Financial Fair Play - my arse

The Stretford End can sleep easy.
Long term, there really is no crisis at Manchester United: UEFA will see
to that. Right now, however easily Wolverhampton Wanderers were rolled
over on Saturday, issues remain.

The midfield needs an upgrade, the
young players will take time to develop and replacing all-time greats
such as Paul Scholes and Ryan Giggs is near impossible. The growing
power of Manchester City may even test the resolve of Sir Alex Ferguson.
Stay strong, however, and all will return to its natural order.

Why do you think David Gill,
Manchester United’s chief executive, is so staunchly behind the new
financial fair play regulations? He knows that, once established, they
will give United the clout to overcome setbacks far greater than defeat
in Basle. Their spending power will be so huge, their advantages so
many, that an early Champions League exit will be as unlikely as a lap
of honour from Malcolm Glazer.




Even before Wednesday’s defeat, Gill
was insisting that UEFA impose ‘appropriate sanctions’ on clubs who fail
to comply with financial fair play. This lobbying will redouble with
United vulnerable. So forget talk of the empire falling. United may have
rough times immediately ahead, but long term can emerge stronger than
ever. Any despondency around Old Trafford is as misplaced as the
optimism that has met Martin O’Neill’s arrival at Sunderland.

Not because he is the wrong
appointment. Not because he cannot turn the club around. The problem is
that even in the short time O’Neill has been out of football, the rules
of engagement have changed.Not because he is the wrong appointment. Not
because he cannot turn the club round.

The drama of the win over Blackburn
Rovers is precisely the type of energy Sunderland hoped the new manager
would bring. The problem is that even in the short time O’Neill has been
out of football, the rules of engagement have changed. The ambition he
once shared with Randy Lerner at Aston Villa is no longer legal. At
Sunderland, O’Neill must learn to know his place.

And what a dead end street it is.
Sunderland have never benefited from the riches and global profile of
the modern European game, so have a limited fan base at home and abroad.


So even if O’Neill persuaded Ellis
Short, the owner, to spend big in pursuit of a dream, those plans would
be strangled at birth. Sunderland are not allowed to grow through owner
investment, so O’Neill’s fantasy of one day producing a team to play
like Barcelona will remain just that. There are only two ways Sunderland
can challenge the elite: the first is to buy a way in, which is no
longer permitted, the second is to produce a crop of young players of
such startling brilliance that massive improvement occurs organically.



And good luck with that. At the first
sign of promise, one of UEFA’s anointed few will swoop and the player
will be lost. Where is Jordan Henderson now? Where is Wayne Rooney? Andy
Carroll? Phil Jones?
As
the regulations that limit a club’s potential begin to bite, the appeal
of playing for a club of Sunderland’s stature will reduce further. More
than ever the focus will be on a well-established elite and top of that
pile will be Manchester United.
So
if O’Neill wishes to coach the next Barcelona he has one hope. It is
that, short-term, United’s pains worsen, Ferguson tires of the struggle
and the enterprising manager of Sunderland becomes his successor.
Although, quite who will want O’Neill’s old job by then remains to be
seen

And apparently, we're ruining football.

Bloody joke, isn't it.

from the start it was all going to be a set-up for the big boys..

just check the premier league hoe hard it is to dine at the top table

It is all going to end up in legal challenge after legal challenge, mark my words !!

With 3rd party ownership allowed in Europe and not here, £800m debts allowed but not £800m investment.

I really think nothing will change even when it does come into force.

Sorry if this is a long
read but FFP really pisses me off and Dawg has set me off – it
seems to me it's nothing more than a ploy to get at Manchester City's
wealth to prevent them from becoming the top club (or at least one of
them) in Europe. It's times like this when I wish the RAF had more
Lancasters all those years ago!


Obviously the green eyed
monster is alive and well – that plonker Jan Lehmann (City play
boring football – all 48 goals eh Jan – you prat) is now moaning
about City having money to burn and we're getting Rumminege the Krazy
Kraut going on about FFP regulations yet again and directly insisting
that City should suffer from them. The Regulations are really so
biased I sincerely hope the legal challenges are many and often.
Doesn't anyone find it strange that the only club ever discussed in
relation to FFP is Manchester City – hardly a word about any other
club. Surely the regulations weren't designed only with City in
mind?


I don't believe people
have really thought this FFP thing through properly. As I
understand it the idea is to:

1. Introduce some
   discipline into club finances. Looking at what happened to Leeds
   and Portsmouth is often held up as an example – but aren't both
   teams still with us? Are club owners and directors supposed to be
   responsible people?
   

1. Try to limit
   spiralling salary costs. Fair enough, some of the salaries are a
   bit obscene but why not simply introduce a salary system adjusted to
   take account of local tax rates in the various European countries
   and then put a cap on it?
   

1. Encourage clubs to
   compete within their revenues. I note it says “encourage”
   which isn't quite the same as saying that clubs have to compete
   within their revenues. Providing they are not getting into debt,
   just what the hell has it got to do with anybody else where the
   money comes from and especially that Belgian nonentity who tells us
   he will be asking questions about City's naming rights?
   

1. Encourage
   investments in youth sector and support infrastructure. Isn't that
   exactly what is happening with Manchester City despite FFP, not
   because of it?
   

1. Protect the
   viability of European club football. Not too sure about this one –
   when has the viability ever been in danger or been threatened? If
   one team goes belly up then another will take it's place – it's
   called competition.
   

1. Make clubs settle
   their debts on a timely basis. Confuses the hell out of me – if
   anyone borrows money aren't terms and conditions laid down for it to
   be repaid by the lender? What the heck has it got to do with
   someone else about how you structure your debt? Does this mean
   that Manchester United will be given a timetable in which to reduce
   their debt – to what level? Absolute nonsense.
   
   

1. Clubs must meet this
   rather woolly criteria to be allowed to play in the Champions
   League.
   
   

All this is somehow
supposed to level the playing field. Utter balderdash. The truth
is that the biggest teams will even out competition between
themselves to some extent but the poor old smaller clubs will have no
chance. I think the FFP Regs are going to be disastrous for the smaller
clubs and I also think the regulations are particularly slanted
against English clubs.



The simple rule is, apparently, that
teams must break even on football related finances. So income from
gate money, sponsorships and transfers must equal or or be better
than expenses incurred. Really we are talking about wages and
transfer fees. Sounds alright but there is one enormous flaw in the
argument.




The “big” teams
(primarily Manchester United, Barcelona and Real Madrid) have large
incomes. The ability to make this money has been built up over a
large number of years when FFP hadn't been dreamt of and therefore
couldn't act as a brake on their growth. FFP lets these teams
spend all that money on wages and transfers. It totally ignores
debt, if not, a club's debt level doesn't have much affect on meeting
the criteria. However smaller teams (take your pick – virtually
any team in the premiership outside of the top five or six and all
the lower divisions) have much lower incomes. That means they
cannot compete with the teams which have already grown over the past
20 or 25 years without the hindrance of FFP and that tosser Platini.




Under FFP teams cannot
now be funded by external sources in order to compete with the “big”
teams. This prevents teams from competing in the present day and
stops any team benefiting from an investment which is good not only
good for the club but also football generally and, in City's case,
their home town/district. Being born and bred in Openshaw I think
City are a godsend to the area. This bias is despite the fact that
there is absolutely no chance of Manchester City getting into debt to
the extent that Leeds and Portsmouth did (and I say again, both those
teams are still with us). All FFP means is that big teams will get
bigger, but will able to do it on the cheap (benefiting clubs which
have run up large debts and not helping clubs without debt one little
bit – Arsenal would suffer from this aspect, ie those with debt
prosper, those who have not incurred debt will gain no advantage).
The smaller teams will just have to stay where they are and hope for
some sort of miracle. If you think it through, it also means that
teams who have traditionally discovered talent and sold them on in
order to survive will not get as much in transfer fees from larger
teams, simply because the FFP regulations would make such teams less
willing (or able) to pay out a great deal of money in transfers.




There are probable
loopholes – we've already seen them. Sponsorship deals, naming
rights, overseas rights etc. UEFA say they will examine these
transactions – in a pig's ear! They have no right to pry into the
dealings of third party companies. UEFA will only be able to take a
prejudiced and biased view – and this can always be challenged in
Court.




Finally FFP is very
unfair to England. Tax rates in Europe are not the same. A simple
example is that if you want to pay a player the same amount of money
after tax then the gross salary in Spain will be a lot lower than the
gross salary in England. This must mean that even before a ball has
been kicked, an English team is at a great disadvantage when compared
to some other countries.


FFP is a mess waiting to
explode – UEFA will have to tread very
carefully. Have they thought what might happen if large (and rich)
teams are excluded from UEFA competitions? Would it be such a bad
thing if City stuck two fingers up to Platini and concentrated on
winning all domestic competitions? How long would it be before the
TV companies and other sponsors insisted that UEFA stopped pratting
about and got such a high profile team into European Competition no matter
what their bloody daft Regulations might say?


Again, sorry for the
extended rant but it's a toss up between Spur's fans and FFP
Regulations as to which get me riled the quickest.

Wow.......have to say - I pretty much agree with everything you've said there.

Bet your F & P key needs replacing now!!

It is a right load of bollocks that will be successfully appealed within the Courts, tying up the whole process for years to come. The only winners will be the lawyers.

For me - it's a simple as this:

An owner of a club, IF they wish, should be able to invest pre-season, a pre-determined amount of money to cover operating costs for the following season - i.e. throw £30m into the clubs account and it stays there until the close of the season. Transfers, wages etc are paid from this pot and season earnings can be added to the pot as well. NOTHING can be removed from it until the end of the season, only added. That way, come the end of the season they can say that we haven't had to borrow money.

This is only if they wish to do this. If they borrow money, then there should be clear guidelines on the amount borrowed and how it is paid back.

Why should a club as fortunate as us have to abide by some rule, that really doesn't apply, on restricts us, as its not as if we are borrowing anything?

Making a loss - yes, but it's easily covered by our owner - an d allows us to trade with other clubs (Arsenal) to keep their coffers looking good.

Thousands of lawyers all over Europe are rubbing their hands with glee and polishing up on business and football law, they will be the only people to truly gain from this.

Good morning BlueBoy - just got back from a long weekend and saw your response. You do realise that your idea is sensible, workable and has much to recommend it - it therefore has no chance! Still, as my old Latin teacher used to say - nil illegitimii carborundum.

It's quite simple once it starts, Sheik stops putting money in, we spend another £800 million quid, Club/Sheik service this debt and we carry on as normal.

Some dirty red team across town get away with this