FFP, if implemented, will catapult us back to the forefront of world football. Even though we've waited a lot, waiting a bit longer is worth it.
Well Mr Samurai as I understand it the key points of FFP are these 1. Clubs have 3 years to break even 2. Clubs can record maximum loses of £39.5m for the 3 yr period before 2014 3. From 2014 to 2017, the max loss falls to £26.3m 4. Owners cannot bail out clubs by way of loans as Abramovich has but they can take shares ( meaning leave the money in the club ). If they do not, the max loses fall from £39.5m to just £4.4m 5. Clubs contravening the FFP face exclusion from UEFA competitions from 2014/2015 season Arsenal it is said is just about the only of the leading 5 EPL clubs which meets these requirements but I think we should consider these factors - 1. The FFP rules are not based on the club's published accounts Certain items are excluded from the calculation such as depreciation, costs of running a youth development scheme, expenditure on stadium infrastructure and community development. Thus if you take Chelsea's loss of £70.9m, this can be reduced by £19m ( 10m for youth development and 9m for depreciation ) 2. Clubs also do not have to adhere strictly to the financial criteria if they can show they are trending towards it. So if Chelsea fail to meet the £39.5m target, as long as they can show they are reducing the loss in a trend that places them towards the target, they can perhaps pass the criteria 3. Clubs like Chelsea ( sorry to use Chelsea all the time but this is just by example you understand ) can amortise the costs of players over the length of their contracts. Hence Torres's £50m can be spaced out over the 5.5 year contract to which he was signed. Thus the club can declare just 9m per year as being the cost of acquiring Torres as opposed to 50m in Yr 1. This reduces substantially the amount of loses over the 3 yr period ( 27m as opposed to 50m ) 4. So the sanction is being thrown out of UEFA-organised competitions. The clubs are still free to win their own national championships with impunity. Thus Utd et al are free to lord the EPL as they wish. Clubs could as they have already threatened, withdraw from UEFA and set up their own championship. How important is participation in UEFA competitions to clubs like Utd or can they just form another European league of their own? The ease of such a route is not something I know about. In Formula 1 teams have tried to do this and make arrangements to run races at circuits but the FIA simply ' blackmail ' the nations in which those circuits are located by excluding them from FIA-sanctioned events so those circuits suffer anyway. Now if UEFA can have such a hold on European venues, then this may be a way to ensure that FFP rules are observed. I hope you are right and we will find ourselves in pole position as a result of the much needed rules but do the rules do enough? Point 4 of my first list of points can do a lot for us especially if the wealthy owners are unwilling to take shares in lieu of repayment of the monies loaned to clubs but what they do is currently an unknown factor. Sorry this is so long but as you can appreciate, it is a complicated issue.
They can only invest if the cost of the investment is a) not of such a magnitude as to tip their P&L accounts into deficit and breach the max permissible losses. Remember though that they perhaps can amortise payments for players over the term of their contracts and so reduce the size of the payments, hence losses. b) if they do breach the losses, these have to be covered by their rich owners taking shares. Thus they have to leave their money in the clubs. What the clubs and their owners do is anyone's guess. While they may be unlikely to flount the regs who is to say they won't simply get together to form a championship outside of UEFA's control
It's the grey area when clubs breach the limits and how this is treated will prove to be the deciding factor. Given the prestige of having leading clubs in the CL for instance, would UEFA be prepared to lessen the prestige of the series if clubs like Man Utd, City, Chelsea and Barca were excluded. Right now talk is cheap. Whether UEFA will apply the FFP rules to the letter of the law and it's spirit remains to be seen. A test of wills I would say
Firstly we need to ascertain if player contract amortisation is allowed under the FFP rules. If it is then the easiest route since no one knows how long the player will be retained would be to amortise over the term of the original contract. If this is revised then presumably a revision of the clubs financial statement under the FFP would occur. Just a supposition you understand
glad we do not have ffp, just common sense and a team that can rise to the occasion. i should keep your ffp wc and chain well under wraps on the 20th
