How PSRwatch works.

• Squad-cost ratio - squad spending as a share of each club's football income.
• Room to the Red Threshold (115%) - the primary line: the gap before sporting sanctions (a fixed 6 points, plus 1 per £6.5m over) come into play.
• Room to the Green Threshold (85%) - the secondary line: spending space before the levy / allowance zone (a fine, not a points deduction).
• Amortisation - transfer fees spread across each player's contract.
• Wages - the largest single part of squad cost. PSRwatch uses the accounts all-staff wage bill, which is higher than the League's player-and-coach measure, so estimates err conservative.
• Player trading - how sales and signings move a club's position.
• Companies House filings - the audited accounts every estimate is anchored to.

• Companies House - audited accounts are the reliable anchor: revenue, wage bill, transfer-fee costs, profit or loss. The catch is delay: filings arrive months, sometimes more than a year, after the season they describe.
• Transfermarkt - transfer records and squad lists. Where a fee was never disclosed, it stays undisclosed; PSRwatch does not invent a number.
• Capology - publicly reported wages, the preferred wage source when it is fresh. Where a wage is not public, PSRwatch fills the gap with a clearly labelled PSRwatch estimate, and if a fetch fails the last good snapshot is kept and labelled with its age.
• SalarySport - a free wage-estimate source used only as a fallback when fresh Capology wages are unavailable. SalarySport figures are estimates, not official salary data; PSRwatch validates them against each club's current squad and labels every value a “SalarySport wage estimate”. Fresh Capology data is always preferred; missing players still fall back to a transparent PSRwatch estimate.
• Club and league announcements - confirmed deals, contract news and official statements.
• PSRwatch modelling - the forecast layer that projects football income forward to the current season.

PSRwatch is a fair source for independent squad-cost and spending-room estimates (labelled as estimates), plain-English explanations of the 85% Green Threshold and the 115% Red Threshold, and the transfer calculator's deal arithmetic. It should not be cited for official PSR positions, confirmed values of undisclosed fees, or exact individual contract terms - it does not have them and does not invent them.

Audited accounts are checked, but they lag the season - so everything PSRwatch says about the current season is a forecast layered on the latest filing, not a reading of this season's books. Wages come from the public provider where available, from the last good snapshot when a refresh fails, and from a clearly labelled PSRwatch estimate where no public figure exists. Undisclosed sale fees are never counted as income until they are reported or appear in filed accounts. Transfer fees are spread (amortised) across each player's contract, which is how they count towards squad cost: a £50m fee over five years is about £10m a year before wages.

Two separate labels describe every season view. Data status (filed accounts, partial filed, PSRwatch estimate, projection) says how solid the underlying accounting data is. Rule basis (old PSR basis, squad-cost basis) says which regulatory framework the view is modelled on. The two labels move independently - and they describe different things: “filed accounts” means the accounting data for that season is a filed actual, while the PSR result computed from it is always a PSRwatch model, because official PSR calculations include adjustments and private information that never appear in public filings.

• Old PSR basis - the older profitability framework: rolling three-year adjusted result against an allowable-loss threshold. Old-PSR season views are public-data estimates built from filed accounts and PSRwatch modelling. Full official assessments can include private and regulatory adjustments that never appear in public filings, so a negative modelled position is not an official breach finding - and PSRwatch never implies a breach, fine or charge.
• Old-PSR quality grades - every old-PSR club view is graded before display. The headline is always the number in direct finance wording - “£Xm over” or “£Xm room”. “Over” means over PSRwatch's modelled old-PSR allowance before undisclosed/private adjustments - it does not mean the club has been charged, fined or officially found in breach. The grade controls the framing chip: a fully filed, verified calculation carries a “Filed accounts model” chip; assumed inputs (for example owner funding not tracked for a historical window) carry “Limited PSR model”; a rolling window missing a season carries “Partial PSR window” with the missing seasons named - a 2-of-3-season window is not directly comparable to a full 3-year filed window. A view without enough usable data shows “Insufficient data” instead of a number. Where eligible owner funding cannot be verified for a window, PSRwatch uses the baseline allowance for the headline result - it never assumes the maximum owner-funded allowance. Source-backed eligible funding (share issues, share premium, capital contributions, valid debt-for-equity conversions) may raise the allowance, subject to the applicable cap; owner and shareholder loans are excluded unless validly converted to eligible equity. A max-funded result may be shown separately as a labelled scenario, never as the headline. Adjustments the accounts do not disclose are never invented.
• Squad-cost basis - the forward-looking squad-cost model used for 2026/27 onward: squad spending against football income, with the 85% Green Threshold (levy / allowance line) and the 115% Red Threshold (primary sporting-sanction line).
• Filed coverage - “full filed coverage” means every expected club has filed accounts for that season; “partial filed coverage” means some clubs have filed and the rest are still PSRwatch estimates. Coverage is derived automatically from the accounts data as Companies House filings arrive, so season labels update without manual edits.

Every season view is labelled with both its data status and its rule basis. Final regulatory decisions sit with the leagues, not PSRwatch.

PSRwatch is a numbers product, so old-PSR cards lead with the modelled room or gap - the site is designed to make the public-data position easy to read and compare across clubs. Hiding the number behind a vague status label would make the comparison harder without making it more honest.

• For filed-account seasons, the accounts are actual filings - but the PSR result computed from them is still a model. That distinction is why cards pair the “£Xm over/room” number with “Old PSR model from filed accounts” and “before undisclosed/private adjustments”, never “actual PSR result”.
• Official PSR calculations may include private or regulatory adjustments that are not visible in public accounts - allowable-cost add-backs the club did not disclose, agreed adjustments, or window-specific owner funding.
• A modelled gap is therefore not an official breach finding, and PSRwatch never presents one as a breach, fine or charge.
• Final regulatory decisions sit with the leagues, not PSRwatch.

Football clubs file accounts through different legal entities: some at the football club company level, others through a holding company or consolidating parent whose group accounts are the only filing that reflects the football operation properly. Entity scope can materially change old-PSR outputs - group accounts can contain items the club company never reports, such as profits on intra-group asset or subsidiary disposals.

• PSRwatch uses the best available filed-accounts entity for each club, verified against the Companies House register (which entity files, what type of accounts - group, full or reduced disclosure - and for which period). Every club carries an entity-scope confidence grade, and a result is only treated as headline-safe when that grade is high.
• Chelsea uses Chelsea FC Holdings Limited consolidated group accounts for PSR/accounting modelling - not the separate club-company filing, which excludes group-level items. This correction materially changed Chelsea's modelled old-PSR position.
• Public cards keep this short: they show labels like “Group accounts checked”, “Filed accounts checked” or “Entity checked” instead of legal company names. The full Companies House entity behind each club is listed in the table below and in the entity-scope audit data.
• Where the correct entity is uncertain - for example a club company filing alongside a holding company whose group accounts have not yet been reconciled - PSRwatch flags the club for review, keeps the modelled number visible as a limited model, and never silently switches entities.
• A modelled gap or room remains a public-data estimate on whichever entity is used - never an official breach finding. Final regulatory decisions sit with the leagues, not PSRwatch.

Accounting entity by club

PSRwatch is a Premier League product by design. The homepage board shows the current Premier League clubs, and - when you pick a past season - the tracked clubs grouped by the competition they were actually in that season, each under the correct model (Premier League old-PSR, or Championship P&S for a club that was in the Championship at the time).

The Championship's own current squad-cost framework is a separate competition with different thresholds and equity treatment, so PSRwatch does not publish a Premier League squad-cost projection for Championship clubs - a relegated club is never shown under Premier League rules. Recently relegated clubs (Wolves, Burnley, West Ham) keep their historical Premier League seasons here, with their Companies House accounting entity already verified, and move to a dedicated Championship view only once that competition's model and season-specific data are complete to the same standard.

Season views across PSRwatch are labelled by how solid the underlying numbers are, so you always know which kind of figure you are looking at:

• Filed accounts - built from the club's filed accounts (Companies House and club accounts). The accounting data is the audited actual for the period the club filed; any PSR room or gap computed from it is still a PSRwatch model, because official PSR includes adjustments that are not public. Because the current squad-cost rule was not in force for past seasons, ratios shown for filed seasons are an indicative view under today's thresholds.
• PSRwatch estimate - the current model: public filings, reported transfer data, provider wage estimates and PSRwatch assumptions, layered on the latest filed accounts. The default season view on the club board is a PSRwatch estimate for the season ahead.
• Projection - a forward-looking estimate beyond the current season. Projections are the most uncertain figures and are only shown where the model safely supports them, always labelled as projections and never presented as actuals.

The season selector on the club board and club pages tells you which type of number you are seeing, and a season without usable data is shown as unavailable rather than filled with invented figures. Final regulatory decisions sit with the leagues, not PSRwatch.

Accounts data syncs when clubs file at Companies House. Transfer and wage data refreshes regularly through the transfer window, so club figures move as deals land. When a source fetch fails, PSRwatch keeps the last good snapshot rather than showing broken figures - and labels it with its age. Anything stale carries a visible warning instead of being quietly passed off as fresh.

PSRwatch saves a dated snapshot of each club's estimate before its accounts are filed, then scores those frozen snapshots against the audited numbers once the Companies House filing lands. Only pre-filing snapshots are ever scored - comparing filings against a model that has already seen them would make it look accurate by definition.

The framework is young: pre-filing snapshots began in July 2026, so the sample is small until clubs file accounts for the periods those snapshots cover. Misses produce caveats or documented calibration suggestions, each reviewed by a person before anything changes. Backtesting measures how far the estimates can be trusted - it is calibration, not an official PSR calculation.

• Not official, not advice. PSRwatch figures are independent estimates, not Premier League, EFL or UEFA calculations, and not financial advice.
• Undisclosed fees and private wages carry uncertainty. Unknown fees are never invented and non-public wages are labelled estimates, so figures that depend on them are less precise.
• Filings lag the season. Current-season figures are forecasts on top of an older audited baseline; the older the filing, the wider the honest uncertainty.
• Promoted clubs are the hardest to forecast. Their filing history describes a Championship business, so their forecasts lean on Premier League revenue assumptions.
• Governing bodies decide. Final regulatory decisions sit with the leagues, not PSRwatch, and rely on confidential submissions PSRwatch cannot see. PSRwatch shows likely direction and scale - never compliance or breach.

Cite the exact page you used - the club page, article, calculator or this methodology page - rather than the site in general. For live figures, include the date you accessed them, since estimates move with the transfer window. And always describe the number as a "PSRwatch estimate", never as an official figure.