I am alarmed that some/many on here believe that FFP/P&R or whatever we wish to call them should be replaced by yet another set of regulations. This ignores a number of recent developments. The first is the aim to put before Parliament a bill to introduce a system of independent regulation to English football. The second is the recent ruling that the rules governing all football competitions must conform to the demands of competition law. UEFA's and the PL's financial regulations ignore flagrantly the outlawing of any attempt to limit investment in article 101 of the treaty for the governance of the EU, which is enshrined in UK law as well. We have also had legal opinion recently that sporting governing bodies should confine themselves to purely sporting matters but have no competence to interfere in commercial affairs and should not do so. UEFA and the PL are straying, quite clearly, into areas in which they have no competence and no right to meddle. Football may be regulated by the PL and/or UEFA: finance and commerce are regulated by the law. Football can make as big a mess as possible of VAR, offside or handball but it must keep its nose out of clubs' finances.
It seems that there is growing frustration with many aspects of the PL's governance of English football and, perhaps in particular the quality of leadership of the present regime. The situation is alarming. Everton are building an excellent new stadium, which is sorely needed and welcomed by their supporters. BUT ... they are alleged to have spent more than an arbitrary limit plucked out of the air by some football administrator ... for the second time. No doubt they will face draconian sanctions imposed by a "commission" composed of representatives of those clubs which are their direct competitors for the second time. Equally "offensive" are Nottingham Forest - another fine, old club - which has spent over 25 years trying to win back its top flight status. In doing this, however, they too violated those same spending limits voted for by a clique of mean, tight fisted owners who tried to cover the yellow streaks of self preservation spreading down their backs with honeyed words about prudence, sustainability and the like.
Then their is the case of the champions, the FA cup holders, the champions of Europe and, indeed, the world. Nothing for English football to be proud of because they have been under investigation for over ten years effectively for violations of these same unlawful regulations. Much as many City fans are outraged by recent coverage in the media, the real scandals are that UEFA was quite happy to act as police force, judge and jury before CAS found that they had no evidence to justify any of the violations they claimed, only for UEFA to maintain they still thought City were guilty and see the PL affirm that it would not abandon its investigation and, ultimately, to affirm that the club has violated the regulations on no fewer than 115 occasions! The rules, the charges and the evidence (if any) are apparently so complex that though it took four years to find anything to charge the club with, it must take another two years before our counsel can show what rubbish the PL case is! No wonder all but the privileged few are fed up to the back teeth with FFP, P&R and all associated nonsense, which is doing little less than trying to destroy the game we love and the clubs we love even more.
