The fee is not the cost. The ratio is the ceiling.
It prices the all-in cost and checks a deal against the squad cost ratio, flagging where the rules are unsettled.
The decision object is the all-in cost. A free is not free.
A signing is never priced on the fee alone, because the components trade off and a low fee routinely hides a high wage. The total acquisition cost is the fee plus wages plus signing-on plus agent commission, and the wage is carried twice, net-to-player and gross-to-club, because the tax wedge between them is real money.
When there is no fee the saved money does not vanish; the player takes it as wages and a larger signing-on, so a free is not zero cost. Months-to-expiry becomes a strategy lever: two equal players are different acquisitions if one is two years out and the other six months from walking. Price the all-in, and remember that the free agent is paid in a different currency, not for nothing.
Illustrative engine read on the real total-acquisition-cost model (fee plus wages plus signing-on plus agent, the net-to-player and gross-to-club tax wedge, and the free-agent dynamic where months-to-expiry shifts cost from fee to wage). Composite signings, demonstration figures.
A club does not have a budget. It has a cost ratio.
The ceiling is not a number a club sets, it is a ratio it must fit: the squad cost ratio, its squad costs over its football revenue. Spending power is therefore revenue times the allowed ratio, and the charge that hits it is the fee amortised over the contract, not the cash fee.
This reframes every deal: a club spends not what it has in the bank but what its revenue times its cost ratio allows, charged on the amortised cost of its whole squad. A high-revenue club has a high ceiling regardless of one owner's appetite, and a smaller club is bounded no matter how badly it wants a player. Spending power is revenue times a ratio, and the amortised wage bill is what fills it.
Illustrative engine read on the real FFP, PSR, and squad-cost-ratio constraint (the ratio as squad costs over revenue, spending power as revenue times the cost ratio, amortisation with the five-year cap, and the headroom, allowance, and sanction check). Composite club, dated demonstration figures.
A club can create headroom, and the engine flags the unsettled.
The constraint layer is not only a wall to check against, it is a thing a club manages, and the clearest lever is the academy graduate. Because a homegrown player carries zero book value, his sale is pure profit and creates headroom, so it reads as a compliance instrument with a timing value, not merely a cash event.
Reading the ceiling as a lever separates a club that manages its ratio from one trapped by it: an academy sale timed to clear headroom, a contract length chosen to thin the charge, a deal deferred a window to fit. The read is honest about its edges, pricing what the rules clearly say and flagging what they do not, because a confident answer on an unsettled rule is worse than none. Manage the ratio where the rules are clear, and flag the uncertainty where they are not.
Illustrative engine read on the real constraint-management layer (the academy-sale relief mechanic as a compliance instrument with timing value, and the compliance-uncertainty rule that flags rather than guesses), read-only on the KR. Composite reads, demonstration figures.
Price the all-in cost, fit the squad-cost ratio, and never move the player's rating.
Price the all-in. Fit the ratio.
Wages and FFP prices the total acquisition cost, checks a deal against the squad cost ratio, flags compliance uncertainty, and never re-rates the player.