I understood the goal they were aiming for; ensure the community entities like a football club were protected from reckless ownership. It makes sense to have rules to prevent an owner gambling the club's future on expensive transfers. A good comparison is us and Leeds in the 2000s. They spent their Champions League money on players, we did up our stadium. They didn't recruit well, league performance suffered and they tumbled down the leagues, ruining themselves financially for years.
Look at what's happened at Bury, Portsmouth, Brighton, Leicester. They were ran by cowboys and it was the fans, the non-football staff, that paid the biggest penalty. Managers and players move on, but people were losing their jobs because some dickhead owner couldn't balance the books properly. Everton have broken the rules and they should be punished, and if it wasn't for petty partisan rivalry I'd think 10pts is harsh because at the end of the day it's not the owners who'll suffer despite it being wholly their fault. But... y'know Scouse Mackems and all that.
I didn't think Man City were/are doing anything that Man Utd hadn't been doing for decades prior. Yeah, it is a bit like cheating on Football Manager, but given the nature of the headstart Man Utd and Liverpool have, it would take something like that to truly compete with them. They were happy enough to run a club riddled with debt for as long as they could and the minute someone comes along with the financial muscle to compete they throw their toys out of the pram?
There has to be a way to protect community entities, without ringfencing the established elite. I've heard people talk about a salary cap, but that's unworkable. The minute the PL brought that in, players would jump ship to La Liga or where ever else is paying the big bucks. People have talked about ensuring a majority of players must come from a predetermined geographical area, but that's unworkable for London clubs, or clubs without a sufficiently large population base. Take Newcastle for example, there was some kind of youth recruitment rule based on where a kid grew up, 50% of our catchment area was the North Sea.
Dunno what the answer is, but FFP isn't it. It perpetuates the strength of the top clubs and restricts the others.