http://www.bbc.com/sport/0/football/26390770 I hope that doesn't include us, and us on the verge of Europe?
It will probably include us as we spent a lot getting promoted and then after promotion. We won't see a good portion of the financial reward for that until this season is done - finishing position money etc. 12 months from now our accounts should look better than they are now.
We're not included in this round of it (we will presumably be asked as soon as we qualify if we do). If you read the article it talks about the 237 clubs that entered European competition this season being the ones the clubs under investigation come from.
Wait, so 76 clubs out of 237 in the Europa and Champions' Leagues are failing the FFP? It seems to be doing wonders so far then...
76 have been asked to provide more information. If you've lost 6 Million Euros in the time covered, and the debt wasn't turned into equity by the time they accounts were published then UEFA are going to ask about it. For example we know if we were being looked at we would fail due to our losses being funded by loans. If tomorrow AA were to turn round and turn the loans into shares we would pass FFP, but UEFA would need to ask us for the information. There's also ways to buy more time for compliance, eg if your average wage used to be £60k/wk, and it's down to £40k/wk now because since FFP was announced you've been giving out sensible contracts, they're not likely to penalise you heavily on account of having lost money due to players on long term contracts that ran out 2 summers ago and who've now left/taken reduced wages. (it stops being an excuse once the rules have been in place for a while)
It's from 2012, we didn't spend that much and the wage bill was reasonably low. Bruce only joined us half way through the year
With a result this weekend and a favourable draw in the Cup we'd be hoping for the Europa League next season. Thanks to Man City winning the League Cup rather than Sunderland, the top 6 in the League will qualify for Europe that way rather than the top 5. So Arsenal/Everton/Man City in the Final would pretty much give the other side the Europa spot for the FA Cup. It wasn't that great still, these are roughly the losses since the Alams took over. 2012/13 - (£28M) 2011/12 - (£9M) 2010/11 - (£20M) On the plus side, that £20M shouldn't count against us. £9M loss in 11/12 includes wages to the likes of Olofinjana that were signed before we were relegated, and includes about £2M that we wrote off when we sacked Bullard that will be deductable (if they're taking the 2012 figure we sacked him in 2011 so the recalculated books he'd already be gone). Then we only have to take about half that loss (probably a little bit more as the compo for NP going to Leicester will be classed as 2011 as well) On the downside, while we get to deduct a big chunk of the small losses, we're also going to have to add on a chunk of the much bigger losses the following year. Has anyone seen the full accounts for last season to know how much of that loss is due to wage rises and bonuses on promotion? Obviously they're a 2013 expense (and deductable, or at least delayable for FFP), but beyond that we're going to have to probably take half the remaining loss for 2012. (I can't think of any reason other than promotion bonuses/transfer clauses that would see the cost being significantly uneven over the course of a the season, even season ticket money is split on a roughly game by game basis)
