FFP and why it's so bad for football supporters World wide.

Lordeffingham

Well-Known Member
Joined
1 Oct 2009
Messages
1,012
Yes, sometimes, people are able to justify things with a good arguement on paper, which is reality is just pure spin, and though appearing on the surface to be all about 'fairness and equality', is in truth absolutely to the contrary.

If you look at what developed football wise, on a World wide basis, and was created in almost every Country excepting England pre 1990, it's a no brainer, almost every Footbal League in the World grew a system, whereby only two, three or in rare cases maybe four Clubs ruled the roost and dominated all of their Domestic footballing competitions.

Every true footbal fan I assume would prefer there to be some actual 'competion' and not just have a system in which pre season it is accepted that one of 2 or 3 Clubs win everything, each year?

The contrary is certainly the case, and has been so in most Countries for decades, and flies in the face of any fairness and genuine competition.

Up to 1990 in Englland, and even more so the further back you go, particularly in the 60's and 70's, success was achievable by almost any Club, and all had a genuine chance ie: City, Utd, Leeds, Chelsea, Derby, Forrest, Villa, Spurs, Ipswich, Norwich, QPR, Liverpool, Everton, Wimbledon, Arsenal, West Ham, Newcastle etc etc.

After that point however, other than when some wealthy owners have intervened, genuine competition went out of the window, and obviously the cases of Blackburn, Chelsea and City are cases in point, whereby the Monopoly on the two horse race scenario was broken, and the cycle interupted giving and increasing the spread and share of power.

New owners from consortiums from around the Globe have been intervening in our game for the past decade, and cotinue to do so, and each brings with it the opportunity to share the potential winnings and spread the success over a larger group of Clubs.

However in cases of some Clubs, any chance they might have had will be dashed by the FFP rules, and although this probably won't fully dent City's chances of staying seated at the top table, other smaller Clubs, will never be able to satisfy the regulators due to smaller stadia, lower fan base and far lesser means of generating the cash flow to justify their owners cash investments.

We all surely want a more level playing field and a larger group of competeive Clubs to be involved, but shutting this door will just perpetuate the tight grip those Clubs like Utd, Real Madrid, Barcellona, Bayern, Milan, you know the Clubs I'm talking about, it's the ones that never stop referring to 'History' as though it justifies their permanent possition at the top table.

We were very, very fortunate at City, as are the supporters at Chelsea, that our owners arrived at a point just prior to Platini conspiring with the European hirachy in an attemp to shut up shop, but though I'm sure we will still possibly even benefit in the long term, it doesn't make it right, and for them to even consider the use of the word 'fair' in the title of their new rules is an absolute joke.

The only bonus at this stage is that I honestly believe that as and when they try to impliment restrictions, and there is then a legal challenge, that he (Platini) and they(UEFA) will fall flat on their faces, leading to the demise of some of those Clubs that have had a real UNFAIR advantage for far too long.
 
They will sap the energy from the clubs below and then form an international league to chase the profit. They'll probably end up touring the world like the LTA or the F1. The top players will end up getting £1 million a week +

Chinese, Brazilian and Russian teams will also become massive.
 
Just as in the real economy the free market does not exist. If it did, gas and electricity prices would be lower due to competition. In fact the banks on failing did not go to the wall, they were bailed out by the tax payer. This is in effect a monopoly of political and economic power. The big players make the rules.

So it is in football. Basically it is protectionism. While the City response to this cartel has been criticized it is the only way to break in.

However in the long run something completely different is required that allows the likes of Derby, Forest or these days Swansea to win the league.

Quite how that can come about in our super capitalist world is a bit difficult to envisage.
 
Dobsy said:
They will sap the energy from the clubs below and then form an international league to chase the profit. They'll probably end up touring the world like the LTA or the F1. The top players will end up getting £1 million a week +

Chinese, Brazilian and Russian teams will also become massive.

This isn't so daft a viewpoint.

I have envisaged this for a few years now. I can see "home" stadiums becoming possibly a thing of the past, where big clubs become this Circus, touring from city to city around the world and competing against another Circus.

I can see City being a part of this, the majority of fans having to watch the more important games live from the armchair,with the next Manchester Derby game being played in the San Siro.

A Super League will happen.
 
Why Always Ste said:
Dobsy said:
They will sap the energy from the clubs below and then form an international league to chase the profit. They'll probably end up touring the world like the LTA or the F1. The top players will end up getting £1 million a week +

Chinese, Brazilian and Russian teams will also become massive.

This isn't so daft a viewpoint.

I have envisaged this for a few years now. I can see "home" stadiums becoming possibly a thing of the past, where big clubs become this Circus, touring from city to city around the world and competing against another Circus.

I can see City being a part of this, the majority of fans having to watch the more important games live from the armchair,with the next Manchester Derby game being played in the San Siro.

A Super League will happen.

Well, the sooner the MANUres, Bayerns, Reals and Barcas of this world fuck off and have their SuperDuperUniversePremierLeague and leave the rest of us to get on with football as it should be, the better.
 
Lordeffingham said:
We were very, very fortunate at City, as are the supporters at Chelsea, that our owners arrived at a point just prior to Platini conspiring with the European hirachy in an attemp to shut up shop, but though I'm sure we will still possibly even benefit in the long term, it doesn't make it right, and for them to even consider the use of the word 'fair' in the title of their new rules is an absolute joke.

Maybe, but no more fortunate than the Rags and Arsenal.

Think back before the late 1980s. Arsenal have been a top flight club since the 20s. Yet how many truly great teams have they produced in their history? One, in the thirties, and they were no better in truth than us at the time. They produced a very good team at the beginning of the 70s but who turned out to be a flash in the pan. You rightly say that at that time, any one of a dozen clubs could win the league in any given season, and the year after their double they didn't mount a serious title challenge.

So why has a team that has hovered around mid table or above for most of its first sixty years in the league become a global superstar in the last 20 years?

Because when the huge amount of new money from the premier league and the champions league became available, Arsenal had the good fortune to have a good side under George Graham, one capable of winning trophies.

Much the same is true of the rags. They had a fairly mid-table or just above side for most of the 70s and 80s. Certainly, they had been a long way short of challenging for the title on a sustained basis since the late 60s and were down, as you know, in 74/5, was it? Then in the close season of 1989 the Gracious One spent a shitload of money on new talent (which is party why the 5-1 was so piss funny). Over time their team gelled and titles started to arrive - just as the new money from the EPL and the Champions league did.

What those two things did, of course, was cement the status quo as it was at that time into place. Chelsea were not part of the status quo, the established European elite, throughout the 90s. Leeds were. Why? Because they had a good team at the right time - the last champions of the old division one. Leeds' story in the last 10 years proves that being in at the start doesn't guarantee continued success, but Blackburn's story shows that a sugar daddy doesn't either.

The good fortune of City, Chelsea and Blackburn has been the arrival of a massively powerful benefactor. The good fortune of the rags and Arsenal is that they happened to have a good team in the right place at the right time. Liverpool and Leeds had the same good fortune, but that wasn't enough for them (though in Liverpool's case it was enough for them until Chelsea and City came along.)

Put it another way. Had the premier league and champions league come along fifteen years earlier, who would have been the Sky 4, the dominant teams who would cement their positions at the top table? Probably the top teams of the day - Liverpool, Villa, Forest and maybe Ipswich, maybe us (we were a top 4 side throughout the late 70s). As it was, their stars faded - except for Liverpool - and Arsenals and the rags started to shine.

So the rags and Arsenal's place at Europe's top table is just as fortunate as ours - so many better teams weren't in the right place at the right time: they, lucky sods, were. They had one kind of luck, we had another.

They won the national lottery, we won Euromillions.
 
So we've had to put up with countless shit for 35 years, they get to win everything, we finally get to the top and it gets deemed unfair. Man City, Atletico Madrid, Espanyol, Torino and TSV 1860 Munich are teams off the top of my head who should be complaining the most about what's been fair over the last few decades.
 
Chris in London said:
Lordeffingham said:
We were very, very fortunate at City, as are the supporters at Chelsea, that our owners arrived at a point just prior to Platini conspiring with the European hirachy in an attemp to shut up shop, but though I'm sure we will still possibly even benefit in the long term, it doesn't make it right, and for them to even consider the use of the word 'fair' in the title of their new rules is an absolute joke.

Maybe, but no more fortunate than the Rags and Arsenal.

Think back before the late 1980s. Arsenal have been a top flight club since the 20s. Yet how many truly great teams have they produced in their history? One, in the thirties, and they were no better in truth than us at the time. They produced a very good team at the beginning of the 70s but who turned out to be a flash in the pan. You rightly say that at that time, any one of a dozen clubs could win the league in any given season, and the year after their double they didn't mount a serious title challenge.

So why has a team that has hovered around mid table or above for most of its first sixty years in the league become a global superstar in the last 20 years?

Because when the huge amount of new money from the premier league and the champions league became available, Arsenal had the good fortune to have a good side under George Graham, one capable of winning trophies.

Much the same is true of the rags. They had a fairly mid-table or just above side for most of the 70s and 80s. Certainly, they had been a long way short of challenging for the title on a sustained basis since the late 60s and were down, as you know, in 74/5, was it? Then in the close season of 1989 the Gracious One spent a shitload of money on new talent (which is party why the 5-1 was so piss funny). Over time their team gelled and titles started to arrive - just as the new money from the EPL and the Champions league did.

What those two things did, of course, was cement the status quo as it was at that time into place. Chelsea were not part of the status quo, the established European elite, throughout the 90s. Leeds were. Why? Because they had a good team at the right time - the last champions of the old division one. Leeds' story in the last 10 years proves that being in at the start doesn't guarantee continued success, but Blackburn's story shows that a sugar daddy doesn't either.

The good fortune of City, Chelsea and Blackburn has been the arrival of a massively powerful benefactor. The good fortune of the rags and Arsenal is that they happened to have a good team in the right place at the right time. Liverpool and Leeds had the same good fortune, but that wasn't enough for them (though in Liverpool's case it was enough for them until Chelsea and City came along.)

Put it another way. Had the premier league and champions league come along fifteen years earlier, who would have been the Sky 4, the dominant teams who would cement their positions at the top table? Probably the top teams of the day - Liverpool, Villa, Forest and maybe Ipswich, maybe us (we were a top 4 side throughout the late 70s). As it was, their stars faded - except for Liverpool - and Arsenals and the rags started to shine.

So the rags and Arsenal's place at Europe's top table is just as fortunate as ours - so many better teams weren't in the right place at the right time: they, lucky sods, were. They had one kind of luck, we had another.

They won the national lottery, we won Euromillions.

I like this. Great post.
 
From the Champions League's infancy Man U and Arsenal were in a fortuituous financial situation and then went to become mainstays of the competition year after year coining the proceeds, snapping up the best players, no thoughts or interest of fairness or even playing fields then, oh no, survival of the fittest the rest can fight for scraps.
The Abu Dhabi Group deciding to invest in football saw City as a viable financial opportunity, one of the factors involved being City's admirable support even when in the third tier of English football thereby attracting and earning heavy investment from the Group.
Man City have now ensconced themselves in the Champions League. Man U and Arsenal's moaning and whining about fair play and Platini's restraints are looking evermore desperate, forlorn and ridiculous.
 

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