Leicester City and their Premier League rivals are racing against a unique deadline to comply with profit and sustainability rules (PSR).

What happens when a deadline isn’t really a deadline? This is the case at the end of the football accounting year, where Premier League clubs are scrambling to stay within the complex PSR guidelines. Premier League teams can incur losses of up to £105 million over a rolling three-year period, with the accounting period ending on June 30. This urgency explains the recent flurry of activity from clubs like Everton, Aston Villa, Chelsea, Nottingham Forest, and Newcastle United. Moves involving academy players are particularly notable because these sales are recorded immediately as pure profit, while purchases are amortized over the length of a contract.

Leicester City is in a unique situation, already facing one PSR charge from the Premier League for the 2022/23 season. This case has been referred to an independent panel. Now, they aim to avoid a second charge for breaches in the 2023/24 season while in the Championship. The EFL’s rules are different, allowing clubs to lose up to £39 million over three years, or £13 million in one season. Spending on areas like the academy, infrastructure, or women’s football doesn’t count towards these calculations.

Leicester has already secured around £10 million in compensation from Chelsea for manager Enzo Maresca and his coaches. Additionally, the potential sale of Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall to Chelsea, valued at about £35 million, would significantly help them meet the threshold.

There’s a rush to finalize deals, but Dewsbury-Hall might not need to be officially transferred to Stamford Bridge before midnight for Leicester to comply with the EFL’s requirements. For instance, Everton’s £60 million sale of Richarlison to Tottenham in 2022 was not announced until July 1 but counted for the 2021/22 accounts. Similarly, last year’s £6 million sale of Ellis Simms to Coventry was recorded for the 2022/23 accounts despite being finalized on July 7.

However, there is a cautionary tale from Nottingham Forest, who couldn’t backdate Brennan Johnson’s £47.5 million transfer to Spurs, completed on September 1. Football finance expert Kieran Maguire explained to The Athletic: “You might argue that it could fall under the definition of an adjusting post-balance sheet event. If a sale of player X is broadly agreed between clubs, but personal terms are pending, it can be backdated to June 30. Evidence of a broadly agreed deal before the balance sheet date is necessary, but it shouldn’t be too difficult to obtain.”