Yes the premier league want to make themselves even more exclusive to their members than they are now so they're handicapping football league clubs with their spending to ensure their precious league doesn't te tainted by anymore nobodies such as hull city, Leeds united and Leicester city.
At least they are trying something. It might work - we don't know at the moment and it is easy to be cynical.
Basically its a ploy to hand the Champions League to either Barcelona or Real Madrid every year as they get more money than everyone else and therefore can spend more
Starting next season, over a rolling 3 year period clubs won't be allowed to lose money. To introduce it without handicapping clubs with existing contracts a loss is allowed for the first 2 or 3 years but that loss has to be within limits and the limits get tighter each year. It's going to be calculated using their annual accounts, so if clubs start fiddling it at least their tax bills are going to be increased accordingly. Wages and transfer fees received will be immediate expenses/incomes (ie counted at full value at the time) where as transfer fees paid, stadium building/expansion costs, work done on training grounds etc will be spread over a suitable time depending on what it is. If clubs are seen to be fiddling the rules by having rich owners "sponsoring" them (eg Man City and Leicester) the amounts that will be counted can be reduced accordingly or even ignored, though the wording on that may need tightening up. If however the club owns another business, let's say we owned Allam Marine, the profits from that business will count towards the income of the club.
it's the "sponsoring" that worries me, there needs to be fixed limits.. what's to stop Abu Dhabi from sponsoring Man City's minibus for £40m?
Haven't the Arab owners of Man City renamed the City of Manchester Stadium/Eastlands as the Etihad for some outrageous sum of money to fiddle the books..? This is not a criticism of the Allams but isn't Eastlands still owned by Manchester City Council? If so, it hasn't stopped them investing further in the Club and the sporting facilities that are to be built on the wasteland surrounding the stadium..
Yes, if a club invested in a new stadium (or bought an existing one in our case) it isn't an expense, it's the purchase of an asset. What then happens for accounting the cost is spread over 50 years (for property). There is a slight complication to that, in that the property would be independently revalued every year, so if it cost £50M to start with and was constantly revalued at £50M there'd be no cost, but I'm sure if it dropped by more than it's share of the price that year that it would still only cost £1M for the first year. Yes, but they're going to be investigated over it once all the paperwork has been submitted. UEFA can't stop them receiving the money, but because it's from a "connected" business they can say that it doesn't count for the FFP rules, although that's the rule I was saying may need the wording tightening up. Presumably only if it was above market value would they do that as well.
