How long until other areas are rife with overspending as clubs hunt for any edge or advantage they can get? At what point does that 150k a year that a club wasn’t allowed to spend on an extra player turn into 350k extra being spent on scouting, or 250k extra on additional specialist coaches? Sure, people could say that it’s better to spend money on developing players with extra coaches or on scouting more kids etc, but it’s still ‘overspending’. And none of it matters anyway if you can’t get players into that first team budget at the end of it. If a club wants to spend a small fee on securing a Dickie, or a Brannagan, or a Sykes in January, knowing full well that within 2/3 years they will be sold for ten times that amount, is that really helping clubs survive? Would it be in the best interests of a club for the league to tell them they can’t spend 50k and a grand a week in wages on a diamond who might well net them a couple of million quid in 18 months time, even though they can take that money plus 50% and spend it on some new changing rooms? Or is it going to end up helping the teams higher up who have six times the budget, and can get around any potential limits on squad sizes by classifying them as an Under 23?
Rules will always be prodded and squeezed as people try to wriggle around them and stretch them to their limits. That’s just life and requires as stringent policing as possible from the relevant authorities - that’s what they’re paid for. What any sort of black and white, flat rate does is make it require less management in principle, but creates a whole wealth of problems and disadvantages down the line and in other areas, away from the first team payslips. I really don’t trust the EFL to consider or be bothered with thinking about or safeguarding any of these things. I think they just want a flatpack solution that allows them to wash their hands, first and foremost.
It’s an extremely complex issue that requires an even more rigorous and meticulous solution. What you don’t want is to shove through an ‘over ready’ piece of legislation that it turns out nobody understood or even read properly a few months down the line.