The Premier League have changed the rules on the amortisation of new player contracts, but will the alterations affect Arsenal?

This week, David Ornstein broke the news for The Athletic that Premier League clubs had voted to limit the period over which a player’s transfer fee could be spread in their accounts to five years, even if their contract lasts longer.

Previously, the amortisation of transfer fees depended entirely on the length of the contract.

If the deal was only for a year, the fee would be amortised entirely in that year. If it lasted 10 years, Premier League clubs could effectively spread the cost of the transfer in their books over a decade.

This led to some clubs, namely Chelsea, handing out extremely long contracts to allow them to do more business in the summer window without breaching the financial regulations.

UEFA already moved to restrict amortisation to five years over the summer, and the Premier League has now followed suit.

But this doesn’t mean players can’t sign contracts for longer than five years. That is still very much allowed.

This is certainly a positive change for the league. The incentive to tie players down to eight-year contracts was a dangerous one, as Chelsea themselves have since discovered.

A number of players that Chelsea have signed simply don’t look to be worth the money they were signed for. Yet they still have many, many years left on their contracts.

With Chelsea sitting in the bottom half of the table, they have a lot of work to do to secure the European football money that makes their long-term approach at all viable.

As for Arsenal, the change shouldn’t make a significant difference.

Arsenal have only very occasionally signed players up to contracts longer than five years, and there’s no evidence that was set to change in the coming windows.

As long as you’re only signing players on deals lasting five years or fewer, this change won’t affect you.