Grumpy wondering whether the owners were under pressure to get a financial return for their out of football (pension) business investments.
Pension funds are always under pressure by the people who's money they're playing with. If I was an American pension holder, looking at English football finances, I'd be a little uncomfortable tbh. Anyway, as I've said, I don't believe this deal is how it's been spun and everyone is just guessing. Here's a guess. When they say 'up to £105m' that'll probably mean 'depending on reaching the PL'. So lets say they're putting up half that amount in the Championship. and there's already £20m debt and a 'multi-million training ground' to build how much does that leave if they fail to go up? That's me done with this thread, my posts are just speculation and guesswork.
Some of our support would be happy we went for it, to throw everything we had a promotion as we 'would be having a go'.....until it all went wrong then criticise we risked the club.....then if we ended up back in L1 tell us all there not going back until some investment is shown Reality is the rules need enforcing.... otherwise whats the point of having them & it just encourages more clubs to take risks as they wont get punished....lets hope rule enforcement is coming & its hammered down on....I hope Forest go down, simply because if they dont the 4 point deduction shows cheating FFP is still worth the risk. Club has had a poor second half of the season & its very disappointing, big mistakes have been made, they need addressing & if they are along with strict rule enforcement KLD will have put us on a solid footing to compete....& Compete going forward if 'the model' works. Lets not forget KLD said this was a 5 year plan....its year 3 with a bit of a blip....did folk seriously think the 5 year plan would go smoothly up without a bump in the road....some calm & trust is needed & KLD must deliver a competitive promotion push next year ....we still might not go up but that would be year 4 with hopefully more clubs falling fowl of FFP. Lost off at Leicester's complaints....they signed up to play by the rules, nobody kicked a fuss up when the rules came in....or as with so many rules in football did these clubs just presume the rules wouldn't be enforced.....lets face it a rule as simple as a substituted player walking off at the closest touchline cant even be enforced....no wonder a independent regulator is required for the more complex rules!!!!
I await the day effective punishments are enforced. I am yet to see any. The punishment needed is not points deductions, but revenue recovery. Until then clubs like Ipswich will be attractive to owners who know the rewards outweigh the penalty. Leicester now launching legal action agaisnt EPL and EFL, why wouldnt they. These people arent fans with any sense of fair play, they are business people who win at all costs. I keep saying it, our approach is great as far as it goes, but naieve in the same breath. Imagine Forest come down, having cheated, they have the parachute payments and probably do a Leeds or Leicester. Promotion for us is less likely as a result. This isnt about clubs going bust at out level, it is about ambition. Would love us to win our way, I have my doubts we can do it any time soon.
Probably puts me in a huge minority but I'd rather a string of heroic failures doing things the right way than win by cheating. I sometimes struggle with the concept of supporting professional teams in any sport when their only connection to the locality from which they take their name is simply that name and the location of their home ground. Foreign owners pumping money in to buy foreign players. It sometimes seems a bit odd to get behind that. If they're cheating too, then what is there to feel any pride about, let alone local pride?
Having success while competing on our/clean terms would be all the sweeter - knowing there isn’t a murky underside when you cut down through the layers. It will be very difficult like FellTop says when we’re effectively competing against teams that are doping. We would need to become elite at all levels of the club. There’s no guarantee we’ll get it right but there isn’t for Forest, Leicester, Chelsea, etc either. At least we’d be competing with homegrown players along with ones we’ve helped develop.
I am not a big fan of FFP as it is at the minute as I believe it restricts clubs from investing and growing, I do however also see the need for financial protection for the clubs so these poor owners do not financially cripple clubs. I am no expert on these issues but if somebody wants to buy a club and invest heavily in it to make it a force in world football then I guess that is fine but the problems arise really when clubs and bad owners take huge loans leveraged against the club or set wages that the club can not sustainably pay putting that club in jeopardy. Like I said not sure I like the current system but it is what the clubs have agreed to so it is the rules and if they are broken then teams should be punished. Again we have the problem of 2 separate organisations with 2 separate sets of rules and 2 separate ways of monitoring and enforcing them rules trying to work out what to do with Leicester?? Then you have this deal for Ipswich which TBH certainly looks murky from the outside and may well be a smokescreen to cover some financial irregularities and to filter money onto the balance sheet. Like I said I am no expert but if given the choice between how we are operating at the minute against how teams like Stoke and Hull are I think I would choose us as we seem to be trying to operate honourably and within the rules as they stand at the minute wether I like them or not.
So a total loss of 14.6m over the last two season to get a run at automatic promotion. Nothing wrong with that. Fair play to them. They’ll be quids in with room to spend if they go up this season and even if they don’t they’re within the parameters so not putting themselves in danger for any sort of sanctions.
As it will with all clubs, can see a few shedding players this summer to try and keep under the psr wages to turnover rules.
It should do, I reckon we are already compliant with the season afters % and that's before any increase in TV money and by the look of it some very popular merchandising. I've said before we may be playing a much longer game and the panic some clubs will be in needs to be backed by the efl, pl and fa to make sure rules are followed and punishments are hard enough to deter them
The accountants of clubs like Everton and Ipswich are trying to fool the PL and EFL imo, sometimes succeeding ... ... so it's clearly very easy to fool people on forums with next to no idea about football finances. Ask them where the money comes from, that the private equity firms are using, and they've absolutely no idea. It's just another form of money laundering imo.
This is key for me. Always a year behind. Part of FFP requires a financial forecast submitted twice a year to the relevant regulator. This is meant to be the check that ensures no surprises come. It doesnt work though because a forecast is as accurate as needed or able. Folk know my opinion on the current penalties. They arent fit for purpose. No deterrent to some. That is in the UK. Some european clubs been banned from eufa tournaments is positive. Maybe the single most effective means in England to make a difference is to stop parachute payments. There is no better indicator the system is setup to reward largesse in my opinion.
As @FellTop alluded to above, our strategy is the "right" one but its going to struggle to work when teams know they can essentially spend what they like to gamble on promotion, knowing they can just bank a season of Premier League money and three seasons of parachute payments.
The idea of parachute payments was admirable when it was launched, I seem to recall it was marketed as preventing back of house staff losing their jobs etc. Unfortunately that was a smokescreen.
And thats partly because fans are impatient, as are investors who want returns quickly. We're kinda seeing the struggle with that ourselves now.
