I don’t think olive oil is the right one. Newcastle need something stronger. Mind you olive oil is useful in some situations.
Forest doesn't surprise me, after they bought 4,000 players. Will put the Charly Alcaraz rumour to bed too.
Everton are ****ed, particularly if the takeover falls through which has been rumoured. New stadium has pretty much bankrupted them.
TBH, I really sympathise with their fanbase (the proper fans anyway). We were in a pretty similar position back in 2009 when we were in the **** financially. The charges are the least of their worries if the takeover falls through.
Would a second charge potentially mean an even bigger points deduction? No idea how these things work
It's an interesting point. What would suit us better, in the event of promotion this season? Forest/Everton get deducted points next season, or Luton to survive due to Everton/Forest getting relegated as a consequence of a deduction this season? (Of course they aren't the only two potential outcomes.)
No sympathy for Everton or Forest They should never have bought that Fujitsu Horizon system for their accounts.
I have some slight sympathy for Forest, the Brennan Johnson sale would have brought them back in to compliance but it fell just outside the accountancy period. But for Everton I’m sure we all remember them getting all Billy Big Bollocks when they were spraying oligarch cash about, now all of a sudden it’s biting them on the arse and they don’t like it quite as much. The only caveat is that Man City cannot be cleared or else it makes a mockery of all of this, creative accounting be damned.
I’m not confident City will be found guilty. I just expect it will be considered too embarrassing that they were happily allowed to buy their way to dominance in a way that was always inevitable and no one did anything about it. And embarrassing for the “greatest league in world” to have their regular champions labelled cheats. It’s fine for the clubs scrabbling around at the bottom. I hope to be proven wrong
Also though, playing devil's advocate here, maybe City haven't breeched the rules? (I am pretty sure they have, but bear with me) Maybe their global income is good enough to sustain the spend, whereas Forest (and Everton) did exactly what FFP is meant to stop - sudden huge splashes of cash on the hope it generates enough profit (success) in the short term to make them compliant? Man City have been spending big for years (and receiving huge income too), whereas the 'sleeping giants' of Forest and Everton simply cannot sustain it. Don't slate me, just trying to throw out an alternative. FWIW, I do think Man City have unfairly spent and used their financial backing to buy success at the detriment of the other teams.
Listening to the Athletic where they did a pod on why Newcastle can’t just spend spend spend. An interesting point made was how the current rules encourage selling off academy players due to it being “pure profit”. It’s what city have clearly made great use of. But for most clubs there is nothing better than seeing academy players break through and play for a while It’s something we are going to have to get used to it seems as there isn’t really a “fair” way of removing this part. Because on one hand this pure profit is probably pretty important for some clubs. But also eliminating it will require some kind of “independent” valuation team to basically deduct a chunk of profit from the accounting. It happens in other industries. As does dodgy valuations that can potentially result in people getting in trouble (I’m sure the details are in politics thread somewhere) A start might perhaps be homegrown players having salaries and signing on fees capitalised? Then those salaries wouldn’t count against profit in that way (whilst they are at the club). Which seems like it would encourage teams to keep home grown players. But thinking about it - final profit would still be the same on a sale. Just spread out. And if those wages were capitalised unless there were clear rules about them still “counting” you’d just get teams raising wages of other players for the wages/turnover ratio and potentially raising the salaries of young players too and then you get cashflow problems and chaos. So scrap that idea And then you come back to an independent valuer - which is rife with problems
