Premier League SCR
How much can Nottingham Forest spend?
Under the Premier League's Squad Cost Ratio rules, Nottingham Forest have a
guaranteed spending limit of £220.2m
— 85% of adjusted football revenue of £259m.
Against their estimated squad cost that leaves £20.9m of headroom.
Their Red Threshold — the 115% ceiling beyond which points deductions apply — is
£297.9m.
£259m is adjusted revenue: headline turnover of
£222m plus a three-season average of
£37m profit on player sales, which is the
denominator SCR actually uses.
Nottingham Forest: the SCR breakdown
-
Estimated revenue (football)
reported
£222m
-
+ Player trading profit/loss (3-yr average)
+£37m
-
Latest single season was +£7m
not used alone
-
= Adjusted revenue (SCR basis)
£259m
-
85% SCR limit
£220.2m
-
Estimated squad cost
estimated
£199.3m
-
Components not itemised — squad cost is anchored to a published analyst estimate rather than composed from wages, amortisation and agents' fees.
-
Headroom vs 85% limit
+£20.9m
-
Red Threshold (115% of adjusted revenue)
£297.9m
-
Headroom vs Red Threshold
+£98.6m
High spending power
- squad cost is 76.9% of adjusted revenue
For reference, Transfermarkt's current squad market value is
£442.1m
(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.
What this means
On these estimates, Nottingham Forest sit comfortably inside the 85% Green
Threshold. They have room to invest in the squad without straining the rules.
Summer 2026 window vs SCR headroom
-
Window spend (gross)
£118.5m
-
Window sales
£137.8m
-
Net sale
estimated
−£19.3m
-
Pre-window effective SCR headroom (85% limit plus any top-up or allowance)
£20.9m
Within headroom
A net sale of −£19.3m leaves
£40.2m of the
£20.9m of effective headroom Nottm Forest had before the
window opened — the 85% limit plus any owner top-up or allowance, minus estimated squad cost, the same basis as the
transfer-window table.
Squawka/Football365 season-end table (post deadline-day): £118.54m in, £137.83m out, net -£19.3m (net sale). Other outlets disagree (Sports Mole/club site: £106m/£117.7m/-£11.7m; VAVEL: ~£106.3m/£136m+/-£29.7m), both appearing to predate deadline-day deals. Key deals common to all sources: Elliot Anderson to Man City ~£116m (largest sale), Liam Delap in from Chelsea £50m, Ousmane Diomande in ~£34m, Daniel Munoz in £22m.
Source.
Spending beyond calculated headroom is not automatically a breach: transfer fees are
amortised over the contract, sales offset signings, and none of it reaches SCR squad cost
until the next accounts are filed.
Every club's window spend vs headroom →
Old rules vs new: PSR compared to SCR
Under the old PSR system, clubs were judged on total losses over three years,
not on what they spent on the squad as a share of revenue. Here's how Nottm Forest's
position compares under both sets of rules.
| Old PSR (loss-based) |
New SCR (revenue-based) |
3-year losses: £95.5m
estimated
Limit: £105m
Headroom: +£9.5m
2020/21-2022/23 (PL)
|
Squad cost: £199.3m
85% limit: £220.2m
Headroom: +£20.9m
Based on £259m adjusted revenue
|
Forest breached the old PSR £61m allowable-loss threshold (as a promoted club with fewer top-flight seasons) by £34.5m over 2020/21-2022/23, drawing a 4-point deduction in 2023/24 (Premier League independent commission ruling). Losses of ~£3m in each of 2020/21 and 2021/22 plus £52m in 2022/23 totalled ~£95.5m against that club's lower limit, not the standard £105m three-year cap. A clean 2022/23-2024/25 PSR figure under the standard £105m limit is not separately published; the 2024/25 season alone recorded a £78.9m pre-tax loss (theesk.org), so headroom under any rolling three-year PSR window remains tight heading into the SCR transition.
Note on this club's figures. Composed, not anchored: matchdayfinance.com publishes a ~75% SCR estimate for Forest (matchdayfinance.com/post/nottingham-forest-financial-results-2024-25), but that figure implicitly uses only ~£55m of amortisation, which contradicts the audited 2024/25 accounts — Swiss Ramble and theesk.org both report player amortisation of £69m plus a £5m impairment charge (£74m combined; theesk.org cites £68.9m amortisation precisely). Back-solving matchdayfinance's 75% against Forest's revenue requires an amortisation figure well below what's actually filed, so their anchor is rejected here. Instead squad_cost is composed from real audited components: total salaries and wages were £167m (Swiss Ramble/theesk.org agree), of which an estimated 75% playing-share is assumed to be player-side (£125.25m, the same 75% convention matchdayfinance itself invokes, applied instead to the real £167m base) plus the audited £74m amortisation/impairment = £199.25m squad cost. Against adjusted revenue (£222m revenue + £7m player-trading profit = £229m) this is ~87.0%, above the 85% green threshold — a materially different (and accounts-consistent) picture from matchdayfinance's sub-threshold 75%. No source discloses agents' fees separately, so that component is null and not included in the sum. Player trading profit of £7m (mainly Omobamidele to Strasbourg, Worrall to Burnley) and revenue of £222m (up from £190m) are both well corroborated across Swiss Ramble, theesk.org and matchdayfinance. UEFA 2026/27: NONE. Forest are not among the nine English clubs in Europe for 2026/27 (UCL: Arsenal, Man City, Man Utd, Aston Villa, Liverpool; UEL: Bournemouth, Sunderland, Crystal Palace; UECL: Brighton — verified 2026-09-02 against premierleague.com / Sky Sports), so uefa_competition is null; an earlier draft wrongly set europa_league.
3-YEAR TRADING PROFIT / TRANSFERMARKT NOTE: 2023/24 profit on player disposals (+£101m) and 2022/23 (+£3m) both sourced from Swiss Ramble's 'Nottingham Forest Finances 2023/24' article, which states profit from player sales 'shot up from only £3m to £101m' between 2022/23 and 2023/24, driving a swing from a £67m pre-tax loss (2022/23) to a £12m profit (2023/24). The £3m figure for 2022/23 was independently corroborated via a second fetch of the same source discussing that season's 4-point PSR deduction. IMPORTANT: this means Forest's current 2024/25 figure (+£7m) is the LOW year of the three, not a flattering outlier — 2023/24's £101m is the real outlier. Smoothing over 3 years (£3m, £101m, £7m; average ~£37m) INCREASES the denominator versus using the single-year £7m figure alone, pulling Forest's already-elevated ~87% SCR ratio down somewhat — the opposite direction smoothing takes for most other rows in this dataset, where the latest year was the inflated one. Transfermarkt current squad value is €517.80m; converted to GBP using a mid-market EUR/GBP rate of 0.8538 (per xe.com), giving approximately £442.1m. This Transfermarkt figure is a market-value sanity check only, not squad cost. Summer 2026 window: spend £106.3m, sales £125.0m, net sales £18.7m (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.
Compare Nottm Forest with another club
← All Premier League SCR clubs ranked by SCR headroom
Figures are illustrative estimates from published accounts, named analyst estimates and
public reporting, not official SCR 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.
Last reviewed 2026-09-03.
Full rules explainer →