The General FFP (Financial Fair Play) Thread

[imavillan]

2 hours ago, ROTTERDAM1982 said:

I'm a bit perplexed about FFP.

Man Citeehhh and Chelsk have had at least a decade to build their club up to their current financial position without any threat of FFP. I would argue that they have made the League better because the traditionally richer clubs have been joined by them. So instead of just Arse and Ure like it was, there are now 4/5 clubs who are competative.

Noocastle and Villa , who have rich owners, could probably run at a loss for a short period of time, to raise the profile/ revenue of their clubs, to possibly join them clubs and make the league even more competative.

On a lower level, I would argue that if Forest had not spent the £100m plus, then they would have been relegated, so by spending the money, and running at a significant loss, they actually protected the future of the club.

FFP is a tool used to protect the status quo, its restrictive, and unnecessary, Villa and Noocastle as football clubs, should not be consticted by accountants.

The arguement is going to be that you are protecting the future of the clubs, but when was the last time a reasonably sized club went bust?  its a lazyt misnomer to deflect from the true reason for the inception of FFP, which is protecting the self annoited big clubs.

I hope Citeeeh or Noocastle take them to court for a restriction of trade. Amazon buy, or destroy , their competitors, it happens in all forms of industry/business. Instead of us talkinfg about signing Neto for example, we are saying we might have to sell Ramsey. Its ridiculous.

You get to the level where you are about to compete, and the carpet is pulled from unser your feet. The PL needs to be careful it doesn't become a boring cartel

 

Arguably the PL is already a cartel.

Occasionally a club knocks on the door of showing progress, then the cartel steps in.

They buy your better players to break your team up. They unsettle your better players with speculation of transfer offers

The media knock you back and actively and unashamedly promote the 'big 6'

They have far more spending power and can buy whoever and offer whatever wages.

With the exception of Blackburn and Leicester, it's no co-incidence that the same clubs win the Premier League every season and that's not going to change this season.

Since the PL formed in 1992/93 the winners have been Man Utd 13 - Man City 7 - Arsenal 3 - Chelsea 5 - Liverpool 1 - Blackburn 1 - Leicester 1

Similar can be said for the FA Cup and League Cup.

I can't see that changing as money talks and the cartel is the cartel. They do not want anymore members spoiling the party.

It's going to be extremely difficult for us or anyone else to join the party and sustain it.

 

EDIT: typo

 

 

Edited February 19 by imavillan

[ROTTERDAM1982]

Good investment decisions will allow teams like Villa and Newcastle the chance to "join" the cartel. FFP does not allow that. 

American Football is continuously interesting because of the draft system, and because of that there are constantly changing champions. The PL needs to look and learn. A league with 8 potential champions will be much more of a saleable item than one with 3.

The PL should work towards creating more competition otherwise it could lose its sparkle

[allani]

1 hour ago, CVByrne said:

They sold part of their commerical rights and future tv revenue etc.. so that comes as cash in now and they lose future income.

That's kind of my point.  The things they have done are the very opposite of sustainable - same as Chelsea giving players 8 or 9 year long contracts.  It "fixes" a short-term issue by creating a much bigger long-term issue.  It is more financially irresponsible than the way that clubs that appear at the bottom of the list are behaving.  As I have said elsewhere we're down as having recorded a loss and yet the value of the club has increased by at least fives times due to the owners improving the club at almost every level.  Anyone suggesting that NSWE are putting the future of Villa at risk need their heads wobbling.

FFP is a good idea (if done properly) but the way it is currently implemented (and all the advantages that the big clubs exploited before the regulations came in) is out of whack.

[MrBlack]

26 minutes ago, ROTTERDAM1982 said:

Good investment decisions will allow teams like Villa and Newcastle the chance to "join" the cartel. FFP does not allow that. 

American Football is continuously interesting because of the draft system, and because of that there are constantly changing champions. The PL needs to look and learn. A league with 8 potential champions will be much more of a saleable item than one with 3.

The PL should work towards creating more competition otherwise it could lose its sparkle

There couldn't be a draft system in football,  unless every Football Association agreed, and thats going to be borderline impossible because of the different employment laws in each country. Works in the NFL because only one country plays it, and that association can control all the laws.

Agree that they do need to come up with a way to avoid this monotonous battle between Man City and one of 3 other teams. 

[allani]

57 minutes ago, CVByrne said:

I think I am getting more of a picture too about the club. Especially how Purslow ran it. He was focussed on being very public, being involved in the transfer negotiations, announcements etc. He wanted Gerrard as it would bring more cameras a attention on Villa. I think the North Stand redevelopment was about Euro 28 and he might have thought he could get his name on the stand too possibly. I think Danny Ings even was a Purslow signing so he could keep fans happy about selling Jack. All of these things happened yet the club floundered commercially and the decision making was not at the standard required. 

I think Heck has come in and looked properly at the finances, looked at income per fan, looked at what getting 8000 extra seats bring in terms of increased revenue and the 2 year gap in income we would have. He and the club know the transition to tighter financial regulations at a time where we had a €138m loss the previous season (and they know the accounts in real time so have knows the financial situation since last spring). He see's a badge which is run of the mill and circular doesn't have a brand that can market the club to new fans and new audiences. 

I also think that you don't go telling people you are making decisions based on the clubs financial situation. It weakens our hand in all negotiations when selling players. 

Not just buying or selling players.  You've also got to think about whether a major international brand would be happy signing an expensive, multi-year sponsorship deal with a club that have just said they might be at risk of either selling players or getting a 10 point penalty the next season.

I've said from the start that there are all kinds of reasons why Heck might not be as transparent as many people would like for all kinds of legal, commercial, confidentiality reasons.  It's a difficult balance between building good relations with the fans and not compromising deals / the strength of the club's bargaining position.  I would almost always sacrifice a bit of the former for the latter.  Especially when NSWE, Unai and Monchi have done so much in terms of building up credit in the bank with the fans.  Actions speak louder than words.  I don't think he's got enough credit for the Atairos and Adidas deals which are more significant to the immediate / long term future of the club than a new badge.

Heck is probably never going to be hugely popular (as he will be the person signing of ticket price rises, etc) but I suspect he's probably pretty thick-skinned and that he'll be more interested in ensuring that he's doing what NSWE have paid him to do which is to basically balance the books better.

[HanoiVillan]

4 hours ago, ROTTERDAM1982 said:

The arguement is going to be that you are protecting the future of the clubs, but when was the last time a reasonably sized club went bust? 

The argument for air traffic controllers is going to be that they prevent planes crashing into each other on the runway, but when was the last time that happened? (actually not long ago, but never mind, you get the drift)

The point of rules to prevent failures is to *prevent* them. The absence of catastrophic failures is not evidence that the rules themselves are failing. 

[HeyAnty]

My only problem with ffp is how clubs can be in1.2billion in debt and face no sanctions and a club debt free is docked 10 points 

[CVByrne]

8 hours ago, HeyAnty said:

My only problem with ffp is how clubs can be in1.2billion in debt and face no sanctions and a club debt free is docked 10 points 

It's a fallacy that being in debt is always bad. Look at Spurs and the debt they took on at low interest rates to fund their new stadium. They now generate massive revenue from it and it's been a massive massive success for the club. 

Using Debt that helps generate future revenue is good.

[HeyAnty]

2 hours ago, CVByrne said:

It's a fallacy that being in debt is always bad. Look at Spurs and the debt they took on at low interest rates to fund their new stadium. They now generate massive revenue from it and it's been a massive massive success for the club. 

Using Debt that helps generate future revenue is good.

So whats the difference in that and an owner using funds to generate revenue? Appart from the club not being in crazy debt if he/she leaves 

Edited February 20 by HeyAnty

[Follyfoot]

Could Aston Villa not employ a load of super stockbrokers and currency traders who could trade the income of Aston Villa on the markets and create profit in the name of Aston Villa , which could be then used by the club in the financial Fairplay calculations.

[HKP90]

13 minutes ago, Follyfoot said:

Could Aston Villa not employ a load of super stockbrokers and currency traders who could trade the income of Aston Villa on the markets and create profit in the name of Aston Villa , which could be then used by the club in the financial Fairplay calculations.

The value of your investment could go down as well as up. 

[duke313]

Isn't it a bit mad that the points deduction could see Everton get relegated where they would almost certainly go into administration, something that the FFP rules were brought in to try and prevent but in Evertons case would actually be the cause of 

[CVByrne]

3 hours ago, HeyAnty said:

So whats the difference in that and an owner using funds to generate revenue? Appart from the club not being in crazy debt if he/she leaves 

What do you mean? Owners can and do inject cash as new equity into clubs. Atarios for example have invested in V Sports that's new shares issued and new capital added to V Sports to spend on adding value to the Company.

Spurs don't have a sugar daddy and have to run like a self sustainable private company. They got low interest loans to fund their stadium. The additional income they generate from the new stadium pays down their loans over time 

 

[MrBlack]

A fixed cap on all clubs, rather than linking it to revenue, is our best hope of being able to compete. Without that  we'll never catch up on the earnings that Man City et al make, in order to spend even close to what they can.

[MrBlack]

They need to bring in a cap.

Fixed, at whatever amount they think is necessary. No club can spend more than that on signings/wages. They can split it however they like.  They can set it above the level that Man City spend in an average season, but only just.  Then every club that wants to can spend that much each year (or less if their owners want to make a profit) then the club that spends the money the wisest will win.

The owners can sell youth to make themselves money, or improve the stadium to make more money from tickets, or offset the cost of signings, but can't use it to fund additional signings over the cap.

Stops the clubs that are already at the top from always being able to spend more.  Stops the clubs at the bottom from getting left further and further behind. 

You review the cap in line with inflation or tv revenue increases or whatever.

Then it's genuinely fair...current FFP is anything but fair. And I'm not sure it's even called that anyway.

[VillaJ100]

5 minutes ago, MrBlack said:

They need to bring in a cap.

Fixed, at whatever amount they think is necessary. No club can spend more than that on signings/wages. They can split it however they like.  They can set it above the level that Man City spend in an average season, but only just.  Then every club that wants to can spend that much each year (or less if their owners want to make a profit) then the club that spends the money the wisest will win.

The owners can sell youth to make themselves money, or improve the stadium to make more money from tickets, or offset the cost of signings, but can't use it to fund additional signings over the cap.

Stops the clubs that are already at the top from always being able to spend more.  Stops the clubs at the bottom from getting left further and further behind. 

You review the cap in line with inflation or tv revenue increases or whatever.

Then it's genuinely fair...current FFP is anything but fair. And I'm not sure it's even called that anyway.

Should have a handicap system where the winner the last season can spend the least.

[villa4europe]

They should have done a cap a long time ago, it's not necessarily Chelsea or city's spending that killed it it was city in particular spending money on players they don't need, all the way back to Scott sinclair and then registering him, grealish, Phillips etc they're signing key players to be back up, they're poaching youngsters to flip for ffp

Got no problem with say Declan Rice going to Arsenal for £100m and being a key player there but when city sniff round paqueta for £60m that's what kills football, he's moving from a key player to a bit part player for more money 

There should be a cap that stops someone like Sergio Gomez going there to play 12 games a year on £80k a year

[CVByrne]

33 minutes ago, MrBlack said:

A fixed cap on all clubs, rather than linking it to revenue, is our best hope of being able to compete. Without that  we'll never catch up on the earnings that Man City et al make, in order to spend even close to what they can.

Doesn't work because of Europe. Madrid and PSG not going to play with same cap as us

[MrBlack]

11 minutes ago, CVByrne said:

Doesn't work because of Europe. Madrid and PSG not going to play with same cap as us

Obviously would have to be FIFA wide.  Setting it at a level that the richest PL club couldn't breach under existing regulations ensures all clubs in the world wouldn't breach it using the current regulations. 

Nothing stopping this coming into existence except resistance from big clubs wanting their cake and eating it. 

 

[sne]

7 minutes ago, MrBlack said:

Obviously would have to be FIFA wide.  Setting it at a level that the richest PL club couldn't breach under existing regulations ensures all clubs in the world wouldn't breach it using the current regulations. 

Nothing stopping this coming into existence except resistance from big clubs wanting their cake and eating it. 

 

Considering FIFA is ran by Infantino who is very much in the pocket of Saudi Arabia I doubt they will push for something that hinders the Saudi Super League ploy.