The AVFC FFP thread

[gurru991]

9 hours ago, BleedClaretAndBlue said:

Man Utds income is something ridiculous. They can spend what they want, fail, rinse and repeat until they get it right. Seems unfair as we can spend, fail and end up in the championship for 10 years hoping our owners continue to prop us up. We simply have to stay up somehow

So its about shirt sales & sponsorship  ?  It's in place to look after the big six !!

[OutByEaster?]

3 hours ago, sidcow said:

Aaaaaaaggggghhhhhhhhhhhhh. 

IT'S NOT JUST THE PRIZE MONEY!!!!!!!!!!! 

That £100k figure wasn't just the prize money - there's not much TV money for the Carabou cup and it doesn't do much for your international reputation - in the early rounds it's difficult to even break even - we made a six figure loss on the Wolves game. Trezeguet's instagram following will make us more this season than the League Cup.

Winning the league cup won't make us rich - we need to increase our incomes through merchandising and sponsorship. That's the club's current focus, growing the fanbase in North Africa, America and Scandinavia - and finding ways to monetise that support where we can.

Top line is king in the Premier league and the way to increase it is through Commercial activity.

In the last season of recorded accounts for most clubs (2017-18), top line income for the clubs near the bottom of the table (Bournemouth, Burnley and Brighton) was at around £135-140m - which is a not inconsiderable amount. We made £68m in the Championship that year.

The clubs we need to compete with are:

• Everton £189m
• Leicester £159m
• Newcastle £178m
• Southampton £153m
• West Ham £175m

The big clubs at the top make three times that amount of money and the big differentiator is Commercial revenue - sponsorships and merchandise - of the clubs in the group above, Everton have a clear lead in this area with around £43m, Southampton have £15m and Newcastle £28m. For Everton, that £43m is more than two and a half times their gate money.

The top clubs make in excess of £150m in their commercial incomes alone, Manchester United made £276m in that year just on Commercial income. There are some decent sized differences in TV income and in attendance between the big clubs and the rest, but it's commercial income that makes the difference. 

That's what we're working on; that's what Christian Purslow and Nicola Ibbetson and the other good people we've brought into the club do. 

The League Cup is almost inconsequential to that, it might make us a million or two if we win it.

It's rumoured that W888 are paying us £9m a season and we're constantly told that shirt sales and merchandise are at record levels - it'll be interesting to see where our incomes end up and I would hope we can get ourselves firmly into the group above as soon as we can. We'll have to wait about fifteen months to find out I suppose.

The elephant in the room of course if the £68m in the Championship - relegation is a killer - that's why any FFP fine is likely to be much less dangerous than the threat of relegation - if we're down for three years it'd cost us £300m - Man City and PSG were each fined around £20m for their breaches, it's unlikely we'd be fined more than that. The risk against the reward is pretty obvious I think.

[sidcow]

Weirdly I can't find an existing FFP thread unless it's really old. 

There is a story on BBC website about Roman Abramovich pumping £247m into the club in the last 12 months.  I don't know the technicalities of inserting links, I hope this is the right way to do it? 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/51017102

Quote

Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich paid £247m into the club last season but it still made an overall loss of £96.6m.

According to Chelsea's 2018-19 accounts, they paid out £26.6m after sacking then manager Antonio Conte and his backroom staff in July 2018.

But I thought owners were not allowed to do this? Even with this they also lost nearly £100m which also must put them in danger of breaking the losses rules. 

How is the crook allowed to pump so much into them but our owners aren't? 

I also wonder which other big clubs who have traditionally relied on Champions League money which has now disappeared are also struggling?  Not only will they lose the actual revenue but I would assume their global plastic fans will quickly migrate towards the next shiny thing losing them even more revenue. 

[imavillan]

Wasn't sure whether to post this in the Man City thread, but i think it probably sits better here.

@sidcowPerhaps the year should be taken out of the title of the thread. 

In the light of the news on Man City theres a great article on FFP by Martin Samuel

Click click, read all about it

 

MARTIN SAMUEL: Financial Fair Play is just a UEFA protection racket... this is payback by the elite clubs who hate Manchester City

• Manchester City did wrong but Financial Fair Play is designed to protect UEFA  
• City have been banned from European competition for the next two seasons 
• City did wrong but in the face of rules that are there to protect a privileged elite
• Consider models of Manchester City and Manchester United and recent success
• Financial Fair Play was corrupted by those at the top from when it was created

[mykeyb]

Hard to feel any pity for City but otherwise the article says what most of us think about FFP

[Genie]

Funny that FFP is supposedly to stop clubs running out of money and the problems that creates, the punishment for breaking the rules is an enormous fine.

[mikeyp102]

9 hours ago, Genie said:

Funny that FFP is supposedly to stop clubs running out of money and the problems that creates, the punishment for breaking the rules is an enormous fine.

Yes it’s farcical. It’s then going to be a cyclical process as you’ll have that fine on your 3 year accounts. 
As city have said, how can something made by UEFA, governed by UEFA and investigated by UEFA be a clean process. Everyone suspects the governing bodies in the sport are corrupt, look at Platini and Blatter who were in charge of UEFA and FIFA. 
This will not only lead to an expensive game changing challenge from City, but could also open up huge investigations into the governing bodies. 

[Dodgyknees]

It is all corrupt and FFP is about protecting the "elite" from the likes of Man City or others with the same ambitions.

Btw, I hate what Man City have done, but I hate UEFA more.

Edited February 15, 2020 by avfcDJ

[ThunderPower_14]

I posted this in the Man City thread, but I absolutely hate the narrative going around today that Man City are dirty cheats and immoral and deserve a big punishment etc etc etc. I'll hate it even more if we fall foul of FFP and end up in the same boat.

Football is spend to win, at every professional level. We have a system in place that tells us that we can't spend more than a certain amount, ostensibly to protect us from ourselves, so we don't overspend and end up going bust. That's how the system was sold to us, but it's not how it works. Bury were able to accrue debt they couldn't pay and get expelled from the Football League because of it, despite FFP being in place. Meanwhile Aston Villa and Man City can't spend money that they can easily afford to and that isn't putting their club into debt? Why?

Man City have certainly exploited some loopholes, but if they hadn't, they'd have hit the FFP glass ceiling and found the likes of Madrid, Barca and Man Utd buying up all their best players and keeping them below the elite tier of football clubs. How is that fair? What's unfair is this bullshit, unjust system that maintains the status quo and helps nobody.

[KHV]

1 hour ago, ThunderPower_14 said:

I posted this in the Man City thread, but I absolutely hate the narrative going around today that Man City are dirty cheats and immoral and deserve a big punishment etc etc etc. I'll hate it even more if we fall foul of FFP and end up in the same boat.

Football is spend to win, at every professional level. We have a system in place that tells us that we can't spend more than a certain amount, ostensibly to protect us from ourselves, so we don't overspend and end up going bust. That's how the system was sold to us, but it's not how it works. Bury were able to accrue debt they couldn't pay and get expelled from the Football League because of it, despite FFP being in place. Meanwhile Aston Villa and Man City can't spend money that they can easily afford to and that isn't putting their club into debt? Why?

Man City have certainly exploited some loopholes, but if they hadn't, they'd have hit the FFP glass ceiling and found the likes of Madrid, Barca and Man Utd buying up all their best players and keeping them below the elite tier of football clubs. How is that fair? What's unfair is this bullshit, unjust system that maintains the status quo and helps nobody.

Somebody really needs to investigate Real Madrid and Barcelona, some top level dodgy shit surrounding those two

[kurtsimonw]

6 hours ago, ThunderPower_14 said:

I posted this in the Man City thread, but I absolutely hate the narrative going around today that Man City are dirty cheats and immoral and deserve a big punishment etc etc etc. I'll hate it even more if we fall foul of FFP and end up in the same boat.

Football is spend to win, at every professional level. We have a system in place that tells us that we can't spend more than a certain amount, ostensibly to protect us from ourselves, so we don't overspend and end up going bust. That's how the system was sold to us, but it's not how it works. Bury were able to accrue debt they couldn't pay and get expelled from the Football League because of it, despite FFP being in place. Meanwhile Aston Villa and Man City can't spend money that they can easily afford to and that isn't putting their club into debt? Why?

Man City have certainly exploited some loopholes, but if they hadn't, they'd have hit the FFP glass ceiling and found the likes of Madrid, Barca and Man Utd buying up all their best players and keeping them below the elite tier of football clubs. How is that fair? What's unfair is this bullshit, unjust system that maintains the status quo and helps nobody.

Man City are, allegedly, dirty cheats because they lied. If Villa break FFP rules it's because we've "overspent" and not tried to cover it up.

[ThunderPower_14]

7 hours ago, kurtsimonw said:

Man City are, allegedly, dirty cheats because they lied. If Villa break FFP rules it's because we've "overspent" and not tried to cover it up.

They lied and creatively accounted to get around an unjust set of rules that shouldn't exist in the form that they do. A set of rules specifically designed to stop a club like Man City being successful at the expense of the long term established European giants. 

They cheated the system, but it's the system in this case which is dirty, not the club trying to navigate around it. IMO. 

[VillaJ100]

On 15/02/2020 at 14:55, KHV said:

Somebody really needs to investigate Real Madrid and Barcelona, some top level dodgy shit surrounding those two

Well Madrid is effectively bankrolled by the state. The whole la liga TV rights package is massively skewed towards them too, they get something mad like 60% of the whole pot between them

[thunderball]

Its a complete farce. Football needs protecting from EUFA: their Champions League, its inequality and self indulgence is killing football competition in every domestic league of all participating countries and doing far more damage than any perceived FFP breaches.

The hope has now left every team outside the top 4/5 and killed domestic cup competitions. Clubs now put more importance of staying in the division than anything else, to the point it has skewed competition and the emphasis is now about survival rather than winning the league. In fact qualifying for the Champions League is the new winning the league, and perversely the EUFA Cup is frowned upon because it is a distraction to the survival chances of those unlucky enough to qualify which degrades the standing of the competition - does anyone watch this competition any more?

Within a few years those 'elite' clubs will be ever-present in the Champions League due to the total self serving money fest pushes them further and further away from the rest of their domestic competition ensuring them of Champions League paydays in perpetuity. They buy all the talent young and old, loan them out as an income conveyor belt and have B teams and youth teams better than most clubs first team.

FFP just ensures that no one else can now compete. Many clubs have very wealthy owners, just as it always was, but now they cannot flex their muscle. This happens in no other free market economy in the world, it is a cynically artificial construct by the top clubs to ensure they keep the cash year after year.

If EUFA cared they would vet the context of club ownership and their respective financial support and not the crass income/permissable loss calculations they now have - that in it self is perverse to allow teams to lose money if its meant to promote sustainable finances - how is a £100m+ loss sensible or sustainable for the game. They should devise a structure to evenly distribute the financial benefits amongst the wider football family, excellence and 'winning' could still be rewarded but this would eradicate the obscene wage and transfer inflation and disparity through out all divisions. Deep competition across the leagues would benefit all rather than the few at the very top, it would also ensure it wasnt catastrophic to miss out. This factor alone creates more problems than it prevents. I would also add that the Premier League is also guilty of this to a lesser extent, it too has contributed to the chaos in the EFL.

You have to gear up to compete in the Premier League, and heaven forbid if you get relegated as your best players get picked off, others have to be sold on disadvantageous terms as FFP will kill you despite your owners bein able to pay the wages without breaking sweat. The only alternative is not trying and going straight back down. If Bournmouth, West Ham and possibly us get relegated they will be in very serious problems (for different reasons), but this just shows how innefective and destructive FFP is. It did nothing to prevent the shocking demise of Bury, Bolton and also the Blackpool debacles.

It all stinks.

Edited February 18, 2020 by thunderball

[Genie]

On 15/02/2020 at 22:05, ThunderPower_14 said:

They lied and creatively accounted to get around an unjust set of rules that shouldn't exist in the form that they do. A set of rules specifically designed to stop a club like Man City being successful at the expense of the long term established European giants. 

They cheated the system, but it's the system in this case which is dirty, not the club trying to navigate around it. IMO. 

I think the rules should be modified to show that if they owner clears any debts on a quarterly basis then it’s fair game. The problem is the building up of debts over time which can sink the club. If the club spends more than it earns, but is balanced by the owner(s) then leave them to it I say.

[fightoffyour]

14 minutes ago, Genie said:

I think the rules should be modified to show that if they owner clears any debts on a quarterly basis then it’s fair game. The problem is the building up of debts over time which can sink the club. If the club spends more than it earns, but is balanced by the owner(s) then leave them to it I say.

That’s effectively the rule now though: £15m loss per season or £45m loss if the owner(s) covers the extra. Granted that covered loss limit could and should be higher or unlimited.

[Genie]

3 minutes ago, fightoffyour said:

That’s effectively the rule now though: £15m loss per season or £45m loss if the owner(s) covers the extra. Granted that covered loss limit could and should be higher or unlimited.

Yeah, I realise some losses are allowed. It should be unlimited as long as the owners regularly clear any debts.

[ThunderPower_14]

I'd even go as far as requiring owners to set up a trust account with a certain percentage of wage and transfer fees owing over the next 12 months, so that if the owner disappears and stops investing, the club can still get through to the next summer transfer window without being unable to pay players and staff.

There has to be some way of investing your own money in a business you own though. It's ludicrious that we can have the 3rd richest owners in the Premier League and be at risk of being relegated because we weren't allowed to spend. If we get relegated, it will cost us tens of millions of pounds, doing far more damage to our finances than any sort of spending would do. It's a broken system.

[kurtsimonw]

6 minutes ago, ThunderPower_14 said:

I'd even go as far as requiring owners to set up a trust account with a certain percentage of wage and transfer fees owing over the next 12 months, so that if the owner disappears and stops investing, the club can still get through to the next summer transfer window without being unable to pay players and staff.

There's plenty of clubs who aren't owned by rich people who probably can't afford to put up an entire years running.

[ThunderPower_14]

5 minutes ago, kurtsimonw said:

There's plenty of clubs who aren't owned by rich people who probably can't afford to put up an entire years running.

Then they have to comply with a modified FFP, I guess. It wouldn't necessarily need to be an entire years, because a club will continue to receive revenue from operating despite an owner disappearing, but there'd need to be a formula.

I'm certainly not suggesting we throw out any sort of protections to stop dangerous owners bankrupting clubs, I just don't like the current system which protects exactly nobody and doesn't allow clubs to spend money they can very easily afford to spend.

We're a perfect example. We were almost insolvent under Xia to the point where the club's entire existence was under threat, and that was despite apparently complying with FFP. Now we're at risk of getting relegated because our spending is limited, which could cost us hundreds of millions of pounds if we go down and can't get back up. How is that protecting us?