But if they’d had FFP in place then it wouldn’t have been allowed to get that far if you get me. The money they were spending was nowhere near commensurate with their turnovers. The safeguards in place now mean it’s unlikely to ever happen again. That’s surely a good thing?
I’m not so sure that it stifles competition though, the top six for example has fluctuated a lot in the last ten years or so. Ten years ago, it was unthinkable that United wouldn’t qualify for the CL and look at now. My point is that there are a number of other factors that affect the standing of the club, not necessarily just finance. On investment, clubs can buy who they like as long as it’s within their means. If their means aren’t big enough then invest there to give yourself a platform. Build, say, a state of the art academy that produces players that sell for big money. It’s not as straightforward as that, granted, but it’s a route to the market you want to be in.
I couldn’t agree with the last point any more. And as I’ve said, it’s the MO of all the top teams. Their greed knows no bounds whatsoever.
I don't think you understand how FFP works to be honest, those clubs you mentioned would absolutely have got into exactly the same position they were in all over again.
FFP does NOTHING to limit debt and it was the continued servicing of the debt that got those clubs into trouble, they would still be allowed to do exactly the same thing under FFP rules.
The way those clubs were mismanaged means they would have flown through all the FFP checks without an issue.
City and Liverpool were both very recently on the verge of going bust in exactly the same way as the aforementioned clubs but, again, both would also have passed FFP at that time. It's only after the City squad was invested in that City fell foul of FFP even though that was money that was invested not loaded onto the club as debt.
If you take the example of City does it not say to you that FFP is about more than protecting clubs finances than it's sold as;
On the verge of going bust: absolutely fine, no FFP issues whatsoever.
Stabilise the finances and build the club through investment with no debt: worst thing ever, a disgrace to the football world, FFP issues all over the place.
When UEFA talk about the success of FFP they talk about increased profits made across the European leagues, what they never mention is that since FFP came into being the amount of debt loaded onto clubs has gone through the roof.
I'd also say what's wrong with what happened to Portsmouth, Leeds, etc? They gambled and it went wrong for them, isn't that part of what sport is about? None of them have disappeared. The only club to have disappeared recently is Bury, who again, had no problems with FFP. They had problems with bad owners, dwindling crowds and unserviceable debt. Not FFP.
The Premier League is also in a slightly different position to the rest of Europe which is why our top six fluctuates more than others, from, coincidentally enough, around the time that City began improving their squad. Without City and, earlier than that Chelsea, investing we may well have had another decade of United and Arsenal as a permanent top two.
The fact that we have had investment in various teams in the league means we have a much more exciting league than anywhere else across Europe which has given us better and better TV deals, this means that even teams in the relegation zone can compete financially with some better known European teams such as AC Milan, Porto, Sevilla, etc.
I'm pretty certain that fans of teams in other European leagues wouldn't agree that FFP has made their league more competitive and interesting. Unless of course they're fans of Celtic, Juventus, Bayern Munich, etc as since the inception of FFP pretty much all European leagues have had one permanent winner over and over and over again.
To your second point I suppose theoretically teams could invest in their youth system, we could look at, say, Southampton as a good example of focusing on youth and building up a squad and growing it organically together.
I wonder what happened to that promising young team they had? Oh yeah, they were systematically dismantled by a team that had been built up through outside investment in the past who then used their financial muscle to cherry pick the best players from that team by offering them much bigger contracts. Not to mention of course using the power of tapping up a player and persuading them to go on strike to force through a transfer, obviously this was illegal but they used their higher financial and, linked to this, political power to easily pay off the fine for disregarding the rules.
Since the change from the European Cup to the Champions League it is absolutely Impossible to build up a club the way it was done in the past, there is just far too much money involved for teams outside of it to come even close to competing. Especially since the seeding and prize money is rigged towards helping out the teams that were successful in the past, these same teams that now run UEFA and corrupted the FFP rules to help them out. (Google search Martin Samuel's interview with Michel Platini to read more about how the powerful clubs did this.)
Even Liverpool with their huge income and worldwide fan base (a fan base which came from success bult on outside investment remember) failed FFP twice and only got round it by first not even qualifying for Europe and then later on by writing off money spent on a fictional stadium. If Liverpool can't even pass FFP to get higher up the league then what chance have teams like, say, Wolves or West Ham?
The easiest way to see if FFP is good for football as a whole, rather than just the benefit of a few rich and powerful clubs,is have a look at who supports it. Take for example a man you know well, John. W. Henry. As we all know he is someone who has absolutely no issue with lying, cheating and stealing to get to the top. He is the archetypal scumbag capitalist businessman, he has no interest in the teams he owns in a sporting sense, cares nothing about the integrity of competion, all he cares about is how much can he get out of his teams with as little as possible put into them. The fact that he demanded reassurance that FFP would be put in place in the harshest possible way before he would even buy Liverpool shows how bad it is for the game as a whole.
If you want more info about why your second point about building a team organically is pie in the sky it may also help if you read up on how 6 clubs changed the rules around shared gate receipts to benefit the 'bigger' clubs only which then led to the breakaway Premier league.
