Former Newcastle United CEO Darren Eales has seemingly taken a veiled swipe at Manchester City by insisting the Magpies were building the 'right way' under his watch and now under the leadership of his successor David Hopkinson.
Manchester City have been in the headlines for all of the wrong reasons in recent weeks after it was announced an independent commission found them guilty of 114 of the 115 charges the Premier League brought against them for serious breaches of their financial rules.
While Newcastle have stuck to the profit and sustainability rules and now the squad cost ratio rules, despite the vast wealth of their majority owners, City have flaunted the rules on an industrial scale for years.
Rebuilding under PSR constraints
The Magpies had to rebuild their squad this summer as the likes of Bruno Guimaraes, Sandro Tonali and Anthony Gordon left the club for Arsenal, Tottenham and Barcelona which was a cause of frustration for supporters who feel like the rules have put a ceiling on their ambition.
Eales was also CEO when United were forced to sell Yankuba Minteh and Elliot Anderson to Brighton and Nottingham Forest to avoid a PSR breach in the summer of 2024, and Anderson's departure particularly sticks in the throat after he joined Man City for a whopping £116million this summer.
And Eales has broken his silence on those deals suggesting it would have torpedoed the club's momentum (Newcastle won the Carabao Cup and qualified for the Champions League the following season) if they did not sanction those sales and they were slapped with a points deduction, while also taking a subtle swipe at City.
Eales: 'It was done the right way'
"At Newcastle, we were trying to build while we were also a going entity. And it was done the right way," Eales told the Athletic.
"My background is as a barrister, and when I was hired by Newcastle, it was crystal-clear from an ownership perspective that everything was going to be done the right way and within the rules which were there.
"When we talk about that summer, it was just the situation we were in, with the added information of what had happened to Everton and Nottingham Forest (both were docked points for PSR breaches). It was real sanctions, with teeth."
"It's very easy after the event to say, 'Ah well, just take a points deduction', but we couldn't. It would have torpedoed our momentum and the progress we were making. It meant making tough decisions and it went right to the wire, but we pulled every lever to make sure we met our PSR responsibilities. One thing the ownership can be proud of is that they've done things the right way. Credit to them for always saying, 'No, this is how we run our ship'."
Explaining PSR to fans
"I think I was the first executive to speak out about how PSR works and to try and explain it to fans, because you could see it coming. We were going to have to move players on. It didn't matter how wealthy your ownership was."
"It's obviously been difficult for the club and it's a tension in the game, a tension within the Premier League."
