Swiss rambles take on it
It should be stressed that these are only estimates, as the figures for these deductions are not divulged in the accounts (except depreciation and goodwill amortisation), so super confident pronouncements on United’s PSR position by numerous football finance experts (and plagiarists) should be treated with a degree of caution.
So far, so good, but now it gets a little trickier, as United have also claimed £40m for COVID losses in 2021/22, which would have comfortably been the largest deduction in the Premier League that season.
After UEFA fined the club €300k for a “minor break-even deficit” for the monitoring period up to 2021/22, United explained, “This reflected a change in the way that UEFA adjusted for COVID-19 losses during the 2022 reporting period”, implying that the Premier League had in contrast allowed the £40m COVID loss.
I’ve also taken a bit of a punt on United being allowed to excluded the £34m exceptional charges linked to the share sale (but not the £6m for loss of office).
It is also possible that United have been able to exclude the FX impact on interest payable, though I have not considered that in my model.
Putting all those assumptions together, I reckon that United complied with PSR in 2023/24 by the skin of their teeth, as their £103m adjusted loss ended up being only £2m within the target.