I think you will see a few of us have said Chelsea have shown in recent years a desire to comply with FFP regulations. This proves they are worried about it to some extent and are or at least were trying to get their house in order. Perhaps the Champions League win has given Roman new desire after it looked like he may of been losing interest a little so he may think its worth risking a big spending spree as he feels confident he can do so within the confines of FFP. It could even be possible that Roman is happy with the CL win and isnt to fussed about it anymore so he may just decide to try and dominate the Premier League. This is unlikely to be the case as its possible the Premier League will integrate FFP into their own entry requirements in the future.
Chelsea have spent much more than £640million on players as well. The figure is over £1.8billion if you take wages into account. Almost £1.3billion spent on wages in 8 years.
He uses Financialfairplay.co.uk which is a good site that compiles all FFP information released by clubs, Uefa and domestic FA's aswell as speculation and more.
http://www.chelseafc.com/page/Documents640/0,,10268~2533950,00.html an overview of the rules from Chelseas official site. The last paragraph is interesting in that it states any overdue payments to employees is counted in FFP so would that include wages paid to AVB while hes no longer your manager. What other owed payments are included? Any ideas?
You amortise the purchase price over the life of the contract. Which is usually five years in the current climate - no one will risk buying a big name player only to have them halve in value within two years cost their contract is running down. Also most clubs will go for a five year contract to minimise the amortisation charge. Interestingly enough, UEFA have enhanced the FFP sanctions to include a points deduction as well as a transfer ban. So had this been an FFP season they could have docked PL points from City, thus penalising them and costing them the PL title, whilst not going the whole hog and banning them from Europe. It's basically imposing the same as the standard points deduction for going into administration. That could put the cat amongst the pigeons in a big way
Like everything in business and tax, people will find ways to get round the rules. I can see City spending lots to recruit the most expensive players and still stay "within the rules". The richest will always get the best players they need. At least in future (one hopes) the clubs will find it difficult to buy expensive players they do not need just to prevent other clubs from buying them. Madrid used to do that - buy lots of expsensive players to stay on the bench.
This would be true if we were dealing with the public and governments. Instead we are dealing with power mad egomaniacs Uefa and someones threatening their power in world football. Uefa, with some very big encouragement from Bayern Munich and the other German Clubs aswell as Arsenal ( these are the clubs who put the idea in Uefas heads ) have basically decided its time to show who is in charge.....that would be.... The clubs......the 99% of clubs who opted for FFP in the first place......there is zero chance of it failing, anything unterward will be pounced on by the 99% of clubs who are not Manchester City. BTW....in europe, City are despised, beyond levels we hate them in the UK. Not the fans of the club, the whole idea of how they came to be. These rules were not designed for City but will target them more than most clubs.
* Translated from Cockney ****er I wish my team Chavski was as big and good as UTD, but alas we will always be a small club with a rich owner.
