Relaxation of FFP rules due to Covid-19

[waspish]

Ffp might work if Uefa champs league money doesn’t count against ffp

 

[Colin Bells Boots]

So by your logic, this ‘cartel’ of top European clubs has only existed since FFP? What do you think the G8 were and they were in existence long before FFP. The fact remains they wanted fuck all to do with Chelsea but Chelsea booted their door off its hinges. There are a lot of parallels between yours and their rise, not least the uneasy relationship with UEFA. They don’t have that anymore though. You talk about clubs being worried about your spending power. What if your spending created any number of inconsistencies in the market which affected every club but you? Would that be okay as long as you’re all right? It’s fine for you to spend as much as you want without recrimination but it’s seen as bad if somebody wants to challenge it? You can’t have it both ways. We’ve spoken on here before so you know I’m not a WUM but the issues are nowhere near as clear cut as you’re making them out to be. There’s right and wrong on both sides, there’s no clear dichotomy.

I said FFP was introduced when it was clear that City and PSG were going to challenge the favoured few. Chelsea were in before, and whilst they were derided by others for their spending power, they did not have specific rule created to frustrate their prorgess.

Going off what you have said, so long as LFC are ok, you're not bothered about other teams, and yet you are concerned that City's spending power creating inconsistencies in the market. Total hypocrisy or what ?

The rags were buying all the best players in order to weaken their competitors - seems to have been forgotten now they are shite, BUT still allowed into the cabal despite having massive debt.

What is wrong is, it that owners wishing to put their money into the game is treated as taboo ans subjected to scrutiny whilst teams with massive debts but in the cozy cartel are ok due to their " club membership ".

FFP is a crock of shit there is absolutely no doubt in my mind , if not yours. But as I said LFC are a member of the cabal who are trying to restrict competition from other teams .

 

[Greggery Peccary]

I said FFP was introduced when it was clear that City and PSG were going to challenge the favoured few. Chelsea were in before, and whilst they were derided by others for their spending power, they did not have specific rule created to frustrate their prorgess.

Going off what you have said, so long as LFC are ok, you're not bothered about other teams, and yet you are concerned that City's spending power creating inconsistencies in the market. Total hypocrisy or what ?

The rags were buying all the best players in order to weaken their competitors - seems to have been forgotten now they are shite, BUT still allowed into the cabal despite having massive debt.

What is wrong is, it that owners wishing to put their money into the game is treated as taboo ans subjected to scrutiny whilst teams with massive debts but in the cozy cartel are ok due to their " club membership ".

FFP is a crock of shit there is absolutely no doubt in my mind , if not yours. But as I said LFC are a member of the cabal who are trying to restrict competition from other teams .

The G14 clubs were founded by those who had been historically most successful in Europe. As of today, not much has changed. Nearly all of them have won a European trophy since its inception, some with multiples. That reinforces their membership credentials totally. I’m not sure where I’ve said that as long as LFC are okay, fuck all other teams? Of course my primary concern is my own team just like yours is, but let’s have this right, given that you’ve spent more money than any other club in the last decade, your spending power has hardly been curtailed that much. Personally I couldn’t give two fucks what you spend or don’t spend. We’ve gone about it a different way, it’s horses for courses. What I don’t understand is that a lot of your fans seem to hate this ‘cabal’ but are desperate for them to accept your club. That’s by the by though.

 

[stonerblue]

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.

great stuff

 

[stonerblue]

The G14 clubs were founded by those who had been historically most successful in Europe. As of today, not much has changed. Nearly all of them have won a European trophy since its inception, some with multiples. That reinforces their membership credentials totally. I’m not sure where I’ve said that as long as LFC are okay, fuck all other teams? Of course my primary concern is my own team just like yours is, but let’s have this right, given that you’ve spent more money than any other club in the last decade, your spending power has hardly been curtailed that much. Personally I couldn’t give two fucks what you spend or don’t spend. We’ve gone about it a different way, it’s horses for courses. What I don’t understand is that a lot of your fans seem to hate this ‘cabal’ but are desperate for them to accept your club. That’s by the by though.

''Gone about it a different way''?
How much was your chumps league final winning squad?

 

[asahartford1]

The G14 clubs were founded by those who had been historically most successful in Europe. As of today, not much has changed. Nearly all of them have won a European trophy since its inception, some with multiples. That reinforces their membership credentials totally. I’m not sure where I’ve said that as long as LFC are okay, fuck all other teams? Of course my primary concern is my own team just like yours is, but let’s have this right, given that you’ve spent more money than any other club in the last decade, your spending power has hardly been curtailed that much. Personally I couldn’t give two fucks what you spend or don’t spend. We’ve gone about it a different way, it’s horses for courses. What I don’t understand is that a lot of your fans seem to hate this ‘cabal’ but are desperate for them to accept your club. That’s by the by though.

When George Orwell wrote 1984, he should have added a football theme.

"Debt is bad , debt is bad"

The ministry of truth , would edit it to;

"Debt is good , debt is good".

Clubs do not pay their executives vast amounts to be on Eufa boards for no reason, they do it to influence and control.

 

[Parisian]

Ffp might work if Uefa champs league money doesn’t count against ffp

Would give PL clubs to big of an advantage. Good for City though.

So by your logic, this ‘cartel’ of top European clubs has only existed since FFP? What do you think the G14 are and they were in existence long before FFP. The fact remains they wanted fuck all to do with Chelsea but Chelsea booted their door off its hinges. There are a lot of parallels between yours and their rise, not least the uneasy relationship with UEFA. They don’t have that anymore though. You talk about clubs being worried about your spending power. What if your spending created any number of inconsistencies in the market which affected every club but you? Would that be okay as long as you’re all right? It’s fine for you to spend as much as you want without recrimination but it’s seen as bad if somebody wants to challenge it? You can’t have it both ways. We’ve spoken on here before so you know I’m not a WUM but the issues are nowhere near as clear cut as you’re making them out to be. There’s right and wrong on both sides, there’s no clear dichotomy.

EDIT: just checked, Chelsea aren’t a member.

I agree with you about the fact that FFP was brought in due to Chelsea in the first place. They needed a measure to stop this from happening. City and PSG came after Chelsea and were hit by FFP but still managed to grow. Now, it is almost impossible to do a Chelsea/PSG/City. Milan AC learnt it.

About the bolded part, it is exactly how football clubs have been run for decades and decades. Remember Real Madrid poaching Stade de Reims best player in the 50s ? Everyone loved Real Madrid galacticos, they surely weren't called cheats at the time. Despite the mixed result on the field, it was a "dream team" and it worked wonders for their brand. Real Madrid current financial might is a direct result from Perez policy and its massive investment. Zidane transfer from Juve to Real Madrid was actually the same as Neymar if you adjust it to their revenue :

https://www.planetfootball.com/quick-reads/figures-show-neymar-transfer-no-expensive-2001-record/

With that in mid, you can prolly understand why we find it hilarious and hypocritical when the clubs that have benefited the most and are still benefiting from this method are crying when new and richer competitors are coming into the scene. Those clubs are benefiting in various ways : more appealing to players, getting free money from UEFA, bigger brand = bigger sponsors + bigger ticket money + bigger merchandising.

How exactly is a club like City supposed to compete and overturn decades of massive investment without massively investing themselves ?

 

[Greggery Peccary]

''Gone about it a different way''?
How much was your chumps league final winning squad?

I’m not sure what you’re getting at here? If you’re suggesting that we won it off the back of spending massive amounts all over the squad, you’re way off. Plus we lived largely within our means. If Coutinho doesn’t get sold, there would have been no Van Dijk or Allison. That FSG sanctioned that money to be spent on two players which went against all their previous strategy was a game changer for us in every sense of the word. Big numbers but bigger players ultimately. However, with the exception of Keita, none of those other players came in for ridiculous prices of the time. It’s an important distinction to make because a £40m player these days is nowhere near one of ten years ago. It’s just transpired that the players we’ve bought have worked out well and been coached into even better players whether they’ve come from Hull or Newcastle or Roma. And our academy seems to be doing its job well. That’s not to say that you’re not doing similar, but it’s certainly with a different financial strategy. Again, that’s fine, it’s horses for courses. Your next manager might not think the same as Pep does, he may want to do things differently. Whatever he’s doing now though, it’s obviously reaping rewards. Like ours is.

 

[Greggery Peccary]

Would give PL clubs to big of an advantage. Good for City though.


I agree with you about the fact that FFP was brought in due to Chelsea in the first place. They needed a measure to stop this from happening. City and PSG came after Chelsea and were hit by FFP but still managed to grow. Now, it is almost impossible to do a Chelsea/PSG/City. Milan AC learnt it.

About the bolded part, it is exactly how football clubs have been run for decades and decades. Remember Real Madrid poaching Stade de Reims best player in the 50s ? Everyone loved Real Madrid galacticos, they surely weren't called cheats at the time. Despite the mixed result on the field, it was a "dream team" and it worked wonders for their brand. Real Madrid current financial might is a direct result from Perez policy and its massive investment. Zidane transfer from Juve to Real Madrid was actually the same as Neymar if you adjust it to their revenue :

https://www.planetfootball.com/quick-reads/figures-show-neymar-transfer-no-expensive-2001-record/

With that in mid, you can prolly understand why we find it hilarious and hypocritical when the clubs that have benefited the most and are still benefiting from this method are crying when new and richer competitors are coming into the scene. Those clubs are benefiting in various ways : more appealing to players, getting free money from UEFA, bigger brand = bigger sponsors + bigger ticket money + bigger merchandising.

How exactly is a club like City supposed to compete and overturn decades of massive investment without massively investing themselves ?

I think you’re way off with the Milan comparison, they’re a fucking massive club. Been in two finals and one win this century, only Madrid have more wins ever obviously. They’re not what they were at the moment but to suggest that they’ve fallen out of European favour is a little fanciful. They can’t buy their way back but as a founding member of the G14, they’ll always have a certain stature in the power game.
I don’t agree that only massive investment can help you crash the party. Spurs have spent a fraction of those around them and have been CL regulars, getting to a final as well. Are they a little short for an extended stay in the greatness area? Probably but money alone doesn’t solve that. I’ve said on here before that the very best teams have all the stars aligned on and off the pitch. Pep is a great fit for City, Klopp is for us. Nearly everything they’ve touched in recent years has struck gold. You could give Spurs an extra £100m in their budget and they wouldn’t bridge that gap overnight. The best teams have managers who make good players into great players. That’s just as valid a route as spending mega bucks to cover every position in the squad.
I’m guessing you’re a PSG fan so I’d like to ask you this if I may? I’ve followed Tuchel’s career and I rate him but how much do you think he’s improved the biggest names in his squad? I’m not looking for a row or saying he’s shit, far from it. Don’t get to watch PSG much so I don’t really know how he’s developed them himself if you get me?

 

[danielwood5]

There’s a lot to respond to there, but I’ll do my best. On the first section, it’s not about debt limitation, namely that the auditors would have looked at their outgoings and seen clearly that they were living beyond the money that came into the football club from elsewhere. That’s when the red flags are going up. They may be able to service that debt perfectly well but it doesn’t detract from the fact that it shouldn’t have happened. I also agree 100% that whilst it does benefit and hinder clubs in different ways, it does help the biggest clubs on occasion perhaps unfairly. However the mandate for all clubs to spend within their means is a brilliant concept. Of course the fans of the likes of Leeds and Portsmouth loved the good times and that, but the most important thing is that they’ve still got their club. The fact that an arbitrary figure can come in and reduce a community asset to rubble and fuck off isn't something that should ever be allowed to happen again. And you mention how even the teams at the bottom can compete financially with a lot of big hitters in Europe. Maybe in the boardroom, but not on the pitch, they’re light years behind. You only have to look how many British teams have won the UEFA Cup/Europa League in the last 30 years who weren’t in the top six or so. The top of our league is ridiculously strong, the rest not so much.
Re the Southampton point; we gave them a lot of money over a period. This was down to their scouting system and the way they’ve developed players which made them attractive. Yes, they’ve lost a lot of players but that’s the nature of football. What it did do is give Southampton a transfer budget like they’ve never had in their lives. They can buy anybody they want. Of course the money still has to be spent wisely but they’re certainly not hard done by. They could have maybe taken that squad a step further to the Leeds of c2000 where they’d made the jump to the CL. But they chose not to, that was their decision. It’s a time of mad numbers being thrown about, for both players and clubs. And tapping up? Every single transfer deal in the world has it. Every single one. If you don’t think that’s the case, you’re way off there, mate.
Clubs can kick the door in at UEFA, Chelsea are a prime example of this. Desperate to get in the G8, couldn’t get near it. Won the CL, different story. If you win the CL this year which I’ve already said on here that you will, the narrative will change again. I might be wrong but I don’t reckon so. Once you’ve won, you’re in the gang. I appreciate that’s a rather facile way of putting it but that seems to be how it plays out rightly or wrongly.
One final thing; not one owner gives two fucks about anything other than the bottom line. They wouldn’t be arsed if they had 40/50k different fans there every week. Community gestures and the like are pure PR frosting. Of course there are fundamentally decent people at all clubs who do great work but the actual people at the top are far more removed than you think. My pal has met and interviewed John Henry on a number of occasions and he’s everything you say he is. I know on here that a vast majority of this forum would die on a hill defending the owners but I can assure you that it’s not the case with us. They mean nothing to us, nothing. We were here before them and we’ll be here long afterwards. Nobody is under any illusions about American investors, we wrote the book on them. And the book on how to get rid of them. The only thing I’m interested in is Klopp and his squad. I’m long past seeing elite level football clubs as paragons of moral virtue, they couldn’t be further from it.

Reading that I don't think you actually disagree with anything I said except where you say 'namely that the auditors would have looked at their outgoings and seen clearly that they were living beyond the money that came into the football club from elsewhere. That’s when the red flags are going up'.

The red flags would never have gone up as the auditors wouldn't have cared as it was all debt loaded on to the club, as you say, those situations probably shouldn't have happened but FFP wouldn't have stopped it.

Also, the mandate to spend within means isn't a brilliant concept in the least and I suspect we'll see that over here over the next few years. I suspect that once United have got back in to the Champions League then the top four here will be cemented for the foreseeable future, that's entirely down to FFP. Nobody will be able to come anywhere close to competing financially with teams that are Champions League on a regular basis and FFP will only cement that further.

The only way it's a brilliant concept is if debt free investment is allowed, this will stimulate the football economy and create a basis of level competition, rather than just going back to the same few teams winning the league over and over every year which is what the concept of the Premier League and Champions League are designed to do.

I completely agree that all club owners are dodgy to some extent and that Liverpool aren't the only club to tap up players or have absolute scum bag owners (Bayern Munich immediately spring to mind on both counts there), I just used them as an example as you are obviously most familiar with them. I do however think JWH is the most damaging import to European football in quite some time. He has managed to pretty quickly infiltrate UEFA and has elevated both on and off the pitch cheating to a sickening level. Hopefully he won't get the permanently fixed European Super League that he's working on though.

I have to say though if you think City are going to win the Champions League any time soon you clearly haven't seen the performances of the referees we've had in games against any of the history boys. You must have at least seen two of them, they were probably the two most bent ones at least so you may be forgiven for forgetting some of the others!