Sheffield United will start next season on minus two points if they are relegated to the Championship.
An independent commission has imposed a two-point penalty for the start of the next campaign they are under the English Football League’s jurisdiction, after the Blades defaulted on payments to other clubs during their promotion season in 2022-23.
A further two-point penalty has been suspended until the end of that same season, the EFL said.
This will be triggered if United default on any payment to another club under a transfer or compensation agreement for more than five business days from the due date of payment.
The EFL said the defaults which led to the sanction were cumulatively in excess of 550 days. The club also agreed to pay the EFL’s costs of £310,455.
Sheffield United are currently bottom of the Premier League, nine points off safety with seven games left to play.
Blades’ horror season will have lasting consequences
By Daniel Storey, i‘s chief football writer
Ten months ago, Sheffield United celebrated promotion with three Championship games still to play and eventually finished on 91 points, their highest ever total in the top two tiers.
Pretty much ever since, everything has gone to ruin and regret. Amazon might be interested in doing one of their documentary series on half the budget – Nothing: Sheffield United. Let the cameras roll and then cover your eyes from the horror.
Even back then, heady in May, a sense of pervading doom was being switched only for the impending kind. Then-manager Paul Heckingbottom had overachieved ludicrously, taking over in 16th and taking them here in the space of 18 months – every Blade knew that.
There had been rumours of administration as late as March 2023 and an ongoing transfer embargo. The next month brought talk of the club not being able to afford bonus payments or transfer instalments.
“Now we know where we’re going to be, the money people can get on with doing whatever,” Heckingbottom said immediately after confirmation of promotion – that “whatever” deliberately laid heavy with meaning.
Heckingbottom knew that budgets were not going to become wildly inflated. Prince Abdullah Bin Mosaad Al Saud had come close to selling before, not least to a Nigerian businessman who was later sued by the US Securities and Exchange Commission for allegedly faking documents and making up companies to defraud investors.
What those money men did to Heckingbottom and his team was to sell two of their best players, Iliman Ndiaye and Sander Berge.
Neither have exactly pulled up trees after moves to Marseille and Burnley respectively, but that’s not the point. It presented the impression that Sheffield United were taking the money and running – barely even trying to stay up.
Read Daniel Storey’s full analysis here