My reply to David' Conn's recent piece attacking our reasoning for suggesting FFP was designed to stop City and similar clubs:
Here's each Tweet combined in order of how I responded:
David, maybe we need to start with the question was FFP was the best means to set financial limitations to ensure fairness whilst maintaining financial stability of clubs when there were other successful models in use? Why no wage cap based on the league/revenues?
FFP is a poorly designed system due to its complexity + relying on self-reporting which is widely known, whether in accounting or research, to garner dishonest answers. This is then worsened by the variable of hyper-competition of sport. I’d wager other clubs have also lied.
Why was FFP selected if UEFA, who 1st implemented it and I gather was replicated by the PL and other leagues, wanted a truly stable system to ensure financal stability and competitive fairness?
FFP is a system designed to be punitive, yet encourages lying that leads to punishment. That doesn’t make it OK to lie, but like other systems of justice that create problems that they supposedly want to discourage (i.e school suspensions) the system may be the larger problem.
I’m not saying “conspiracy” but it certainly is interesting that FFP was the choice when surely UEFA must have known it allowed to punish clubs with undefined and subjective consequences for failing FFP via investigations instead of a more clear cut consequences.
The NBA has a soft wage cap. If a club goes over they are penalized and there is no chance to hide this as all player wages are public. Then that money goes towards revenue sharing. It also hurts flexibility so better to stay under it. This is a much more stable and fairer system