financial-results-202425 and corroborated by theesk.org and gregcordell.substack.com (Greg Cordell). Revenue £691.0m, player trading profit +£81.2m are reported figures. squad_cost is composed, not a single anchored analyst figure: total wages £346.8m + player amortisation £171.6m + impairment £15.2m, of which ~75% is assumed to be playing-staff-related (theesk.org's stated assumption, used because no analyst discloses a clean SCR-specific squad-cost split), plus agents' fees £24.7m (FA intermediary disclosure, arseblog.news/roundtable.io, full amount attributed as playing-related). This yields squad_cost ≈ £424.9m, i.e. ~55% of adjusted revenue (691.0+81.2=772.2m) on a UEFA-style basis — broadly consistent with, if slightly below, two independent named-analyst SCR estimates for the same period: theesk.org ~58% and Greg Cordell (gregcordell.substack.com/p/arsenal-fc-202425-financial-results) ~61.9%, both against UEFA's 70% threshold and both concluding Arsenal comfortably compliant on both PL (85%) and UEFA (70%) bases. A third source, psrwatch.com, publishes a forward-looking 2026/27 PL-basis SCR forecast of ~79.1%, still 'safe' under the 85% green threshold, but uses different (lower, possibly restated) revenue/wage inputs (£643m revenue, £331m wages) so was not used as the primary anchor. UEFA competition for 2026/27 confirmed via Wikipedia/UEFA.com: Arsenal qualified for the 2026/27 Champions League league phase (pot 1) as 2025/26 Premier League champions. 3-YEAR TRADING PROFIT / TRANSFERMARKT NOTE: 2023/24 profit on disposal of players' registrations = £51.1m, per Arsenal's official 2023/24 financial results (arsenal.com/news/financial-results-202324), corroborated by Swiss Ramble's 2023/24 review (swissramble.substack.com/p/arsenal-finances-202324) which rounds it to £51m (driven by Balogun, Xhaka, Turner sales). 2022/23 profit on disposal of players' registrations = £10.7m, per Arsenal's official 2022/23 financial results (arsenal.com/news/financial-results-202223), corroborated by Swiss Ramble's 2022/23 review (swissramble.substack.com/p/arsenal-finances-202223) which rounds it to £11m (down from £22m in 2021/22, mainly Guendouzi, Torreira, Leno, Mavropanos sales). Both years are net profits (no loss years in this window), consistent in sign with the known 2024/25 figure (+£81.2m). Transfermarkt squad value fetched live from transfermarkt.us/fc-arsenal/startseite/verein/11 (same data as the .com page, which returned HTTP 403 on direct fetch) showing a current total squad market value of €1.41bn; converted to GBP using an EUR->GBP rate of 0.856 (approximate August 2026 spot rate per exchangerates.org.uk / foreignexchange.org.uk), giving ~£1,206,960,000. This is a live, fluctuating market-value snapshot, not an accounting figure, and is provided purely as a sanity-check metric distinct from squad_cost. Summer 2026 window: spend £198.5m, sales £61.9m, net spend £136.6m (Sky Sports/GiveMeSport, transfer fees not accounting profit — the P&L profit on disposal is fee less remaining book value, so this is an upper bound on the player-trading profit that will land in FY2026/27). The stored player_trading_profit remains the filed figure and is NOT adjusted for this window.
Source.

Figures are illustrative estimates from published accounts, named analyst estimates and public reporting, not official SCR or UEFA submissions. Premier League squad cost is composed from wage, amortisation and agents' fee components or anchored to a published analyst estimate, because no club discloses the SCR split — which is why it is always flagged estimated. The same estimate is read against both the 85% and 70% lines; UEFA's own cost definition differs, so its calculated figure will not match exactly. Last reviewed 2026-09-03. Methodology →