Queens Park Rangers accept transfer ban
Matt Hughes, Deputy Football Correspondent | Gary Jacob
July 27 2018, 12:01am,
The Times
McClaren will be hindered by a transfer embargo during January’s window
Queens Park Rangers have reached a £41.965 million settlement with the EFL over breaching its spending limits and accepted a transfer embargo for January next year in an agreement that brings their four-year legal battle to a close.
The Times understands that the Championship club will pay a £17 million fine to the EFL over a ten-year period, contribute £3 million to cover the EFL’s legal costs and convert £21.965 million of outstanding loans into equity.
QPR were ordered to pay a fine of about £40 million last year for failing to comply with the EFL’s Financial Fair Play rules during the 2011-12 season, when they were promoted to the Premier League, with an arbitration panel ruling that levying a world-record fine for a rule breach by a sporting organisation was lawful and not disproportionate.
The club immediately announced their intention to appeal and a date was set for a hearing in front of a new panel in London this month, but after intensive negotiations, QPR have withdrawn their appeal.
Under the terms of the settlement, QPR’s payments to the EFL will not be taken into account when calculating their future Profitability and Sustainability results, the measure of a club’s financial health that replaced FFP at the start of the 2016-17 season as an alternative way of countering potentially unsustainable levels of spending.
QPR’s owners will not be permitted to take the £21.965 million out of the club and a ten-year payment schedule has been agreed for settling the fine.
QPR can claim to have succeeded in reducing the level of the fine, but with the mandatory conversion of loans into shares, the dispute will still cost the owners almost £42 million.
In addition Steve McClaren, the new manager, will be hindered by a transfer embargo during January’s window, which is likely to lead to a flurry of activity during the rest of the summer by the west London club.
QPR’s settlement was discussed at an EFL board meeting in London yesterday with their decision to withdraw their appeal ending several legal battles between the EFL and clubs recently promoted to the Premier League.
Bournemouth and Leicester City agreed to pay fines of £4.75 million and £3.1 million respectively this year for posting losses of £38.3 million and £20.8 million during their promotion seasons.
QPR’s case was more complex as the club’s owners wrote off £60 million in an attempt to avoid a huge fine for breaching FFP regulations. The club believed that they had got round the regulations after declaring an annual loss of only £9.8 million after promotion from the Championship in 2013-14, but the EFL took issue with the £60 million income injection that QPR classed as an “exceptional item” in their accounts, and considered their real loss to be £69.7 million.
The EFL has been determined to uphold its sustainability rules throughout the process while also being conscious of the need to avoid putting QPR under so much financial pressure that the club’s future could be threatened.