City & FFP | 2020/21 Accounts released | Revenues of £569.8m, £2.4m profit (p 2395)

Loved that gunners are so apoplectic regarding our t/o.

To think we applauded them off the pitch when they hammered us at Maine Rd. They'd never do that to City.

With all the money in the world they still couldn't buy class.

Well done M18
 
Winning things doesn't directly equate to hugely increased revenues. Of course, there's additional prize money etc, but it's relatively small.
What winning things gives you is increased media exposure (but there are other ways to get that too, including marquee signings) which in turn increases your chances of improved sponsorships / partner deals.
But a club can't just stand still and expect revenue to increase dramatically, even though this HAS been the case for many years with many clubs. City have had to be creative and think up new ways of making money. Having 'City' teams in multiple countries is one example of thinking in new ways.
Some clubs have made money via property development, some have done so via TV stations, or lavish corporate match day facilities, or buying up youth talent, loaning them out and then selling them on for profit.
Football clubs are relatively small businesses in the grand scheme of things, which is something many fail to appreciate. Traditionally, they've not even been well run businesses, they've been shoddy to say the least. It's only in recent years that astute businessmen have started to impose businesslike thinking into clubs. Even in the past when successful businessmen ran clubs, the club was their 'folly' and wasn't run like an efficient business.

As for profit at City, it's true that overall investment compared to profit is negative (so far) i.e. it's loss making overall, but that's to be expected after such large initial investment.
You can't expect profitability overall, within such a short time frame. But within 15 years, the Sheik may well be well into profit. Please don't confuse this with yearly profitability which is entirely different. I'm talking about actual profit since the takeover.

Arsenal themselves have been paying back the cost of their stadium - which was their huge investment, and now, 10 years on, it's paying off for them.
Arsenal didn't buy that stadium outright. They borrowed the money from investors. That's no different than City, with the exception that the money isn't borrowed, it's given.
If you believe the Sheik just wants to toss money away, then the Arsenal fans have a point.
If you believe the Sheik actually wants to profit (in some way) from City, then they don't have a point.
I believe the latter.

Even if the Sheik only wants City to be a marketing platform for Abu Dhabi, then that's fine - it's still something we're offering that to HIM is worth billions and he's getting value for money. If he wasn't getting that value for money, he'd be better running a bunch of TV campaigns, or sponsoring Rugby / F1 / Tennis etc.
People aren't investing in Arsenal for the fun of it. They aren't investing in United or Liverpool for the fun of it. Why should they with City?
 
meltonblue said:
That's exactly my point silver fox. When it was first mooted, it was for the right reasons.

The only thing I'm saying is I blame the ECA far more than I do Platini for the subsequent change in focus and interpretation that it got. The clubs hold the power still, not UEFA. He has said as much plenty of times. I personally think he's actually like to include it to exude more power himself, there's just no way the ECA will go along with it.
Click to expand...

Perhaps we are saying the same thing then as you suggest ?
He is certainly not blameless but you feel he is impotent because of undue pressure from powerful members.

UEFA's decision to move to Switzerland from France allowed the organisation to act as a sovereign state (until recent Swiss law changes).
With that in mind I see him as a top civil servant insisting on carrying out the wishes of a corrupt government whilst distancing himself from any of the actions. I feel that the G14 gave him the end result they wanted and left him to devise a plan that would work.

Maybe his ''I don't make the policies I just carry them out'' attitude is acceptable and should be expected. Unlike his tutor Mr B. at FIFA he has not had the opportunity to 'appoint' loyal delegates around the world to maintain his position so he has no option but polite obedience to his powerful masters ?

Regarding the Mr Rumm.'s and Mr Gill's of his world of course they would continue with skewed FFP, they are simply afraid of the financial competition our owner brings to their cosy cash cow.
But Mr P. has absolutely no financial position to protect (or perhaps he has ?) so should have carried out the FFP including debt which was already on the agenda when he took office. However he chose to use its skewed template to assist the objectives of the G14 by eliminating ''Debt'' from the original plan.

Is Mr P. really a man you would trust ?
 
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Just read this on TAW. Sorry, it's a bit of a long read. The comments below this article are worth reading as well.
http://www.theanfieldwrap.com/2015/07/liverpool-the-model-of-the-model-owners/
BTW who is @ahsannaeem on here. Hands up please.

LIVERPOOL: THE MODEL OF THE MODEL OWNERS
by Rob Gutmann // 4 July 2015 // 96 Comments

130118-043-Liverpool_Aston_Villa-1024x736.jpg
I GOT myself into one of those ‘mini-wars’ on Twitter the other day. The type where you spew 140 characters quickly but are then forced to regret at leisure. My ire concerned news of further ‘reforms’ to UEFA’s Financial Fair Play regs, and was fuelled by the reading of a piece of transfer gossip that projected that Manchester City hoped to bag both Raheem Sterling AND Paul Pogba for about £120m. “How can those shameless fuckers be getting away with this profligacy again!” I railed. Something like that.

Anyway. I was taken to task by a Mr Ahsan Naeem — @ahsannaeem — an erudite Manchester City fan, who it transpires also really enjoys listening to The Anfield Wrap. Ahsan asked if he could make his counter case to my sophisticated dismissal of Man City’s reckless business plan and its relationship to FFP via a direct email, rather than within the constraints of Twitter. What followed was this: a thorough lecture that entirely contradicted my (and I suspect most lay) understanding of the Manchester City ownership model.

His case was something of a paradigm shift for me. Read it and see what you think. Then hassle John Henry on Twitter, and get him to have a look too. Cheers. Over to you Ahsan:

LAST summer City actually only made an operating loss of £7million. However, due to UEFA deciding that City had failed FFP with regards their 2013 accounts, they were fined £16m. This fine was ‘suspended’ in the sense that if City’s 2014-15 accounts showed that the club had turned a profit (which they will) the fine would be returned. The way in which the fines work is that UEFA simply withhold Champions League prize money. Effectively the sanctions were imposed based upon 2013, but implemented in 2014, when the club had already almost entirely wiped out their losses.

The effect of this is that as of this summer City are now free fromUEFA sanctions. At the same time their profits this summer will be significant due to the returned Champions League monies onto the books, plus the new television deal. Conservatively, before sales, City will have somewhere in the region of £75m to spend before any outgoings.

You asked the question on Twitter about how City square the circle of spending double that if not more this summer. Well, simply put, I would suggest that the club are confident that their revenues will continue to grow exponentially. If the club take the same approach as post 2011’s spending, i.e. the squad is complete so any movements with regards incoming players after this summer will be directly linked to players leaving, then it’s simply a matter of them being able to keep the wage bill steady, and then believing in their own ability to continue to grow revenues significantly enough to cover a heavy one summer outlay. As fees are amortised for accounting purposes, a heavy spend one summer is easily workable.

Our wage bill is already significantly less than it was in 2012, and with Dzeko, Jovetic and maybe another first teamer to leave on top of Milner and Lampard, that bill comes down even further. That leaves plenty of room for the wages of Sterling, Pogba, and one or two others. Even if the bill were to go up marginally from 2014 that is more than acceptable with regards to FFP because we’re a profitable business investing in it’s own future.

(All of this is of course premised on the notion that FFP will still exist in three years’ time, which judging by the recent Belgian court ruling is, in my opinion, unlikely.)

100823-017-Man_City_Liverpool-1024x682.jpg
On a more general note, I’m a long time listener and a subscriber to the TAW player shows. You have generally always been relatively fair to City, up to and including The Price of Sterling show where some of you guys were honest enough to say that a move to City might actually be good for Raheem.

However, the one misconception you guys have, which in many respects is understandable, is that the club is run in an ad-hoc manner when it comes to spending with no controls in place or no interest in being sustainable. The truth is quite the opposite. When the club was bought out the owners put forward a plan, and said that they expected the club to be relatively self sustaining by the end of their first five-year cycle. That has come to fruition and yet it’s something that the club rarely, if ever, gets any credit for. It was a bold plan which required heavy investment early on, but it has paid off as we have won two leagues and two domestic cups in five years, have established ourselves in the top four, and yet this summer will show a rather large profit.

This is from December when our accounts were released:

“We have moved beyond the period of heavy investment that was required to make the Club competitive again, it is commercial growth of the kind we are seeing today that will underpin and support our operations in the future.”

The Chairman concludes that today the Club “is where we hoped it would be when we began this transformation six years ago” and eagerly looks to what lies ahead for the Club and its supporters.

Chief Executive Officer Ferran Soriano, supporting the thoughts of the Chairman points to “a new level of financial sustainability” and outlines that not only has the Club halved losses for three consecutive years, but that it has budgeted for a profit in 2014-15 and the club expects to be entering the 2015-16 season with no outstanding sanctions or restrictions.

I can hear the cries now of “yeah, but he’s just using his own companies to sponsor the club”. The reality is that since Etihad sponsored City in 2011 their own market share as an airline has grown exponentially, as have their own revenues worldwide. It represents less than 10 per cent of our overall revenue now, and it is in fact something that UEFA went through with a fine toothcomb before signing off on because it’s clear that it benefits both parties as all these kinds of deals do.

Personally, I think FFP is a quagmire of bullshit which is awful for football. Our league has grown as has the money available from Premier League television rights precisely because of the investment of Abramovich and Sheikh Mansour. This has led to a far more competitive and interesting league than the one previously dominated by Liverpool, Manchester United, and latterly Arsenal. Although you might wish those days back, I think you can understand why the supporters of clubs outside of the traditional hegemony within European football would welcome anything that gives them a chance to compete.

It’ll be interesting to see what FSG do next. I don’t for one minute believe that you’ve spent hard this summer without banking on the Sterling money coming in. But lets imagine for one minute that they have. Is there really a plan there to aggressively get you back into the top four? As Neil Atkinson said on a show recently, you can’t buy players to finish fourth — you have to buy to try to win the league because ultimately that’s exactly how City, Arsenal, United and Chelsea are going to spend.

I don’t see FSG spending like that. I see them spending in exactly the same manner as Spurs, right up to and including the signing of Firmino which has all the echoes of Lamela joining Spurs after Bale left. Their trying to find a back door to the Champions League without committing anything like the wages required to do it. This is just my opinion, but that’s not good enough for where Liverpool should be. I don’t spend the hours I do listening to the Wrap and the TAW player stuff because I hate Liverpool, quite the opposite. I feel a real affinity with the supporters, not least because one of my best friends is a life-long Red. I’d love to see you guys usurp United, but to do that you need an owner committed to doing it, with a long-term plan.

FSG’s plan seems to be bank on UEFA and FFP doing them a favour, which is never going to happen. We all know in ANY walk of life money talks, especially when it’s cash money not loaned from a banking institution.

I hope you take this in the spirit intended. Just wanted to give you a City supporters’ perspective on your question, FFP, and generally how our club is run in comparison to others. It won’t surprise you to learn that I think we have the best owners in European football and the best executives making sure that we continue to grow in the right way. This isn’t about sugar daddies and whatever other cliché you want to throw at City or Chelsea. It’s about growing a business to challenge already established businesses.
 
Platini like Blatter is the figurehead of an organisation.
It's not enough to claim the glory when things go well, but be merely the conduit of club wishes when it's not going well.
He voted for Qatar to get the World Cup (not Blatter). He spouted the virtues of FFP all over Europe and criticised the threat of inflated transfer fees (all the while still witnessing Real Madrid and Barcelona setting the records, not City, or Chelsea, or PSG).
Yes, he's a puppet, put in place by his masters (the G14). He sought political power in the football world, and in order to get it, he cut deals with those who could him achieve his aim. It's no surprise he's now beholden to them.

He's no better than Blatter in my opinion. Sadly, the entire hierarchy of football is so laden with political animals with personal, and club agendas, I don't see a way forward with a different leader.
Much like the Prime Minister, or President - by the time they reach the top, they've cut so many deals to get there, their impartiality is already hugely compromised.
 
goalmole said:
Just read this on TAW. Sorry, it's a bit of a long read. The comments below this article are worth reading as well.
http://www.theanfieldwrap.com/2015/07/liverpool-the-model-of-the-model-owners/
BTW who is @ahsannaeem on here. Hands up please.

LIVERPOOL: THE MODEL OF THE MODEL OWNERS
by Rob Gutmann // 4 July 2015 // 96 Comments

130118-043-Liverpool_Aston_Villa-1024x736.jpg
I GOT myself into one of those ‘mini-wars’ on Twitter the other day. The type where you spew 140 characters quickly but are then forced to regret at leisure. My ire concerned news of further ‘reforms’ to UEFA’s Financial Fair Play regs, and was fuelled by the reading of a piece of transfer gossip that projected that Manchester City hoped to bag both Raheem Sterling AND Paul Pogba for about £120m. “How can those shameless fuckers be getting away with this profligacy again!” I railed. Something like that.

Anyway. I was taken to task by a Mr Ahsan Naeem — @ahsannaeem — an erudite Manchester City fan, who it transpires also really enjoys listening to The Anfield Wrap. Ahsan asked if he could make his counter case to my sophisticated dismissal of Man City’s reckless business plan and its relationship to FFP via a direct email, rather than within the constraints of Twitter. What followed was this: a thorough lecture that entirely contradicted my (and I suspect most lay) understanding of the Manchester City ownership model.

His case was something of a paradigm shift for me. Read it and see what you think. Then hassle John Henry on Twitter, and get him to have a look too. Cheers. Over to you Ahsan:

LAST summer City actually only made an operating loss of £7million. However, due to UEFA deciding that City had failed FFP with regards their 2013 accounts, they were fined £16m. This fine was ‘suspended’ in the sense that if City’s 2014-15 accounts showed that the club had turned a profit (which they will) the fine would be returned. The way in which the fines work is that UEFA simply withhold Champions League prize money. Effectively the sanctions were imposed based upon 2013, but implemented in 2014, when the club had already almost entirely wiped out their losses.

The effect of this is that as of this summer City are now free fromUEFA sanctions. At the same time their profits this summer will be significant due to the returned Champions League monies onto the books, plus the new television deal. Conservatively, before sales, City will have somewhere in the region of £75m to spend before any outgoings.

You asked the question on Twitter about how City square the circle of spending double that if not more this summer. Well, simply put, I would suggest that the club are confident that their revenues will continue to grow exponentially. If the club take the same approach as post 2011’s spending, i.e. the squad is complete so any movements with regards incoming players after this summer will be directly linked to players leaving, then it’s simply a matter of them being able to keep the wage bill steady, and then believing in their own ability to continue to grow revenues significantly enough to cover a heavy one summer outlay. As fees are amortised for accounting purposes, a heavy spend one summer is easily workable.

Our wage bill is already significantly less than it was in 2012, and with Dzeko, Jovetic and maybe another first teamer to leave on top of Milner and Lampard, that bill comes down even further. That leaves plenty of room for the wages of Sterling, Pogba, and one or two others. Even if the bill were to go up marginally from 2014 that is more than acceptable with regards to FFP because we’re a profitable business investing in it’s own future.

(All of this is of course premised on the notion that FFP will still exist in three years’ time, which judging by the recent Belgian court ruling is, in my opinion, unlikely.)

100823-017-Man_City_Liverpool-1024x682.jpg
On a more general note, I’m a long time listener and a subscriber to the TAW player shows. You have generally always been relatively fair to City, up to and including The Price of Sterling show where some of you guys were honest enough to say that a move to City might actually be good for Raheem.

However, the one misconception you guys have, which in many respects is understandable, is that the club is run in an ad-hoc manner when it comes to spending with no controls in place or no interest in being sustainable. The truth is quite the opposite. When the club was bought out the owners put forward a plan, and said that they expected the club to be relatively self sustaining by the end of their first five-year cycle. That has come to fruition and yet it’s something that the club rarely, if ever, gets any credit for. It was a bold plan which required heavy investment early on, but it has paid off as we have won two leagues and two domestic cups in five years, have established ourselves in the top four, and yet this summer will show a rather large profit.

This is from December when our accounts were released:

“We have moved beyond the period of heavy investment that was required to make the Club competitive again, it is commercial growth of the kind we are seeing today that will underpin and support our operations in the future.”

The Chairman concludes that today the Club “is where we hoped it would be when we began this transformation six years ago” and eagerly looks to what lies ahead for the Club and its supporters.

Chief Executive Officer Ferran Soriano, supporting the thoughts of the Chairman points to “a new level of financial sustainability” and outlines that not only has the Club halved losses for three consecutive years, but that it has budgeted for a profit in 2014-15 and the club expects to be entering the 2015-16 season with no outstanding sanctions or restrictions.

I can hear the cries now of “yeah, but he’s just using his own companies to sponsor the club”. The reality is that since Etihad sponsored City in 2011 their own market share as an airline has grown exponentially, as have their own revenues worldwide. It represents less than 10 per cent of our overall revenue now, and it is in fact something that UEFA went through with a fine toothcomb before signing off on because it’s clear that it benefits both parties as all these kinds of deals do.

Personally, I think FFP is a quagmire of bullshit which is awful for football. Our league has grown as has the money available from Premier League television rights precisely because of the investment of Abramovich and Sheikh Mansour. This has led to a far more competitive and interesting league than the one previously dominated by Liverpool, Manchester United, and latterly Arsenal. Although you might wish those days back, I think you can understand why the supporters of clubs outside of the traditional hegemony within European football would welcome anything that gives them a chance to compete.

It’ll be interesting to see what FSG do next. I don’t for one minute believe that you’ve spent hard this summer without banking on the Sterling money coming in. But lets imagine for one minute that they have. Is there really a plan there to aggressively get you back into the top four? As Neil Atkinson said on a show recently, you can’t buy players to finish fourth — you have to buy to try to win the league because ultimately that’s exactly how City, Arsenal, United and Chelsea are going to spend.

I don’t see FSG spending like that. I see them spending in exactly the same manner as Spurs, right up to and including the signing of Firmino which has all the echoes of Lamela joining Spurs after Bale left. Their trying to find a back door to the Champions League without committing anything like the wages required to do it. This is just my opinion, but that’s not good enough for where Liverpool should be. I don’t spend the hours I do listening to the Wrap and the TAW player stuff because I hate Liverpool, quite the opposite. I feel a real affinity with the supporters, not least because one of my best friends is a life-long Red. I’d love to see you guys usurp United, but to do that you need an owner committed to doing it, with a long-term plan.

FSG’s plan seems to be bank on UEFA and FFP doing them a favour, which is never going to happen. We all know in ANY walk of life money talks, especially when it’s cash money not loaned from a banking institution.

I hope you take this in the spirit intended. Just wanted to give you a City supporters’ perspective on your question, FFP, and generally how our club is run in comparison to others. It won’t surprise you to learn that I think we have the best owners in European football and the best executives making sure that we continue to grow in the right way. This isn’t about sugar daddies and whatever other cliché you want to throw at City or Chelsea. It’s about growing a business to challenge already established businesses.
Click to expand...
Already up bud: http://forums.bluemoon-mcfc.co.uk/threads/city-ffp-continued.308853/page-544#post-8669628

Edit: the guy who wrote that excellent rebuttal is our very own BillyShears.
 
SilverFox2 said:
Perhaps we are saying the same thing then as you suggest ?
He is certainly not blameless but you feel he is impotent because of undue pressure from powerful members.

UEFA's decision to move to Switzerland from France allowed the organisation to act as a sovereign state (until recent Swiss law changes).
With that in mind I see him as a top civil servant insisting on carrying out the wishes of a corrupt government whilst distancing himself from any of the actions. I feel that the G14 gave him the end result they wanted and left him to devise a plan that would work.

Maybe his ''I don't make the policies I just carry them out'' attitude is acceptable and should be expected. Unlike his tutor Mr B. at FIFA he has not had the opportunity to 'appoint' loyal delegates around the world to maintain his position so he has no option but polite obedience to his powerful masters ?

Regarding the Mr Rumm.'s and Mr Gill's of his world of course they would continue with skewed FFP, they are simply afraid of the financial competition our owner brings to their cosy cash cow.
But Mr P. has absolutely no financial position to protect (or perhaps he has ?) so should have carried out the FFP including debt which was already on the agenda when he took office. However he chose to use its skewed template to assist the objectives of the G14 by eliminating ''Debt'' from the original plan.

Is Mr P. really a man you would trust ?
Click to expand...

Not trust no, but at the same time not blame entirely as much as some people have done. It is more the overall emotive feeling on FFP that I have an issue with. In its inital inception, as I said, I thought it had merit and could see and agreed with what UEFA wanted to do. What it turned into, aboslutely Platini holds some culpability, just not as much as the G14.

I'm not against financial regulation in football is essentially my point and what I believe Platinis intial aim was , it needed to go further than it did to work though and include debt.
 
meltonblue said:
Not trust no, but at the same time not blame entirely as much as some people have done. It is more the overall emotive feeling on FFP that I have an issue with. In its inital inception, as I said, I thought it had merit and could see and agreed with what UEFA wanted to do. What it turned into, aboslutely Platini holds some culpability, just not as much as the G14.

I'm not against financial regulation in football is essentially my point and what I believe Platinis intial aim was , it needed to go further than it did to work though and include debt.
Click to expand...

I don't think many of the posters on this forum are assigning the entirety of the blame to Platini, Gill is a far more despicable figure to most blues.
 
meltonblue said:
Not trust no, but at the same time not blame entirely as much as some people have done. It is more the overall emotive feeling on FFP that I have an issue with. In its inital inception, as I said, I thought it had merit and could see and agreed with what UEFA wanted to do. What it turned into, aboslutely Platini holds some culpability, just not as much as the G14.

I'm not against financial regulation in football is essentially my point and what I believe Platinis intial aim was , it needed to go further than it did to work though and include debt.
Click to expand...

As we know FFP including debt as its main theme was already proposed at the time Mr P. took office.
To use its name then omit its main thrust was a tad deceitful don't you think ?

I have to say I'm with Fanchester on this one and believe his political ambition left him no option but to give his backers payback.
As FanC said to rise to top position in any sector or walk of life means deals with all those that can help your rise. Unfortunately all of his associates especially G14 members are all determined to stop investment via new money.
Most of them have their club ownership as an end result and it rattles them to think that others should see ownership as a means to start investment rather than just pick up the dividends.

In short, Mr P. has sold his soul to those who furthered his career so he is surely just as guilty as his G14 supporters.
 
Good post that

FanchesterCity said:
You can't expect profitability overall, within such a short time frame. But within 15 years, the Sheik may well be well into profit. Please don't confuse this with yearly profitability which is entirely different. I'm talking about actual profit since the takeover.
Click to expand...

With regards to this statement, you are right in terms of annual profit offseting the Sheiks overall investment.

However I would imagine that at some point in the distant future he will sell his shares in the company and realise a massive profit. Even now the club must be worth close to £1bn , imagine what it will be worth in 10 years time, during which he wont need to invest anymore as the company will be profitable. We will probably be the biggest club in the world at that point in time if you extrapolate from the growth we have see so far under his tenure
 
All this discussion of whether Platini's reasons for the introduction of these ludicrous rules which masquerade under the Orwellian-speak title of "financial fair play" miss the point by several country miles. There are no right reasons for this nonsense. These regulations are clearly contrary to European law. This is for the very good reason that this form of regulation gives total control of club finance and investment policy to a bunch who can't even decide if goal line technology is necessary or not. Platini is an ex-footballer not a businessman and the rest of his clique are just as business illiterate as he is. So, his answer is to recruit yet another committee, fill it with failed bankers and draft in officials from Bayern Munich, Manchester United etc etc, believing that these people have the "best interests of football" at heart. No-one notices, of course, that their heads are so big that they still wear at least two hats. So, it doesn't matter what Platini's priority is: if it's spending it's Sheikh Mansour's decision how much of his money City spend, when and on what, and if it's debt it's Glazer's business to decide how much United borrow and why. It's no business of Platini or his committe because it is literally none of his business. He cannot have total control with no reponsibility.
 
"All this discussion of whether Platini's reasons for the introduction of these ludicrous rules which masquerade under the Orwellian-speak title of "financial fair play" miss the point by several country miles. There are no right reasons for this nonsense."

And that is where I disagree. I have no issue at all with football wanting to do something to protect clubs from owners that asset strip or load up debt that threaten their future. I have an issue with FFP and it's implementation and think they could actually achieve what they want to do through the Fit and Proper Persons test instead if it was either fit or proper.

Just because we are in the position we are shouldn't mean we look at Parma or Portsmouth and just think sorry, thems the breaks.
 
In theory, FFP (not at we know it, but the principle) could be a true leveler...

But let's imagine that for a moment. A game of football where no matter how big / wealthy your club is, it would have little effect on the outcome of a game?
It sounds great in principle, but in practice, there's no way on earth, United, or City, or for that matter Leeds would want a genuinely even footing with Accrington, or Rochdale.

Even if football bowed to the lowest common denominator, and ALL clubs had to settle for the salary and transfer budget of Accrington, the 'big name' clubs would probably still pull the better players, although certainly you'd expect a far more varied league and trophy winners roster. Is that what we want? really? Maybe it is, but I suspect it's not - because like most fans, we like the idea of a leg up over others, because somehow we've 'earned it'.

Fundamentally though, football should be about 11 vs 11, and not the size of an owners wallet or how many fans a club has, but there are very few sports where money doesn't influence the likelihood of success. From Formula 1 to Tennis, Rugby, even Athletics - funding is critical and coaching / facilities / equipment costs.

If my 'extreme' example demonstrates the impracticality of a truly even playing field, perhaps then there's a compromise. Something that offers a chance to at least reduce the gap between the haves and have nots of our beautiful game. For that to happen, there has to be hard caps on player spending. Anything that still allows a rich club to proportionally outspend others offers little in the way of 'fairness'.
 
I don't think FFP should have anything to do with levelling any playing field to be honest, I think it should do what it initially set out to do before it changed to what it is now, which was to put financial safeguards in place to protect clubs from their owners.

Fairness in that context is towards the fans of that particular club that it is being run in a way that is not detrimental to its future rather than anything competitive. Football as a competitive entity ended a long time ago really.

That's what I mean about the complete change of interpretation.
 
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