Tony Bloom on recruitment and potential changes to Premier League financial rules

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The chairman discussed a range of topics in an interview with BBC Sussex.

Charlie Hanson

2025-10-14T13:00+01:00

Albion chairman Tony Bloom. 📷 by Tony Bloom.

Chairman Tony Bloom has said Albion’s recruitment model means that they’re always looking at all markets.

While we have enjoyed success in signing players from South America in recent years, Yoon Doyoung joined from South Korean side Daejeon Hana Citizen and Greek youth internationals Babis Kostoulas and Stefanos Tzimas were all brought in over the summer transfer window.

“For recruitment, we are looking globally,” Tony said in an interview with BBC Sussex. “So whether it's in South America, whether it's in Asia, whether it's in other countries in Europe, we are looking for the best possible players, for the right type of player for the age profile and for the money.

“We don't care where it is. Hence why we have a huge amounts of nationalities in the building.

Babis Kostoulas and Stefanos Tzimas joined Albion from Olympiacos and Nuremburg, respectively. 📷 by Paul Hazlewood.

“Everything about the Premier League becomes more difficult every year. We have to always look to improve and innovate. You can't still in the Premier League, our competitors are fiercely competitive. They are looking to overtake one another and get stronger all the time. So we have to do likewise and ideally we are going ahead even faster than the other teams.

“I don’t know exactly what other clubs are doing. They don't necessarily talk about it, but you can assume they're spending a lot of time trying to improve in all areas, particularly the areas of analytics in their recruitment processes.

“We have to innovate and aim to get better every season, which we are.”

Our work in the transfer market saw us announce a £73.3m profit for the 2023/24 campaign, seeing us comfortably comply with the Premier League’s Profit and Sustainability Rules (PSR).

New financial rules - Squad Cost Ratio (SCR) - are set to be voted on by Premier League clubs and Tony has yet to decide which way to cast his ballot.

“There's a vote coming up in the next few weeks to change that system. There'd be a year, if it does get voted through, having both systems. Then it will be fully amended with the squad cost ratio if it gets voted in, which would be a lot more similar, but with differences, to the UEFA system.

“We are in the process of going through that. We don't have a view yet on which way we'll be voting. And there's also the top to bottom anchor and there's sustainability votes. So there's a lot for us to go through, but we will know a lot more when the votes happen in the next month or so.

“There has to be some kind of financial sustainability. PSR has worked to an extent. It's far from perfect, but it has stopped clubs being able to spend whatever they want. No system is perfect.

“The advantage of the Squad Cost Ratio is it’s more real time. It's over a season rather than looking backwards over a three-year period. But there's pros and cons of both, we are really looking at it in detail as we speak.

“[Chief financial officer] Lee Cooper, as you'd expect, is all over the details, and we're going to be having a meeting towards the end of the month.”