Tottenham Hotspur have potential £350m boost to supercharge the Thomas Frank era

For Tottenham Hotspur fans, there is renewed hope and optimism heading into the new Premier League season.

After the dismal campaign that was 2024/25, where former manager Ange Postecoglou’s side finished one place above the drop zone, domestically, something had to be done.

Postecoglou’s legacy was leaving Champions League football for new manager, Thomas Frank – through winning the Europa League last season – while the revenues that will come into the club owing to that will be significantly impactful for what Spurs do during this summer transfer window.

Even conservatively, Spurs could expect £60m plus from very average foray in European football’s top knockout club competition this coming season, and with the money spent dwarfing the money coming into the club so far this summer, it is a welcome boost.

But where exactly do Spurs stand with their current acquisitions and their position when it comes to the Premier League’s profit and sustainability rules (PSR)?

When it comes to losses, Spurs have racked up plenty in recent years. For the three-year assessment period for PSR, which allows clubs to lose up to £105m over three years minus allowable deductions for such things as asset depreciation, investment in infrastructure, the women’s team, the academy and community initiatives, Spurs lost £182m between 2021/22 and 2023/24. That was made up of £61m in 2021/22, £95m in 2022/23, and £26m in 2023/24.

But Spurs haven’t been in any danger of breaching PSR, and the club have gone out this summer and spent some €146m (£126m) bringing in the likes of Mathys Tel, Kevin Danso, Mohammed Kudus, Luka Vuskovic, Kota Takai and the loan of Joao Palhinha, which incurs a loan fee.

All told, the cost of adding those players to the club’s amortisation costs – which stood at £136m for 2023/24 – will be around the £25m mark per-year, although the rise will be offset in some degree by the book value of big money signings decreasing by another year.

The sales the club made won’t impact amortisation too much, with Son Heung-min’s £19.5m exit to Los Angeles FC making ‘pure profit’ in the club’s books as his book value has long since been amortised. Similarly, Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg’s exit to Marseille for a fee just short of £12m guaranteed represents pretty much pure profit. That’s £31.5m coming in, compared to an annual outlay of £25m so far in terms of additional amortisation costs.

There are wages to factor in, of course, but Son’s large salary, and Hojbjerg’s considerable one, mean that the club will have created some space to absorb new additions. They have the ability to do more. The exits of other players, such as Fraser Forster and Sergio Reguilon, have also cleared some more headroom.

But in terms of PSR, the three-year cycle up to 2023/24, where Spurs lost that £182m, never saw them fall foul of the rules because their allowable deductions were £93m per year across the period, largely due to stadium-linked depreciation.

That meant the club had two years of being net positive for PSR and even the heavy £95m loss only resulted in a £1m negative net PSR position due to £94m of allowable deductions that year. The upshot of that was Spurs were net PSR positive to the tune of just shy of £100m, and when adding on the allowed £105m, they had PSR headroom of more than £200m.

We are now into a new cycle with the ticking over of the new financial year for clubs this summer, with clubs now operating in the 2025/26 financial year.

For the cycle up to 2024/25, which will be assessed by the Premier League before the end of the year, the £61m loss from 2021/22 drops off and, assuming the same amount of allowable deductions at £93m, Spurs will have absolutely no issues with PSR. In fact, the club’s PSR position will become even healthier if they come under the £61m loss threshold, which they will likely do.

But the focus now, and for those players signing now, is the 2025/26 season and that cycle. That includes 2023/24, 2024/25 and 2025/26, a season where Spurs have Champions League football to lean on that will yield large revenues. It also means that the £95m loss from 2022/23 falls off in this current cycle and is replaced by a season where the club stand a good chance of getting back into the black if they go on a deep run in the competition.

The headroom the club has could well push past the £350m mark for the current cycle and, while that suggests that it should be ‘open wallet time’ at Tottenham, the big thing is making sure that the club can cashflow new additions, and improving their player trading in terms of outgoings, with it being one of the areas where many of their rivals outperform them.

But at a time when the club has optimism about a new era under Frank, and with a world-class stadium which allows for revenues to remain high and reliable, each year, the club has the ability to move in the market in the coming seasons and not run the risk of falling foul of regulation, either the Premier League’s or UEFA’s.

They have the set-up to invest in more success, but the likelihood is that it will be on a piecemeal basis, and what happens this season will determine greatly how big the club chooses to go in the transfer market next summer.