Is financial fair play… working?

J

jonny_greenings_sock

Well-known member
Thinking about the insanity of PL transfer fees this summer - £110m for Caicedo, £70m for Hojlund, relegated Southampton selling their decent young players for £50m a pop. £40m seems the standard fee for an average Premier League player. It’s gone mad.

But - ignore the numbers and think about it as a percentage of a club’s transfer kitty. Is this a sign that FFP is actually working?

I think a reasonable, sustainable transfer window is where clubs can bring in three new players, or one really good one and a few punts. Every Premier League club makes £150m by just being there. So £100m for Declan Rice seems insane in the context of past fees, but when you think of it as 2/3rds of what they’re allowed to spend, it kind of makes sense.

Was interesting to see Klopp, who said he’d never be able to spend £100m on one player a few years ago, saying about Caicedo that “everything has changed.” Of course the problem is that the Premier League exists in a bubble of its own, no other leagues outside of the occasional petro-club can come anywhere near competing with this kind of money, and it doesn’t trickle down to clubs like us, who are a rizla paper away from the Premier League yet have to sell our best player for €11m to keep the lights on.

But in a roundabout way, teams like Brighton being able to sell their best players for £50m-£100m - and no club being allowed to net spend over £200m - does seem to have levelled the playing field. It’s the same percentage of money moving around as 20 years ago, just the numbers are way bigger. Or has it?
 
GibbosEmpire said:
Fees are worse now than ever before the FFP came in
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But the tv revenue has increased and, for the big clubs, merchandise has gone truly global so income is up.

FFP has created lots of loop holes - longer term contracts to split the cost, increased shirt sponsorship from parent companies, the snaffling of youth prospects etc.

I feel it needs to be more tightly controlled and regulated.
 
GibbosEmpire said:
Fees are worse now than ever before the FFP came in
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True, but my point is that before FFP Chelsea could spend £200m and Burnley could spend £15m.

Now everyone can spend £200m, because they can sell their decent players for £70m. And no-one can really spend more than £200m, Chelsea actually made a load of money back on sales and wages last season even with their insane spending.

It should be enforced way more strictly, but in a way the high fees make the league more equal and fair.
 
most people, myself included, have no idea how ffp actually works. its just something thats shouted when people see ridiculous sums of money being splashed around. would be nice if it was more transparent, maybe a figure could be included on the league table!
 
Teams like Villa and Sheff utd gambled on promotion risking entire future of the football clubs, it just so happens they got lucky,its a matter of time before a club does that and it all goes horribly wrong, I just hope it's not Leeds,that would be absolutely terrible 😉
 
RE OP

A Premier League statement read: "In accordance with Premier League Rule W.82.1, the Premier League confirms that it has today referred a number of alleged breaches of the Premier League Rules by Manchester City Football Club to a Commission under Premier League Rule W.3.4."

City have been charged with more than 100 breaches of rules that required the club, according to the Premier League, to provide "accurate financial information that gives a true and fair view of the club's financial position."

City have also been accused of failing to cooperate with the investigation.

So is it working 🤔

www.espn.co.uk

Man City charged for FFP breaches over 9 years

Manchester City have been charged by the Premier League over breaking financial rules across nine seasons.
www.espn.co.uk www.espn.co.uk
 
FFP was introduced to stop the established top clubs from being challenged. The last think they want is another Man City muscling in on their patch.

It's stopped Newcastle spending the outrageous money that they could, so I guess it has had the desired effect.
 
The problem with FFP is that the only people who know whether a particular club is FFP compliant are that club's accountants. And even then, the best run clubs might still get it wrong if the club is struggling on the field and crowds dwindle or the club is knocked out of cup competitions earlier than expected.

A far easier and more transparent way to achieve the same thing would be to limit the squad to (say) 22 players and have a salary cap on that squad of 60% of the club's revenue.

The club can still spend on youth teams and community work and stadium upgrades but can't recruit players if it breaches the cap.
 
It hardly works at all when there is a cloud between who are the clubs owners and who are the sponsors so the “big” clubs can do what they want. In fact if ”fair play” was applied to the letter, several clubs would be doing a “Rangers” and be demoted a few divisions.
Never mind, if Boro were ever to step out of line , fair play would really be enforced.
 
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Frozen Horse said:
FFP was introduced to stop the established top clubs from being challenged. The last think they want is another Man City muscling in on their patch.

It's stopped Newcastle spending the outrageous money that they could, so I guess it has had the desired effect.
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It wasn’t another Man City they were trying to stop it was another chelsea as they were the first to challenge the natural order by simply spending foreign cash.
 
Lottowyn said:
It hardly works at all when there is a cloud between who are the clubs owners and who are the sponsors so the “big” clubs can do what they want. In fact if ”fair play” was applied to the letter, several clubs would be doing a “Rangers” and be demoted a few divisions.
Never mind, If Boro were ever to step out of line , fair play would really be enforced.
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Oh without doubt English football is endemically corrupt to its core.
 
Subbuteo_171 said:
It’s not working and is pointless.
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It's not pointless, although it's not very well conceived nor policed nor enforced.

For as long as there is a £150 million jackpot for being in the Prem League there will be a never ending stream of chancers willing to buy clubs by borrowing on the club's dime and hoping it pays off. If it doesn't they walk away leaving the club to deal with the mess.

FFP doesn't stop this entirely but it makes it harder to do.
 
But now with the questionable deals with sponsorship they can circumvent to an extent. Don't Newcastle get £26million per year from Sela who are owned by their owners. Similar to Man City and Etihad Airways. But chunk to cut from the losses due to player purchases
 
Jedi boro said:
It wasn’t another Man City they were trying to stop it was another chelsea as they were the first to challenge the natural order by simply spending foreign cash.
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Well it didn't work fast enough to stop city then. However, it may be doing its job now.

If we ask is it working, we have to be clear on what it was brought in to do, and that is to protect the already rich.

Pie in the sky of course, but I'd like to see a flat rate budget per division. Ok, some clubs bring in more revenue than others, in which case they can cut ticket prices, or owners can pocket the profit, but the playing field should be level, and competition should be limited to the playing field
 
Frozen Horse said:
Well it didn't work fast enough to stop city then. However, it may be doing its job now.

If we ask is it working, we have to be clear on what it was brought in to do, and that is to protect the already rich.

Pie in the sky of course, but I'd like to see a flat rate budget per division. Ok, some clubs bring in more revenue than others, in which case they can cut ticket prices, or owners can pocket the profit, but the playing field should be level, and competition should be limited to the playing field
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You need to factor in the ones overseeing it as well as it’s only as good as the corrupt money grabbing toss pots that oversee it.
 
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