Clubs cry foul over QPR 'conspiracy' attempt to dodge £50m FFP fines from Football League Maurice Watkins is a sports lawyer whose firm represents QPR Raheem Sterling's agent has emerged as key player in his contract talks Peter Moores will begin review into England's failed World Cup next week By Charles Sale for the Daily Mail Published: 21:32 GMT, 2 April 2015 | Updated: 22:18 GMT, 2 April 2015 View comments Rival clubs claim QPR, facing Football League fines of up to £50million for multiple breaches of financial fair play regulations, are making an outrageous attempt to get their man on the inside of the discussions. Football League board member Jim Rodwell’s departure from Notts County to become chief executive of Scunthorpe has created the need for an election for a League One representative as Rodwell cannot automatically keep his place. League One clubs have been informed that there are two nominations for the vacant seat — Rodwell and former Manchester United director Maurice Watkins, now chairman of Barnsley. please log in to view this image Maurice Watkins is a sports lawyer whose firm represents QPR over their considerable FFP troubles please log in to view this image Tony Fernandes, owner of QPR, wants to avoid fines of up to £50million for Financial Fair Play breaches please log in to view this image QPR are 19th in the Premier League, four points away from escaping the relegation zone Watkins is a sports lawyer and his firm Brabners are representing QPR over their considerable FFP troubles. Clubs believe that having Watkins on the Football League board, where FFP is the hot topic, would be helpful for QPR and a massive conflict of interests. However, the highly-respected Watkins, who has a number of sporting directorships including British Swimming and Lancashire County Cricket Club, dismissed the conspiracy theory as ‘wholly ludicrous’. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/article-3023688/Rivals-claim-QPR-trying-dodge-50million-FFP-fines-getting-man-inside-Football-League.html#ixzz3WCD8YAUq Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
As a Championship club supporter I actually find this a bit unfair on QPR as they haven't actually done anything wrong yet. If you go down let's wait and see what happens. QPR did not write the rulebook so shouldn't really be blamed. I also am not really a fan of trying to prejudge things as it can be, ahem, prejudice!
Simple question not covered in the report, did Watkins try to get the position last time it was available? (assuming he was eligible at the time)
The problem Dan is that in many ways this situation has already been prejudged, last season whilst we were in the Championship the CEO of Charlton was complaining that any fine should really go to other clubs as a form of compensation, who have (in her view) been in an unfair situation trying to compete with teams who overspend, rather than the proposal of the fine going to charity. This opinion was based on the losses we made during our final year in the PL when however much other clubs don't like it, it is necessary to spend huge sums of money just to try and stay in the division and if you are relegated you are still going to have PL levels of expenditure on wages unless you can off load. Admittedly last season we had Redknapp's stupidity in bringing in more players on loan than was needed and paying huge wages, but due to the owners "generosity" of writing off £60m of loans the final loss within the accounts was not far of FFP limits.....
It will be interesting to see the opinions of other Championship fans in the event that we do go down. Not sure they will all be as tolerant as Dan the Man. It will be like Faurlin-gate part two.
I would be more than happy to be back with you at Loftus Road watching us beat Charlton in the Championship - not sure if Charlie would stick around though for another one of his cracker jack goals at our School end, which you may recall you almost missed by taking an early half-time bathroom break! Hopefully Tony does not walk after refusing to pay FFP fines imposed and we do a "Rangers", ending up in the Conference. Could be fun though watching us stagger our way back to the top - at least we would likely pick up a few more wins on the journey.
I've not really looked in enough detail at your situation here, but in general it should be a case of if you were in breach of the rules then you should pay the fine, if you weren't then you don't. I'd want to see consideration given to attempts by a club to reduce the wage bill and other expenses, rather than for example a relegated club that sells everyone they can, releases every out of contract player, and doesn't sign anybody being treated the same as an existing Championship club going "screw the rules, here's £100M and we're spending it whether we're allowed to or not". I do think there's a fundamental flaw in the way the fine is calculated when a team is promoted though. It's a percentage of your excess losses from the season in the Championship. Well that doesn't do the job of putting clubs off doing it. Even if you're instantly relegated, the reward in the event of promotion is far greater than the fine that will be dished out. Worst case you get 1 year of PL income and a full batch of parachute payments. If you take Blackpool's owners as an example. They could quite easily decide one day to put the money in to get promoted, not sign anybody or increase the wage bill once they did, get instantly relegated and then be left with a tonne of money even after paying the fine. The penalty should really be related to the income you get as a result of it (allowing for the considerations I mentioned earlier).
Yes can you remember all the nice posts from Reading and Norwich fans wanting us to go down 2 divisions and some hoping we got kicked out of the league with Faurlingate. I understand it was because both those clubs were bitter and jealous and that we were doing well and they were sh@te but any decent real fan should never want another club to be unfairly relegated. I remember some of those heated posts calling us 'cheats'? Smaller fans supporting small clubs. I do agree though that we will get the usual numpties invading our boards.
