Club faces biggest fine in British football history

No, not ours...

Dayey maayar, as the man used to shout.

£80m LOSS £60m FINE! QPR face record-breaking punishment for wildly overspending on dozens of players in failed battle to stay in Premier League


Queens Park Rangers are on course to be hit with the biggest fine in British football history, which, in a worse-case scenario, could top £60 million.
Ironically, it will be imposed because of the amount of money they are losing — believed to be a huge £80m for last season — and will compound their financial troubles, perhaps sparking meltdown.
They have racked up big debts and massive annual losses largely through signing dozens of players on huge contracts in recent seasons, including Chris Samba, Park Ji-Sung, Julio Cesar, Jermaine Jenas, Loic Remy and others, most of whom remain on the club’s books, draining their resources with contracts worth up to £100,000 a week.
Big money signing: Jermaine Jenas signed by Harry Redknapp in January 2013 from Tottenham on 18-month contract worth £50,000 a week

If QPR are promoted this season, the fine will be levied in January 2015 by the Football League under their new Financial Fair Play (FFP) rules, which will see overspending clubs ‘taxed’ on their losses. Rangers are currently favourites to go up to the Premier League from the Championship this season. They could avoid a fine — or at least postpone it — if they fail to get promoted. In that case, they will be hit with a lengthy transfer embargo.
The mathematics are complicated, but in broad terms, Championship clubs will pay a £1 fine for every £1 they lose over £18m in the 2013-14 financial year.
Short stay: Chris Samba Spent six months at QPR to July 2013 on £100,000 a week. His 10 Premier League games cost £2.5m in wages

Sources familiar with QPR’s financial situation have told The Mail on Sunday that the club will post losses for 2012-13 of about £80m. The club are not obliged to publish those accounts until next spring and have declined to comment.
Rangers are two-thirds owned by Malaysian businessman Tony Fernandes and one-third by the Mittal family. Fernandes’s majority shareholding gives him ultimate power and it is he who sanctioned the hiring of Mark Hughes and then Harry Redknapp, allowing both to sign large groups of players.
It is expected that the club will record another massive deficit for the current season, and it is the losses in 2013-14 that will be measured to calculate any fine.
If QPR’s losses for the season are £80m, the fine will be about £62m. That would equate to roughly all of QPR’s Premier League income (if they are promoted) for next season. Even if 2013-14 losses are as ‘low’ as £60m, a fine of more than £40m would follow.
‘This is the first season in which clubs will ultimately face sanctions [for over-spending],’ a Football League spokesman told The Mail on Sunday. ‘Clubs have to submit their accounts for 2013-14 to us by December 1, 2014, with sanctions levied early in 2015. If a club being sanctioned are in the Premier League by then, the fine will need to be paid.’
QPR’s accounts for 2012-13, in which they were relegated from the Premier League, have not been made public, nor will the club confirm when they will be. Asked to comment on their expected losses last season and this season, and on the potentially destructive fines, a Loftus Road spokesman said: ‘The club will be making no comment on [these] matters at this time.’
Expensive hands: Julio Cesar signed from Inter Milan on four-year deal in summer 2012. Out of favour now, but earning £90,000 a week
Expensive hands: Julio Cesar signed from Inter Milan on four-year deal in summer 2012. Out of favour now, but earning £90,000 a week
The Mail on Sunday can reveal that the Football League plan to donate fines levied under their FFP rules to charity. It had previously been expected that fines paid by overspending clubs would be shared among clubs who stayed within the rules and did not lose huge amounts while trying to ‘buy’ success. But a senior FL source says giving the fines to charity is now the preferred option ‘for a number of political reasons’.
The last publicly available accounts for QPR relate to the 2011-12 season, when they made a loss of £22.6m, had debts of £89m and a wage bill that had almost doubled year-on-year from £29.7m to £58.4m.

Park Ji-Sung moved from Manchester United in July 2012 for £2m. Now on loan at PSV with QPR paying most of his £70,000-a-week wage
That huge wage bill was before they signed high-earning players like Samba, Park, Rob Green, Junior Hoilett, Ryan Nelsen, Jose Bosingwa, Julio Cesar, Stephane Mbia, Remy and Jenas.
The wage bill for QPR’s relegation season is expected to be about £90m, or, by itself, about 150 per cent of the club’s total income of about £65m. A ‘sensible’ wage ratio is closer to 50 per cent of turnover. They have cut some costs since last season, releasing or selling 11 players in the summer including Samba, Bosingwa and Anton Ferdinand.
But they also signed eight new players on permanent deals and loaned three others including Benoit Assou-Ekotto from Tottenham and Niko Kranjcar from Dynamo Kiev.
QPR’s income will also have plunged between last season in the Premier League and this season in the Championship, largely through reduction in TV money.

 

Just what they deserve.

 

I don't think any club deserves potential closure. It has been poorly run, but I wouldn't wish that on other fans.

 

I don't understand this at all. Club badly run financially, losing money, so give it a massive fine? How the hell will that help? Is it just meant to be a deterrent and they'd worked out they'll only need to totally destroy 1 or 2 clubs before all the rest realise they're serious and fall into line?

Surely they can tell when a clubs being mismanaged earlier? Why not at that point, deduct 10 points? Deduct 10 every time they don't meet the requirements. That would work better and wouldn't actually sacrifice whole clubs.

I can't believe anyone who calls themselves a football fan would wish another club to be totally destroyed either.

 

DQPR fans are saying it's a poor article that doesn't really grasp the facts correctly.

 

i agree a points deduction would make much more sense as it could at least be enforced without destroying a club - however much the people running it deserve to be shot !

 

I idea is simple, stop clubs spending money that they haven't got and are never likely to have.

 

and guess who's manager now? I know Pompey love 'im.

 

Looking back that was quite a harsh statement to make while under the influence.

 

As noble an idea giving the fines to charity is, spreading it around the clubs who stuck by rules was a great way to help strengthen the lower leagues financially, and that would have been really good for football.

I do agree that fines for clubs are an awful idea though, there will still be gamblers like Duffen who take high interest bank loans and stick them on black. What then? The perpetrator walks free and the club and its fans are left facing the consequences of one mans actions they had no control over. Punishment directly to owners/chairman or whatever for financial mismanagement should be the way forwards, and each case reviewed on its own merits.

So fernandes should be forced to pay a huge fine and banned from football for a few years. That way he can't make the situation any worse and the FA can hold on to Fernandes' cash until QPR resolve the situation or need bailing out. If they need bailing out then Fernandes has paid for it via his fine and that cash gets used up to the amount they need with any spare going to a random charity pulled out of a hat by Sepp Blatter.

 

Totally agree, put the onus on the individual so they can't leave it to the next person to sort their **** and it's them, not the Club that suffer for their decisions. I've no idea if that can be enforced or would work in reality though.

 

I've no idea either, without too much thought there's plenty of potential loopholes. Money men could carry on bankrolling and controlling a club through a surrogate if you like, or should hey be banned and fined for serious financial misconduct or something, what would happen about ownership of the club? The perpetrator could potentially raise cash from a sale equal to that of a fine and they've pretty much got away with it. Maybe if the FA make it a rule that breaking certain rules gives them the power to auction the perpetrators shares off themselves to the highest bidder?

 

Another turd in his M25 cockney comfort zone as revealed exclusively by myself on here

 

Nah you were right the first time.

 

Without access to the full FFP rules it's difficult to make sense of this.

But I would guess that Fernandes employs accountants that can find loopholes in the rules.

If QPR show a loss of £60m what's to stop him from invoicing one of his other companies for the said amount
(for 'sponsorship' or the likes). Instantly the club is showing break-even. So what happens then ?

So many clubs these days have holding companies offshore together with very complex arrangements, that it would take a team of
forensic accountants to unravel a club's true financial position.

I don't know how the FFP will be policed, which takes me back to my first sentence...

 

What could Harry have done to/for England eh. The mind boggles with that bent cockney ****. The FA dont get much right but ****ing hell i doff my cap to them about ignoring him.
Just for Aggers, if it turns out we go down this year and we find out Hudd is on 50 grand a week what will it make him?

 

They obviously have to fine one club to show they are serious about the rules to prevent other clubs thinking all they will get is a slap on the wrist for either breaking or bending the rules. If it has to be one club and one manager then QPR and Harry "every England football fan wanted me to get the top job" Redknapp will be the one where most fans of other clubs think "It should be them".

And let's be thankful such rules weren't in place when we were last in the PL

 

Whatever happened to the Dayeeee Mayaaaaar man?

Remember first seeing / hearing him outside Hammonds when I was a nipper. But later, and most commonly, wandering through the massed ranks of Bunkers selling his rags. Dirty smelly old geezer he was, guess he's long gone to that William Booth House in the sky !!!

I'm getting old! :-(

 

I still think all new owners of football clubs should be required to make a percentage deposit in escrow to act as leverage against future financial behaviour. That would sort the bastards out.

 

What will happen to the £60 million?

Why not give £1m each to the bottom sixty out of the 92 clubs?