Some Crystal Palace fans have concerns about the financial state of the club after a busy period of spending over the winter.
Steve Parish signed off on a £48m deal to take Jorgen Strand Larsen from Wolves, having already agreed to pay Tottenham £35m for Brennan Johnson at the start of the winter transfer window.
The Athletic now interestingly claim that Adam Wharton and Jean-Philippe Mateta “will need to leave” if their asking prices are met this summer for financial reasons, in order for the UEFA Conference League winners to comply with new Squad Cost Ratio (SCR) rules.
SCR is replacing PSR (Profit and Sustainability Rules) this summer after a vote from Premier League clubs.
Squad-cost ratio allows clubs to spend up to a percentage of their total revenues on squad-related costs. It is similar to the SCR used by UEFA for European competitions, which is set to 70%.
We Are Palace have now reached out to Adam Williams to get a clearer idea of where Crystal Palace are financially after this claim from The Athletic was made.
How can Brennan Johnson make a name for himself at Crystal Palace? 🏴
Exclusive: Crystal Palace in a comfortable position when it comes to SCR
The Head of Football Finance and Governance Content for GRV Media believes Crystal Palace “should be fine” even without making any sales this summer.
Williams – who also explained why Crystal Palace will receive less World Cup compensation from FIFA than initially expected – said: “The problem with estimating a club’s SCR or PSR headroom is that their financial accounts are always on a delay of around nine months, so we don’t have real-time information to make our calculations. Football revenues, however, are relatively predictable and you can use deduction to get a read of where a club is.
“Palace’s revenue in 2024/25, the last full financial year on record, was £197m. Under SCR, you also factor in a three-year average on player sale profits. They made player sale profits of £66m that season, thanks mainly to the Michael Olise and Joachim Andersen sales, which were both pretty close to being pure profit. In 2025/26, the fee Eberechi Eze was originally signed for was almost fully amortised, so his move to Arsenal will have been close to pure profit too. So their player sale profit average going into 2026/27 is about £65m over the last two years, which you add to your revenue to get your numerator in the SCR calculation.
“With a decent season in the Europa League in 2026/27 and a top-half finish in the Premier League, I think they could be moving towards £250m in revenue. Even if we assume they make zero player sale profits this season, that basically gives them revenues for the purposes of SCR in excess of £300m. So they can spend 70% of that figure on first-team squad costs for UEFA SCR and 85% of it for Premier League SCR. That’s £210m and £255m respectively.
“I’m going to assume some wage bill growth from £148m in 2024/25 to about £175m at the moment, factoring the players they’ve signed and performance bonuses. But a quarter of that will be non-first team costs, which effectively makes their wage bill for SCR just over £130m. Transfer amortisation will have increased a bit too after Strand Larsen and Johnson joined. I’m going to put the figure at about a £25m increase, which gives amortisation of around £80m. That gets you to a squad cost of about £210m, which is exactly in line with the limit I outlined for UEFA’s SCR.
“One thing to note is that UEFA SCR is assessed in calendar years, not seasons, so you’re taking the average revenues and player sale profits over the second half of 2025/26 and first half of 2026/27 for your calculation. That means there’s a pretty wide margin for error with my figures. I’m using back-of-an-envelope calculations, but they will be directionally correct.
“But even if they did breach UEFA SCR, it won’t be a big breach and they would get a small fine which they can comfortably absorb, not a sporting sanction.
“So, I am ultimately very confident about where Palace are with SCR. Even without player sales, they should be fine. If they make sales on top of their existing position, they’ll have plenty of wriggle room. That puts them in a strong negotiating position if they do want to cash in on some of their more valuable assets.”
Chelsea are keen to sign Maxence Lacroix – so the France international could represent one major sale for Crystal Palace this summer if a deal materialised.
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The Frenchman still has three years left on his contract 📝
