Donyell Malen

[ozzjim]

Atleti now sniffing around the Don.

After yesterday that’d be a hard no.

Unless they have another player we fancy signing.

[itbrvilla]

Daft to get rid given our current position.

[Sexual Ealing]

I will reluctantly accept Griezmann in exchange.

[eamonn]

He's the Litmanen you covet.

[LeeB]

I will reluctantly accept Griezmann in exchange.

Alvarez more like.

[Garyth]

I will reluctantly accept Griezmann in exchange.

Alvarez more like.

Well, hello. Now we're talking.

[Villatillidie25]

Seen this on X/ Fb. Zero idea if this is how it actually works, but reads well and sounds like it could be.

How Aston Villa could create PSR headroom in January 2026 (explained)

Football finance isn’t about cash — it’s about accounting. And that’s where this potential Aston Villa scenario gets interesting.

Let’s set the scene.

Villa signed Donyell Malen for £20m on 14 January 2025. If he’s on a standard 5-year contract, his fee is spread at £4m per year. By January 2026, only one year has hit the books, meaning Malen still has a book value of roughly £16m.

Now imagine Villa do the following:

• Loan Malen to Roma for £1.5m
• Include an obligation to buy for £25m
• Buy Tammy Abraham for €20m (around £17m) on a 5-year deal

On the pitch, it looks like a straight exchange of forwards. On the balance sheet, it’s a very different story.

📊 The Malen side

If Roma’s obligation to buy is written in a way that makes it effectively certain, Villa can usually treat it as a sale immediately for PSR purposes.

That means:

• Sale price: £25m
• Remaining book value: ~£16m
• Instant accounting profit: ~£9m

Add the £1.5m loan fee, and Villa book around £10.5m of PSR benefit in the current season.

📉 The Tammy Abraham side

Villa’s purchase of Tammy Abraham works the opposite way.

A £17m fee over a 5-year contract means:

• £3.4m per year hits the PSR calculations
• Not £17m all at once

So in the same season Villa record over £10m of income, they only take a £3.4m charge for Tammy’s transfer fee (wages and agents aside).

🔁 The PSR effect

Put together:

• +£10.5m from Malen
• −£3.4m for Abraham

➡️ Net PSR improvement of roughly £7m in January 2026

That’s the key mechanism:
profits are booked immediately, costs are spread over time.

🚨 Why this attracts scrutiny

If two deals are clearly linked, regulators may ask:

• Is Malen really worth £25m?
• Is Tammy’s price conveniently low?
• Are the deals helping one club’s PSR position more than reflecting market value?

If valuations are deemed artificial, adjustments can be made. But if the numbers are defensible, the structure itself is allowed.

🧠 The takeaway

This is classic PSR engineering:

• Immediate accounting profit
• Deferred costs
• Squad strength maintained
• Risk pushed into future seasons

It’s legal. It’s clever. And it shows why modern transfers are as much about spreadsheets as they are about football.

One caveat. UEFA’s SCR system doesn’t bank the net revenue of a sale up front unlike PSR but spreads it over a 3-year period making the deal broadly net neutral in each year.

[Garyth]

One caveat. UEFA’s SCR system doesn’t bank the net revenue of a sale up front unlike PSR but spreads it over a 3-year period making the deal broadly net neutral in each year.

This is interesting. Seems pretty reasonable from a big picture perspective, but it must be a nightmare for club accountants keeping track of all the different requirements and accounting periods.

UEFA doing things by calendar year just seems madness considering the reality of most clubs.