Ferran Torres has joined Barcelona, but his debut is unclear as club tries to creatively work around debt

To review, there are two different things, conceptually and practically: There's having the money to do it, and there's fulfilling the criteria to be able to do it now. The salary limit part is more complex -- on some levels, anyway. On others, it's very simple, and very rigid: If you do not comply with the rules, you will not be able to register your player. End of story. It's an automated system, and that button you want to click on will not be clickable.

Barcelona's permitted salary limit is €97.7m calculated on the basis of what they spend and generate. It's not that they are right at the limit; they're miles over it, with the actual amount spent on salaries over €400m. This tends to lead people to suggest that the rules are pointless as they bemoan another big club just ignoring financial fair play. The questions are inevitable: What's the point if they can still sign players? What's the point if they can be at four times their permitted salary limit without it having any tangible impact?

First, it's not without consequence; these are not rules simply ignored and unenforced, nor are financial difficulties long term entirely ignored. Not now, anyway. In the summer, you may remember, they lost the best player in their entire history -- someone named Lionel Messi -- for free. Whatever other elements were at play, everyone can surely agree that's quite a big impact. Antoine Griezmann left too, also for free. (For now, at least: There is a €40m purchase clause applicable a year on.) The summer before, Luis Suarez left for free -- and won the league at Atletico Madrid. Gerard Pique and Sergio Busquets took pay cuts. Without Pique's drop, Memphis Depay wouldn't have been able to play the opening game of the 2021-22 season.

The limits shift with each season too. Last year, Barcelona's limit was €382m, and next year, with the impact of the pandemic lessening, it will likely climb again, although it is inconceivable that it will reach the level of their actual expenditure on salaries unless that continues to drop. (While you could theoretically just sit on the same squad and change nothing, any new contract would break those rules -- in other words, you couldn't renew anyone -- and to be able to invest anything, you have to comply with the salary limit.) In Barcelona's case, that means bringing the total under €97.7m.

This last bit is impossible. You can't even give some players away to shed their salaries -- not if they don't want to go. Unilateral terminations risk a court case, which could cost more than it would save. Because of that, and because of the pandemic and its impact on those limits, creating a kind of negative equity in which you couldn't even pay for the squad by getting rid of the whole squad, there is another way out. You can be over the limit and still invest, but only with evidence that you are addressing the shortfall and how much you invest is capped at a ratio of 1:4. That is to say, for every €1 a club wants to invest in their squad, they have to have made €4 in savings.

Usually, a combination of savings go towards any investment, of course, but to put that in very simplistic terms: If you're over your limit, you can't sign a player on €1m a year by getting rid of a player on €1m a year, keeping the level the same; you would have to get rid of a player on €4m a year. If it's a very expensive player, the margin grows: If you can move on a player who accounts for more than 5% of your limit, you can reinvest at a ratio of 1 to 2, meaning a €10m player gives €5m of margin.

Barcelona currently have no margin to register Torres, and finding that is their immediate task. (Long-term plans are a different issue, which is why some costs are postponed until then: By the summer, €40m could be incoming for Griezmann, for example, and other necessary sales may become possible.) It is not an easy one, but nor is it an impossible one. While Laporta was his usual bullish and enthusiastic self, his director of football Alemany was calm, clear and concise -- it is that personality, along with his competence, that increases the optimism that this could just work.

Alemany had already said that before anyone could arrive, players had to leave. Now they had signed Torres despite no one going yet. "The reality is that when we signed Ferran, we knew that we didn't have any margin with the salary limit," he admitted on Monday. "We made an exception with Ferran because it was worth it. We accept that and we're working on various avenues."

"If we can generate 'fair play' [margins], we will decide if there are other signings; [the latter] will depend on exits," Alemany added. For all the desire to seek other arrivals -- Alvaro Morata foremost among them -- registering the one player they actually have signed has to come first. If they succeed in doing that, then and only then will they look at other potential signings.

Those avenues are varied, creative and often time-sensitive. Some are walked more willingly than others. In many cases, solutions are ultra short-term and mean shifting costs further down the road to a time, they hope, when they will be easier to assimilate and fit within financial regulations -- a time when there may be money incoming. At that point, some of the plans made this summer will likely be picked apart: Memphis Depay, Sergino Dest and Luuk de Jong are all players lined up to depart within a year of arriving, itself an indication that some solutions don't solve anything. And so they work, hands partly tied.

A useful indication of how fine the margins are, and how delicately balanced it all is, is shown by the fact that Yusuf Demir is no longer playing games -- if he makes one more appearance, Barcelona would have to exercise a €10m purchase option -- and even more clearly by a comment made by Xavi Hernández this week.