Financial Fair Play Rules - Bournemouth fined £7.6m

[Mr Angry 1,555]

I thought that as it was the Championship rules that QPR broke, they were only liable to pay the fine if they went back down to the Championship? Presumably that means that Bournemouth won''t be liable to pay this fine anyway unless they go down?

[PurpleCanary 5,558]

[quote user="OldRobert"]None of the comments so far have produced any sort of argument or evidence, that what I said in the first place isn''t proving to be correct, in that FFP is a complete, ineffectual waste of time.[/quote]There is evidence. There is the negative evidence that most clubs (such as ourselves last season) are abiding by FFP. There are also the transfer bans that have been handed out. I don''t have the time to compile an exhaustive list, but Fulham, Bolton and Nottingham Forest have all been so sanctioned, and there may be others.And that a few clubs are cheating to try to gain promotion while a clear majority are obeying the rules is, if anything, likely to lead to the penalties being strengthened rather than discarded.As to whether our fans would complain if we cheated, I for one would. But since Smith and Jones were apparently horrified by our breaking the rules over tapping up Lambert et al I doubt they would allow it to happen over FFP.

[Jim Smith 2,317]

They should either make all clubs bring their financial year in line with the season and just not allow any club who have broken the rules to be promoted or the premier league needs to show some solidarity with the football league and not pay over a substantial chunk of tv monies to teams who have cheated plus deduct them points.

The problem is that the two leagues/bodies are separate so it''s very difficult for the football league to impose adequate sanctions if clubs do not come back down for a while.

[PurpleCanary 5,558]

[quote user="Jim Smith"]They should either make all clubs bring their financial year in line with the season and just not allow any club who have broken the rules to be promoted or the premier league needs to show some solidarity with the football league and not pay over a substantial chunk of tv monies to teams who have cheated plus deduct them points.

The problem is that the two leagues/bodies are separate so it''s very difficult for the football league to impose adequate sanctions if clubs do not come back down for a while.[/quote]Jim, the problem with the first idea is that financial years are already close to being in line with the seasons, but it takes time for the accounts then to be drawn up and published. For example, our financial year runs to June 30 (because that is when player contracts expire) but the accounts usually do not come out until late October. So that the next season has long started before any rule-breaking comes to light.

[GPs Beard 0]

According to www.financialfairplay.co.uk

there are at least 2 interesting twists to the FFP debate, that apply directly to Championship teams.

The maximum permitted loss per season is £13m , but this reduced greatly to £5m IF THE OWNER DOES NOT INJECT EQUITY. How much equity , isn''t shown. But if the owner puts money in , then you can make a higher loss.

Next year , apparently, the rules are loosening . A championship club must not make a loss higher than £13m per year averaged over three years. so in theory you can make a thumping great loss in year one? There will also be provision for relegated teams from the Prem, where such teams can make a loss of £35m when they were in the Prem.

Of course those that consider FFP to be bad news will say that without breaking these rules Bournemouth would never be able to compete with "larger" clubs. not a view I subscribe to btw.

[PurpleCanary 5,558]

[quote user="PurpleCanary"][quote user="OldRobert"][quote user="PurpleCanary"][quote user="OldRobert"][quote user="PurpleCanary"][quote user="Jim Smith"]These rules are going to be pointless for so long as the rewards in the premier league dwarf the sanctions that can be handed out. There is also a bit of a scandal surrounding Leicester''s adherence to the rules in the year they went up.

To be effective, the sanction should be linked to the amount the club profits from the breach - (i.e. they should lose a significant proportion of their premier league tv money for the following season).[/quote]This is this getting absurd, with QPR and Bourenmouth having cheated their way to promotion, and - on the face of it - Leicester as well. We have to move beyound merely financial penalties for such clubs that get to the  Premier League. There are two sanctions that really would make clubs think twice about breaking the rules, given that they might end up back in the Championship. One is a transfer embargo. The other is a severe points penalty, probably linked to the size of the fraud, that would effectively make it impossible to be promoted back for at least a season.[/quote]That may be so, but it''ll never happen which makes the whole set up totally useless as I said before, and might as well not exist.[/quote]Really? Why so? The chairmen and owners of clubs that have played by the rules were already angry about the cheats, and the example of Bournemouth will only fuel that resentment.There are already points penalties for playing ineligible individual players, so there is a nice logic to extending that to players in general that a club could only afford (transfer fees and/or wages) by breaking the rules.[/quote]I seem to remember QPR being in line for a £50m fine and the Football League saying they weren''t going to let them play in their leagues, effectively banning them from League Football.  This of course never happened, neither the fine even though they had financially misbehaved, and the League Clubs were reportedly up in arms at their behaviour.  All bullsh$t as usual.  The punishments may well be there, but they are never used to the extent where they are a deterrent to clubs being mismanaged usually in an attempt to gain promotion to the Premier League.  With all the cash sloshing about in the PL, it''s a total waste of time fining a club £7/8m.  Make it £50m and a statutory 20 points deduction then they might think twice about abusing the rules.  Smaller clubs in the Football League get points deductions for misbehaving, when''s the last time a PL club got a points deduction.[/quote]As far as I am aware there has still not been a decision on how much to fine QPR, but one way or another either they have already been fined or will be, even if it is not the £60m that was threatened but a much lesser sum. I don''t think there is any likelihood of QPR not being penalised at all, and the threat of  the League kicking them out was only if the club refused to pay whatever the fine was.I suspect there is a great deal of resentment being built up by such cases among the majority of Championship clubs who do play by the rules, with a realisation that merely financial penalties are not a deterrant.[/quote]The Swiss Ramble has just published  an expert look at QPR''s finances. It is a real horror story. Just appalling mismanagement. It also makes it plain that there has indeed not been a decision on their alleged breach of FFP, so it isn''t yet true to say they have got away with it:"To add insult to injury, QPR are still facing the threat of a hefty Financial Fair Play fine from the Football League, who have queried the ''treatment of certain items in their accounts'', namely the £60 million debt write-off in 2013/14. Under the rules prevailing at the time, clubs were only allowed a maximum annual loss of £8 million (assuming that any losses in excess of £3 million were covered by injecting equity). Any clubs that exceeded those losses were subject to a fine (if promoted) or a transfer embargo (if they remain in the Championship)."If the £60 million debt write-off is not allowed, that would imply an enormous fine of £58 million, though it has been suggested that deducting allowable expenditure like youth development and promotion bonuses would reduce that to £43 million. Either way it’s a huge amount of money. However QPR have challeneged the legality of the rules."