It's getting worse - latest UEFA regulations, which the PL (or 6 of 'em, anyway) heartily accept is you can only spend a certain percentage of your revenue on player acquisitions. Convenient, now that about 12 clubs are miles ahead of anyone else. So in order to catch up, your owners will need to inves......oh, wait, they're not allowed. So to catch up, you can pursue lucrative sponsorshi.......oh, wait, that's not allowed either. The worst thing about this revenue thing is imagine you're Fulham and you want a player from, say, Huddersfield Town. No other club wants him, and Fulham would like to meet the £20m valuation, but unfortunately they're not allowed to spend it. So either Hudderstield drop their pants and miss out on millions, or.....well, there's no alternative. So not only are the rich continuing this disgusting, unchallenged ability to protect themselves, they're now able to do it - thanks to UEFA"s bumbling incompetence - at the expense of smaller clubs. I give football maybe 15-20 years tops before it collapses.
Well he would have nailed it if he had got his facts right. Premier League members voted 12-8 in favour of banning loans between related parties but need 14 votes to carry it, meaning that loans can go ahead.
I think his point was they didn’t vote it out/down. I have always said this was unfair FFP (load of **** imho) was supposed to make teams live within their means It was never manageable - and they were never going to manage it fairly anyway it’s just a handful of clubs trying to keep themselves at the top (I include mine in that - I don’t blame them for trying to do that but I don’t think they should be getting away with it) Although I do believe if the rules are there no matter how stupid you have to abide by them and tbph it’s nice to see that your boys are trying to I think that ffp needs to be clearer and managed IF they are going to keep it. I think it’s massively unfair on Newcastle as it stands and anyone else who gets a wealthy owner.
I think they need to decide is FFP designed to a) ensure that clubs don't live beyond their means or b) to try and make the league more competitive or c) ensure that high turnover clubs retain their advantage over the smaller clubs At the moment it only really does c). If they wanted it to do a) they would allow rich owners to put cash injections into a club as long as they weren't classed as loans and there was no requirement to repay the money at any time. If they wanted to do b) they would apply squad salary caps with some leeway to not disadvantage teams playing in Europe.
I think the original idea and intent of FFP was a good one. To try and protect clubs from going bust and keeping local institutions which mean so much to the local population happy. I think it was Gary Nevile who has floated the idea, that the correct way of doing this is for clubs to live within their means, and if they happen to have a rich benefactor then the owner has to cop for the debt. It should be made a formal part of the purchase of a club or as part of the owners and directors tests. Weather that be using an escrow account where they place the entire sums for player contracts and transfers up front (over and above what the club can afford) or they have to pay the bills upfront rather than using further lines of credit. These rules have originally been bent out of shape by hedge funds and yanks to protect the few clubs who were successful over a period of time in their history which was lucky for them. Since then it seems to be the Spanish and Italian clubs owners trying to screw it over more and more as their ****ty leagues get dwarfed by PL money.
This is as perfectly succinct and accurate as anyone could ever put it. This MUST have been put forward to the PL and UEFA time and time and time again, right? I'd love to know what their official line on it is.
It still feels like there is some form of illegality to the whole FFP thing, maybe a restraint of trade thing. Imagine if it were a burger joint (calm down Obi) who wanted to compete with Maccy D's.... and the smaller burger joint were owned by KSA... and weren't allowed to expand quickly despite having all the funds in place... there would be 'hell on'. PS just finished a call with Bali and they say it's a balmy 35c right now... lucky sods.
That sounds good. Might mean lower clubs stop demanding stupid money for very average players and top clubs stop spending stupid money on players / needing to sell players for silly money. Transfer fees come down so expenditure across the whole football is down, players stay at their own clubs more rather than being hovered up by the top clubs and more teams are competitive as can hold onto their best players longer. As a result of not spending as much on transfer fees, clubs less desperate for money so aren’t reliant on tv revenue to constantly increase and can start to offer football at a reasonable price to fans
You're talking about some utopia that won't exist. In the meantime, how many clubs will suffer purely under cost of living because they can't generate the funds? In the meantime, bigger clubs - who are already hoovering up all the talent, will keep getting away with it. There should be significant caps on things like the amount of players any one club can actually own, regulation of the loan market so Chelsea/City aren't able to send 50 players out. How many clubs of meaning have actually gone bust - and stayed gone - BEFORE FFP, and how many AFTER FFP? Parma are top of Serie B. Fiorentina are fine. Coventry have bounced back, Pompey are gradually getting back. But, really, FIFA's goal was to stop Bury happening again? Even though it's never happened before, or since? Utter, utter bollocks.
