Forest docked four points

[Google Bot 3,848]

1 hour ago, RobJames said:

When the other PL clubs finally grasp they are no more than 'cannon fodder' then we might see some change

I think the change will come when the clubs successfully move into becoming global franchises as part of a super league which they have their own worldwide broadcasting rights for.

Then we'll have to endure the tears of Sky and the Prem League, and then it'll be the tears of fans of those clubs protesting because their club no longer plays the big fixtures at home, and instead are part of Riyadh season and such showpiece events.

I don't even seen this as being about individual clubs, but rather it's a strategic global takeover of the sport and billionaires grabbing a horse while it's available.  The prem league have no control to stop it as each year the clubs are allowed to fall further into debt to their owners, which means they fall further at their mercy.

It's ridiculous to have been allowed to happen to start with, entirely fuelled through the desire to sell the 'best' product at the highest price.  Not a religious man myself but i've often argued with friends who are, as I could never get my head around how pride could be considered as the deadliest of all the sins, but I guess this is an example that makes sense to me.

It's worth noting that Man City owners on their own have more combined wealth than the FA, Prem League and UEFA combined too,  this is why I believe the Prem League kills itself if it was to issue severe punishments their way.  They're out of control, basically, and need the clubs more than the clubs need them.

Edited March 18 by Google Bot

[Indy 3,448]

2 hours ago, Parma Ham's gone mouldy said:

I find myself a little confused by this.

I confess to having a positive bias towards Forest, who I have always admired as a club. A coach from there was part of my football journey (and is now a senior FA coach educator for quite a few Premier League teams).

What Forest did might well be argued to be the only realistic way to break into the premier League - and out of the basement trapdoor and gulf between newly-promoted and functional at Premier Level. 

I of course fully understand what is called ‘financial doping’ in Europe - when teams use ‘unsustainable’ capitalist, artificial, state or gambled wealth - to outspend all rivals, and-or to gamble ‘tomorrow money’ on football.

However how exactly does one create a plausible strategy to stay up in the premier league with its wide disparity of resources and natural financial weight bias to present incumbents vs the newly-appointed?

1. Burnley this season, Norwich previously have tried Man City lite.

2. Sheff Utd, Luton, Burnley previously and others have tried physical spoiling and ****housery. 

3. Brentford have gone all-in on data, set pieces, limited weapons and algorithmic calculations. 

4. Forest,  Fulham, Wolves previously - and to a lesser or grater degree several others in hybrid format  - have simply thrown money at it year one and really replaced whole teams as fast as possible. 

Now my question is this: 

If there is financial imbalance and teams can massively outspend others through sheer size and commercial operations, how does restricting how Forest can compete year 1 address this?

Doesn’t it simply lead to existing large teams remaining large and dominant and making it near impossible to compete without doing what Forest did?

Thus is it really balancing competition or simply entrenching the status quo?

Is entrenching the status quo true competition then?

Parma 

Exactly my point Parma! Until there’s a set squad number and a set financial budget equal for all premier teams at the start of every season then there’s always going to be this massive imbalance! 
Can you ever imagine established premier teams ever agreeing to that? The chance that they could get relegated as the level playing field is set!

Maybe the only way forwards for this set up is having a premier league without any relegation! Split into two leagues North & South and teams invited from the top 32 across the major towns and cities? Totally revamp football? Just a thought!

[Ulfotto 773]

Should Norwich we getting points added for being a club that breaks even over a 3 year period. Maybe it’s worth appealing for this given breaking the rules only loses you a win and a draw. Whereas running a club to break means instant relegation.

Interesting detail in the bbc report shows little old Brentford bid 40 million for Brennan Johnson!

In my opinion most clubs are missing the point of the rules. The rules are there to encourage clubs to be solvent and not spend money they don’t have whereas most clubs are seemingly trying to stay within the rules to avoid the points reduction which misses the point of why the rules are there.

[Google Bot 3,848]

15 minutes ago, Ulfotto said:

The rules are there to encourage clubs to be solvent and not spend money they don’t have whereas most clubs are seemingly trying to stay within the rules to avoid the points reduction which misses the point of why the rules are there.

Football is very strange like that, it's like this concept that the prem league is a private company 'owned' by the 20 member clubs in the league via shareholdings.

So effectively the prem league is punishing it's own shareholders.  You'd think they'd be more in sync with one another, really, and be more pro-active in achieving solvency across x number of years.

Edited March 18 by Google Bot

[Fen Canary 1,450]

Seems fairly light to me. Signing all those players for big money must have earned them more than 4 points over the course of time so it’s almost worth breaking the rules. 

[Ulfotto 773]

The Brennan Johnson stuff as a defence is laughable. It misses the whole issue.

The issue is buying 29 players in a single year, spending more than every year of your entire club history combined, more than Barcelona, Real Madrid and Paris Saint-Germain.

 

[Nuff Said 5,868]

5 hours ago, Robert N. LiM said:

Obviously outrageous that Chelski and Abu Citeh aren't getting punished, but it's a stretch to see Forest and especially Everton as 'little' teams. Really sick of Everton's protestations of harsh treatment in particular.

Lots of Forest supporters interviewed on local news here tonight protesting that it is “unfair” but unable to explain why. 🤔

[Nuff Said 5,868]

1 hour ago, PurpleCanary said:

I agree with all that. Yes, the current system tends to entrench the top teams in the Premier League, but scrapping whatever FFP is called now would also tend to entrench the sides that would have a chance of being promoted from the Championship and certainly then those that would have any hope of staying up.

Added to which a similar weighting towards “bigger”, wealthier clubs benefits us in the Championship. Posters seem happy to benefit from it when it yields promotion but cry foul as when it doesn’t apply once we’re promoted.

Unless you implement some sort of draft system like in the NFL (have I got the words/names right?), it’s hard to see how there won’t always be a natural bias towards clubs that have been successful for years and who have built up critical mass. That doesn’t mean you can’t get the occasional Leicester or Luton who buck the odds - or an Everton going the other way despite natural advantages.

[aBee 172]

1 hour ago, Ulfotto said:

Should Norwich we getting points added for being a club that breaks even over a 3 year period. Maybe it’s worth appealing for this given breaking the rules only loses you a win and a draw. Whereas running a club to break means instant relegation.

Interesting detail in the bbc report shows little old Brentford bid 40 million for Brennan Johnson!

In my opinion most clubs are missing the point of the rules. The rules are there to encourage clubs to be solvent and not spend money they don’t have whereas most clubs are seemingly trying to stay within the rules to avoid the points reduction which misses the point of why the rules are there.

To be fair we’d turned a profit in Y1&2 not far short of what we bid for Johnson. A shame Cooper threatened to walk when their board accepted a bid of less than half that in their promotion season!

I’m sure those of us who’ve had a go at competing without breaching FFP will applaud the stand Forest say they’ve taken to look out for the little guys if they appeal their deduction down at our expense! 
 

 

[Helsinki canary 279]

15 hours ago, Indy said:

Everton now Forest, what ever happened to the 103 breaches by Man City? 

They would be in league 1 by now

[Graham Paddons Beard 2,701]

Forest would likely get this reduced if they appeal. Their challenge is when. Do they do it now and get them back this season or see what happens . If they stay up having lost all four points they may not bother . Appeals are expensive and distracting . 
 

So you can now get a team breaching FFP , and staying up making the breach worthwhile. 
 

Unsurprisingly the process isn’t working . It makes competing harder against higher income clubs . It isn’t effective at stopping what it is trying to stop which is reckless spending . 
 

Leicester next (if they go up). 

[shefcanary 2,901]

14 hours ago, Google Bot said:

It's worth noting that Man City owners on their own have more combined wealth than the FA, Prem League and UEFA combined too,  this is why I believe the Prem League kills itself if it was to issue severe punishments their way.  They're out of control, basically, and need the clubs more than the clubs need them.

It's also worth noting that Citeh's "campus" is now so large and "productive" it probably makes more GDP per square metre than any other geographical area north of Watford (or whatever terminology is used for non-London & SE nowadays). This will give the Government and their prospective football czar increasing headaches. It's unusual in that all of Citeh's facilities are concentrated on the one site, but it will be  model others will eventually follow. The biggest irony is that the club were effectively gifted the stadium and the land around it. 

The UK has since Thatcher's "revolution" been open to any overseas investor coming in and making money on our soil, often subsidising them in the process for the tax revenues that eventually flow. But with so little of UK plc actually in the control of UK investors (albeit plenty of UK investors make money off the back of the situation) the success of football in this regard makes it incredibly difficult for Govt to manoeuvre and create "fairness and equity" on a level that fans would agree to. 

If a European Super League (shortly followed by a European & ME Super League, then World Super League) is created, I can still see UK Govt supporting whoever of the English clubs feature in it to the detriment of the rest of the football world. 

Cynical - moi?  

[Rupethebear 29]

The fact that they budgeted to finish 12th is amazing, basically they thought fxxk the rules we will stay up and pay a fine for bad behaviour.

Getting exactly what they deserve.

[chicken 3,045]

21 hours ago, Google Bot said:

It's ridiculous really as they've knowingly overspent floundering rules top buy themselves survival, and even then it was tight.

The fact that any business actively supports a model of going into debt should ring alarm bells, but it's just an accepted norm now. 

Joke of a system, with the money coming in to the game there's no excuse to not be self sufficient, The threshold across the total of multiple seasons therefore should be zero loss, otherwise it's forcing all other clubs to extend beyond their limits to compete and setting a bad example.

Who an earth thinks that losing £60m is acceptable to start with?

Whether you're paying 100m or 1m for a player, they're still the same player - it's nonsense as it's been allowed to be nonsensical.

I'd like to know outside of these points penalties what kind of money is kicked back to the prem league in fines and fees, there's nothing about that.

Sorry, but it just winds me up.

100%, if the FA and the Premier League truly cared about this and any sense of FFP then the owners would be punished too and clubs given far bigger consequences.

I've felt the same since Bournemouth were promoted and broke FFP to get there. The assessment should be a much faster process, if you break FFP in getting promoted you should be relegated no matter where you finish in the Prem. You simply wouldn't be there and shouldn't be there. Four points, a couple of million in fines that can be appealed and reduced... it's peanuts when you have laid out hundreds of millions in breaking the FFP.

I know they don't like punishing the clubs at the heart of it as such, and leave fans without a club - though they are happy enough to see it happen at lower league levels. If that's the case, owners should be suspended, even black listed. Fit and proper - should that not include gambling with a clubs future to such a degree that it's "boom or bust" with less of the boom and more of the bust? It's reckless, careless and puts livelihoods on the line too. 

[Google Bot 3,848]

12 minutes ago, shefcanary said:

If a European Super League (shortly followed by a European & ME Super League, then World Super League) is created, I can still see UK Govt supporting whoever of the English clubs feature in it to the detriment of the rest of the football world. 

It's because they'll have to, they can't bail out these clubs if the owners threaten to pull out or take legal action against the Government, I don't think people realise the financial might that's amassed and the reality of sport and leisure being the replacement for oil money, this is serious business.

It's a suffocation of the sport in and once the strangle hold is locked in you control the direction of movement , The government will do what it can to maximise the value of tax paid into it's pot.  So, as you say, they'd have to support English clubs in a World League even though it kills the domestic game.

It's when the admin and tax of these clubs is going back into foreign soil where it becomes a massive problem, and it's entirely possible we see clubs such as Man United become rebranded as the Red Devils, and a new domestic version takes it place within a much lower profile domestic league.

I don't know if that could possibly happen, but it's the only way I can see the level of money being thrown into the game from Arab states being logical.  There has to be a longterm plan which creates a revenue stream in return, I see no financial benefit of them building up European teams paying tax back into European countries.   But i'm far from being an expert on the matter.

[chicken 3,045]

25 minutes ago, shefcanary said:

It's also worth noting that Citeh's "campus" is now so large and "productive" it probably makes more GDP per square metre than any other geographical area north of Watford (or whatever terminology is used for non-London & SE nowadays). This will give the Government and their prospective football czar increasing headaches. It's unusual in that all of Citeh's facilities are concentrated on the one site, but it will be  model others will eventually follow. The biggest irony is that the club were effectively gifted the stadium and the land around it. 

The UK has since Thatcher's "revolution" been open to any overseas investor coming in and making money on our soil, often subsidising them in the process for the tax revenues that eventually flow. But with so little of UK plc actually in the control of UK investors (albeit plenty of UK investors make money off the back of the situation) the success of football in this regard makes it incredibly difficult for Govt to manoeuvre and create "fairness and equity" on a level that fans would agree to. 

If a European Super League (shortly followed by a European & ME Super League, then World Super League) is created, I can still see UK Govt supporting whoever of the English clubs feature in it to the detriment of the rest of the football world. 

Cynical - moi?  

Football as a current model is broken. Is there really any confidence in FIFA after all of the shenanigans over the last decade? Is it transparent enough? Honest enough? Does it have much integrity left?

After all, we now know that several clubs owned by Russian oligarchs were simply play-things for laundering money. We now have several oil rich states, entire states, investing in football clubs no doubt up to similar types of things. We know that the secret services were warning of this quite some time ago, and yet it continues to be allowed to happen.

I'm not sure it's even fair to call it cynical anymore when there is so much evidence to suggest that football is far from the smart, glistening article it is promoted to be, away from the pitch at least.

[Ulfotto 773]

I suppose the issue is the difference between “sport” and “business”. In business a company dominates one sector buys its one way into another or grows its market share by making short or long term losses then that is a legitimate business tactic think Microsoft and Xbox. Think Ocado and online shopping. It happens everyday. Whereas in Sport the governing body is saying that is illegal.

If Amazon bought a team and throw millions at it that is now not allowed.

[aBee 172]

22 minutes ago, Ulfotto said:

I suppose the issue is the difference between “sport” and “business”. In business a company dominates one sector buys its one way into another or grows its market share by making short or long term losses then that is a legitimate business tactic think Microsoft and Xbox. Think Ocado and online shopping. It happens everyday. Whereas in Sport the governing body is saying that is illegal.

If Amazon bought a team and throw millions at it that is now not allowed.

Though taking losses with the intention of recouping by higher profits once you’ve driven the competition out is illegal and indeed it’s a thing Microsoft have been fined billions for doing. 

[Robert N. LiM 5,944]

18 hours ago, Parma Ham's gone mouldy said:

I find myself a little confused by this.

 

18 hours ago, Parma Ham's gone mouldy said:

Now my question is this: 

If there is financial imbalance and teams can massively outspend others through sheer size and commercial operations, how does restricting how Forest can compete year 1 address this?

Doesn’t it simply lead to existing large teams remaining large and dominant and making it near impossible to compete without doing what Forest did?

Thus is it really balancing competition or simply entrenching the status quo?

Is entrenching the status quo true competition then?

Interesting response as always, @Parma Ham's gone mouldy - thanks for taking the time. I take the point and there's certainly something in what you say, but I think I'm basically with @cornish sam: this is more or less what I would have written if he hadn't already done so.

 

17 hours ago, cornish sam said:

The problem though is that if all of the clubs that got promoted went at the throwing money at it problem then they couldn't all succeed and the ones that failed and got relegated could be in serious danger of going into administration, so even though a few may have owners willing and able to suck up the loses, even those without would have to try and outspend the rivals. The knock on of that would also be driving up the prices of (relatively) mediocre players so that even going down into the championship the teams would feel the need to gamble in order to even try and compete to the playoffs without even having the chance to stay in the rich lists...

 

 

A bit like parachute payments, FFP rules, it seems to me, are a sort of sticking plaster in response to the grotesque financial iniquities that are basically priced into the setup of the Premier League. It makes me laugh grimly, all this talk of setting up a 'football regulator'. We had one pre-1992, it was the FA, whose responsibility it was to act in the wider interests of the game. They didn't always get that right, as their shameful treatment of Wimbledon emblematises, but when the FA set up the Premier League with the richest clubs, they basically abandoned their oversight role and any pretence that the bigger clubs could be encouraged, or even forced, to act in ways that benefitted the game as a whole disappeared overnight.

 

In the end this is all that needs to be said:

22 hours ago, nutty nigel said:

The PL is ridiculous but unfortunately wanting our team to win ultimately means we want to be in it.

And the second half of Nutty's sentence encapsulates why the problem will never be solved. Even those like us, who can't beat 'em, still want to join 'em.

[chicken 3,045]

1 hour ago, Robert N. LiM said:

And the second half of Nutty's sentence encapsulates why the problem will never be solved. Even those like us, who can't beat 'em, still want to join 'em.

That's how sports works though. As fans we want our team to compete on the pitch as much as they possibly can. Generally, wins come with a combination of talent in the squad and the head coach and players being enough of a cohesive unit to realise that talent in performances.

The further down the leagues you go, the more important that togetherness appears to be, cohesiveness, well drilled teams can overcome ones that have more fancy Dan's.

It doesn't mean that those fans and clubs don't understand that the league above may be fraught with issues. Or that as fans of this club, we want our club to join with those issues and be part of them. By and large, us fans get very little say in that regard - we have to just put up with a broken system because there is far more money involved in it for anyone to listen sadly.

For what it's worth, the basic concept of FFP was sound, to stop big billionaire Joe Blogs to take a tiny 3-5k attendance club from the edge of professional obscurity to premier league champions just by throwing money at it and, as had been the case, doing it at the cost of massive debts to the club rather than themselves. It doesn't actually stop them spending money on the club itself... which is the point. Make your club more profitable, sustainably, and you can spend the profit the club makes plus a % from your pocket as a "reward" essentially. The idea being that if they crash and burn like Leeds and Southampton, the club can at least fall back on the profits it should be creating with the investment it has received.

This is why Man City finding the "we'll sponsor ourselves" loophole was a massive dirty move. Fairly obvious loophole when it's pretty much a nation state that owns several of it's own brands though. Sponsorship is good, but is still relatively short term and not always sustainable - much like TV deals.

In many senses though, FFP helped to ringfence clubs that had spent to get there. I find that football is almost reflective of society in general. Have buckets of money and you can pretty much write the rules because you can pay someone to find ways around the rules - spot loopholes or caveats or conditions etc you can take advantage of. Tax avoidance Vs evasion for example.

The homegrown rules are pretty similar. On paper looked like a great idea. Yet as far back as the FA Youth Cup win for our youngsters, the teams they were playing against often consisted of youngsters signed from abroad whilst young so that they would qualify as "home grown". The impact could be argued to be the opposite of what was intended in that British youngsters at top clubs are not getting that focus that the rules were designed to give them. In fact, they are getting less IMHO. Which is why we are seeing players go in the other direction and turning out to be fantastic players, or dropping down leagues to build their careers. After all, are you going to want to keep a youngster who you've invested £1-3m in already over a player recruited from a local youth league and cost you nothing?

[shefcanary 2,901]

The rules of PSR are drafted such that if a billionaire or State is going to pour money into a football club, that it should be at their risk only, not at the risk of the long term existence of the club. That is not via loans or "revenue" but straight equity investment. Of course the latter route becomes linked then to tax and company law legislation, which in theory for tax and cost reasons restricts the amount any billionaire can invest in equity. 

Of course there are always ways and means, plus loopholes, to avoid those tax and corporate legislation restrictions, but as demonstrated now with an in season ruling on Florist, those ways, means and loopholes are now fewer and very difficult to utilise. 

Having said that, Citeh are relying on the fact that the 115 cases against them were all raised before the routes to ways, means and loopholes were legally closed. Hence why everyone involved is taking things much more carefully in their case!

Edited March 19 by shefcanary
further thoughts

[Grando 333]

On 18/03/2024 at 16:16, GJL Mid-Norfolk Canary said:

Just hope all of the points that are going to be docked all take place this season

...if the unthinkable happens and you know who goes up this season, you wouldnt want other teams being docked points next seas8n, giving them a lifeline...

But what if the Binners bottle it and we go up! Then some points deductions next season for our rivals would be a plus… 🤔