Richard Masters: Premier League must 'preserve and protect' the competition | Premier League

Richard Masters has insisted Premier League The clubs share a determination to “preserve and protect” the competition as a new season fraught with off-field challenges is about to begin.

Masters, the top flight's chief executive, says there remains a “collective spirit” within the league's 20 member clubs, despite continued Legal battles involving champions Manchester Cityand the Premier League is taking legal action against FIFA over an expanded club calendar.

Ahead of this weekend’s opening round of fixtures, an ebullient Masters attempted to paint a portrait of the league’s collective strength. “There is a collective spirit within the Premier League that still exists, absolutely,” he said. “(The Premier League) is a competition, so it’s set up for people to compete with each other. They’re competing with each other all the time, and everyone is trying to find an angle, whether it’s signing a player, finding a way to be better in the Premier League, and I think that’s a great thing.

“I don’t believe in breaking the rules and we will sort that out, but I think there is a collective spirit. At the end of the day, everyone understands that the Premier League is a fantastic football competition that needs to be preserved and protected. That’s primarily the role of the Premier League, but everyone has to play their part and I think they understand that.”

Masters declined to comment on the disputes with City, with reports suggesting a verdict in a first arbitration case, over the league's rules on transactions between associated parties, is due in the coming weeks. He said the league “actually has a pretty good operating relationship” with its champions of the past four seasons, but argued the competition needed to move beyond recent disagreements and disputes over the rules.

Masters hopes to accomplish that by implementing a new regulation. This season, the league will test two new financial mechanisms that could be implemented permanently in 2025-26: one, the squad-cost ratio, would limit player spending to a portion of revenue; the other A top-down anchoring system This would limit the top clubs to spending a fixed multiple of the income of those at the bottom.

“If we do change the system, we will change it to one that I hope clubs will trust and want to comply with, so we are not talking about financial regulations and rules at that stage, we are talking about football,” Masters said.

“I will always want football to speak for itself. Obviously we don’t want to normalise the asterisks in the standings and the disputes that have been going on for a long time. We want this to be temporary, not permanent. We have to face these challenges and resolve them, and come to the end of the season with a clearer picture.”

Masters also addressed the issue of the expanded international calendar, reiterating the league's opposition to FIFA's lack of consultation on an expanded Club World Cup and arguing that a record number of matches for the biggest clubs could cause “saturation” in a television market the league is returning to this year.

“Obviously we have a lot of football and the Premier League is part of it,” he said. “Our clubs are involved in multiple competitions and we are expanding that calendar. So I think it should be a concern that we reach a saturation point.”

Masters said the league hopes to have completed all of its broadcast deals for the 2025-28 period by the end of this year. “We need to tell the clubs what their budget is going to be, the financial forecast, and it's going to be good. We're going to have a strong financial position to present to them and we'll have increased our market share.

“If you look at the collective broadcast revenues of the big five European leagues, we are at around 50%. So we think we will be in a very strong financial position, which obviously allows clubs to plan ahead to get the best players, hire brilliant management teams, invest in infrastructure and do all the things that make a competition a success.”