Jump to content
Sign in to follow this  
PurpleCanary

PREMIER LEAGUE FFP

Recommended Posts

There has been a decision by Premier League clubs on their version of Financial Fair Play. This is effectively instead of the Uefa version, although the Uefa version applies as well to those clubs that want to compete in Europe. There is very little detail so but there seem to be two key elements, and at very first glance they don''t appear to do us any favours.

Firstly, clubs will be limited to losses of £105m over three seasons. Secondly, clubs with an annual wage bill of more than £52m will be able to increase it by only £4m per year.

In other words clubs can rack up annual losses of £35m and have them met by rich owners, and the only clubs that need to worry about high wages are those paying out comfortably over £50m a year. To put that in our context, we have paupers for owners who could not possibly bankroll us to the tune of £30m a year. Debts of £20m caused us serious financial problems. And our wage bill for last season (in the Premier League) was £29.5m.

The aim has obviously been to curb the absurd mega-spending of clubs such as Chelski and Man City. But that is of little help to us. Our problem is competing against all the other clubs and if this means that Fayed, for example, can keep putting in £35m a year at Fulham then we are going to continue to be at a great disadvantage. But this is only at first glance and as such not to be relied upon.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

It was interesting to see which clubs voted against this.

  • Fulham
  • West Brom
  • Man City
  • Aston Villa
  • Swansea
  • Southampton

Seems odds that all but Man City would vote against it. I''m sure sooner or later their reasonings will come out, but seems odd at this moment in time!

I''m fully behind it though. But the £35m a year loss doesn''t include the youth systems of clubs so i''m sure they will bend the rules somehow!!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Would it not have been better to limit the cost of a ticket for a game instead of all of this? Charge a top amount of £35 for a home ticket (adult) and £25(adult) for an away game. Season tickets would cost £665 for an adult is their ticket was £35 a match. Clubs would have to either have a sugar daddy or be able to cope on smaller income, limiting spending. If any club ever went into debt they would struggle to get out and therefore go bang due to lack of care when spending on transfer fees, agent fees, wages etc...

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Glad you broached this Purple. My understanding of the wage increase cap is that it only applies to any money from the tv deal and that (the richer) clubs will be able to use alternative sources of revenue to bump up the wages which isn''t really going to stop the big boys running away from everyone else is it?The most important part that I picked up on was that from next year any loss over £5m MUST be secured against the assets of the club owner(s).The Wiz''s of this world will simply see that as yet another reason to get our "pauper" owners out, holding the club back blah blah blah etc.  but I''m curious what would happen at say QPR if they survived? Will the owners then have to further underwrite losses posted in the accounts through the clubs wasteful spending policies because I can see that coming as a bit of a shock to some of these owners who probably budgeted an amount to squander and thought that was the limit of their financial exposure.

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

[quote user="Bethnal Yellow and Green"]


Rich clubs making sure it is harder for anyone else to try and join them at the top. http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2013/feb/07/premier-league-self-interest-fair-play


[/quote]

Thanks, Bethnal. I hadn''t seen that Conn piece when I dashed out my quick assessment, but he does comes to a similar conclusion:

The aim is to allow owners to put serious money into clubs, but not quite so serious as Roman Abramovich and Sheikh Mansour have unleashed into their football ventures.

And we do not have serious money. Another factor now to think about in terms of whoever succeeds Smith and Jones as owners. There was a very slim chance that the Premier League''s version of FFP would eliminate the advantage of having rich owners, but seemingly not so.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
[quote user="I am a Banana"]

It was interesting to see which clubs voted against this.

  • Fulham
  • West Brom
  • Man City
  • Aston Villa
  • Swansea
  • Southampton

Seems odds that all but Man City would vote against it. I''m sure sooner or later their reasonings will come out, but seems odd at this moment in time!

I''m fully behind it though. But the £35m a year loss doesn''t include the youth systems of clubs so i''m sure they will bend the rules somehow!!

[/quote]

That is interesting. No Chelsea or Man Utd in there, nor Liverpool or QPR.

What I don''t get is that if they all agree that they need FFP then why don''t they just go with the UEFA one? If Purple is right then that would apply to at least the top six teams anyway.

Which would leave the other 14, of which most would quite happily accept whatever version of FFP would be thrust upon them or reject them as they would any proposals.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Getting owners to guarantee losses over 5m over a 3 year period is a good move to be fair. However, otherwise the new rules do absolutely nothing. The top clubs are limited by the lower UEFA FFP limits anyway and the rest of the clubs are just being limted to what some of them are currently spending anyway. If they were at all serious about introducing something that was actually financial fair play then they would have at least applied the UEFA rules. The comments from the government minister are laughable at best and that numerous posters on here suggested during the transfer window that we did a Portsmouth and "invest" money we do not have only suggests the possibility that there is need a to increase the genetic diversity in Norfolk or improve the education system.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

[quote user="T"]Getting owners to guarantee losses over 5m over a 3 year period is a good move to be fair. However, otherwise the new rules do absolutely nothing. The top clubs are limited by the lower UEFA FFP limits anyway and the rest of the clubs are just being limted to what some of them are currently spending anyway. If they were at all serious about introducing something that was actually financial fair play then they would have at least applied the UEFA rules. The comments from the government minister are laughable at best and that numerous posters on here suggested during the transfer window that we did a Portsmouth and "invest" money we do not have only suggests the possibility that there is need a to increase the genetic diversity in Norfolk or improve the education system.[/quote]

 

Spot on. This version of FFP has obviously been aimed by some of the other big clubs at Man City and Chelsea, and may have an effect there domestically. But it does nothing for the inequalities below the few elite clubs of the PL. As T says, the Uefa rules, which aim to force clubs only to spend what they earn, would have been far preferable to a system in which clubs can continue to rack up massive losses every season.

As I supected moere details are emerging, and in particular about the ability to raise wages. The early reports said clubs spending more than £52m a year could then only raise by £4m a year. But it trasnspires that is only for one season and that the £4m limit is simply from TV money. Extra money can be put in from other sources of income. According to The Guardian:

"The following season, they can add an additional £8m and another £12m in 2015/16. But additional money earned from commercial deals and match-day income can also be put towards the total – which could put pressure on the sensitive area of ticket prices."

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I haven''t had time to pour through the details of this - so thank you PC for your thoughts.

 

For me, the thing clubs like Chelsea and Man City are most scared of is another club doing exactly what they did. While there were 4 Champions'' League places and 4 teams challenging for them (Man U, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool) the big clubs were happy - they could pretty much forget about the League in the push for European glory; which led to the latter stages of the CL being dominated by English teams.

 

Now there are 5 or even 6 teams in competition for the 4 spots the big boys are worried that other clubs might suddenly get rich and crash their party - the signings Man U have made recently have been more aimed at winning the Premier League than questing for European glory. Interestingly Abramovich was one of the biggest supporters of the UEFA FFP rules, as he didn''t want other people doing what he did and could see that Man City was just the beginning of Middle Eastern investment into football. It makes perfect sense to me that the ''big'' teams would want FFP rules as it stops some billionaire suddenly turning up at Swansea and spending millions on new players in a push to knock someone else out of the Champions'' League. The big teams have the biggest revenues (obviously) so will always have that advantage, smaller clubs won''t be able to access those greater commercial revenues (overseas advertising etc) without success in the League or Europe - which are almost impossible to acheive without investment.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
[quote user="Bethnal Yellow and Green"]

I haven''t had time to pour through the details of this - so thank you PC for your thoughts.

 

For me, the thing clubs like Chelsea and Man City are most scared of is another club doing exactly what they did. While there were 4 Champions'' League places and 4 teams challenging for them (Man U, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool) the big clubs were happy - they could pretty much forget about the League in the push for European glory; which led to the latter stages of the CL being dominated by English teams.

 

Now there are 5 or even 6 teams in competition for the 4 spots the big boys are worried that other clubs might suddenly get rich and crash their party - the signings Man U have made recently have been more aimed at winning the Premier League than questing for European glory. Interestingly Abramovich was one of the biggest supporters of the UEFA FFP rules, as he didn''t want other people doing what he did and could see that Man City was just the beginning of Middle Eastern investment into football. It makes perfect sense to me that the ''big'' teams would want FFP rules as it stops some billionaire suddenly turning up at Swansea and spending millions on new players in a push to knock someone else out of the Champions'' League. The big teams have the biggest revenues (obviously) so will always have that advantage, smaller clubs won''t be able to access those greater commercial revenues (overseas advertising etc) without success in the League or Europe - which are almost impossible to acheive without investment.

[/quote]

I agree with that Bethnal.

Like you say, whatever they do now is a bit after the fact. If they adopted the rules say four or five years ago Man City would not have been able to achieve what they have done so quickly or easily.

Sadly bringing them in now sort of helps those clubs at least solidify where they are. As like you say you get a bigger international following by being more successful and doing that for longer periods.

You could say the same about Chelsea prior to Abramovic - it would be hard to say that about Man Utd, Arsenal or Liverpool who all experienced success prior to the ''big money'' and on the backs of home-grown squads for the most part.

I think the FA needs to listen to the fans though, knowing some that are QPR fans and Man City fans from before the money arriving they are both happy but at the same time concerned. They want financial security but know that wealthy owners doesn''t guarantee that and the UEFA rules would at least help contribute that.

The problem is that the FA are also running scared.

The reason they don''t just bring in and back the UEFA rules is that the premiership is currently the best league in the world, arguably. Being the best league in the world means a lot of money in things like TV rights that the FA get money from - everyone wants a piece of the best league in the world. To maintain being the best league clubs have to pay for the best players.

The FA doesn''t want to undermine that and knows at the moment it has an edge on the rest of Europe.

It''s quite sad if you ask me.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

The thing I find most farcical about this is the level that has been set. Just having a quick look at the latest summary I could find (which granted was from the 2010-11 season) only 2 teams that actually incurred losses of over £35million (unsurprisingly Man City and Chelsea) so as long as the sugar daddy is willing to underwrite (I assume write off) any losses there''s no real limit being applied here.

For the record the next highest loss was some people''s beloved Aston Villa who had losses of £34.8 million...

(source http://www.sportingintelligence.com/finance-biz/business-intelligence/premier-league-guide/)

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
Sign in to follow this  

×
×
  • Create New...