TheBrownBottle

Yep. Only need a two-thirds majority.

It also means that this season will need to record c£13m profit in FFP terms. There’s no give at all in the numbers.

They’ve broke away before - that’s why there is a premier league. It wouldn’t be the strongest argument.

It would be tricky to challenge a legal exclusion order from the act tbf

I didn’t say they exempt generally - they received an exclusion order under the act for broadcasting. An independent regulator would need powers to be of any use. edit: sorry FM replied to the wrong post!

The govt announced an independent regulator in the last King’s speech, so the intention is to legislate. It is worth bearing in mind that the govt can allow exemptions to the Competition Act (and has before for football). An independent regulator would likely have govt leverage to ensure that the regs are also lawful.

I still think Leicester would have fallen back to earth tbh - Brighton will do likewise in the near future. Every so often a well-run club does so, but cannot survive transfer mistakes etc even without FFP Just my take of course

They are, and they aren’t at the same time Leicester aren’t a big club, nor are they potentially a big club - even without FFP, it is unlikely that their position was sustainable. In their case, return to the mean - ie being a yo-yo club - was always likely at some point. Their achievements were spectacular in any context of course. But you’re spot on re what FFP does - it limits transfer failures to clubs already at the top. Chelsea, Man Utd, Man City etc could have absorbed a Tonali; it would have been irritating, but hardly catastrophic. For us, it was catastrophic - we can’t afford that sort of misstep (I know many think he’ll come good, and I hope he does, but for now that transfer was a disaster in the present). I suspect much greater circumspection will be paid to high-cost ‘bargains’ - particularly from overseas. I don’t anticipate a general change to our policy - buy young to sell high - we’ve bought similar to Ashley’s requirements for a reason (preferring under-25s etc). The plan will be to sell for big profits.

Proof of funding wouldn’t be enough - negative externalities are caused by inflation all the way down the pyramid.

The desire to reduce inflationary pressures in football is reasonable - Chelsea in particular caused problems, and so did Man City. Personally, I’ve no issue with FFP as a concept - but not as it exists at present. I wouldn’t want to see PIF come in and spend a billion quid on transfers in one season

Yeah, I know, and you’re right - though while the club only publishes in the following year, they’ll be across where they sit atm.

CL money is in this year’s accounts, not next year’s. edit: to be clear, CL revenue is in 23/24 season. Adidas is 24/25. Both are roughly the same value. So the any increase from 23/24 to 24/25 isn’t likely to be dramatic.

The PL was built on this mate. Short term thinking and smaller clubs fucking everyone else over. When the PL breakaway occurred in 1992, the top flight was meant to reduce from 22 clubs to 18 - which would of course mean that four space would go and that wouldn’t be a risk to the ‘Big Five’ (or ‘ITV five’ - Liverpool, Man Utd, Everton, Arsenal, Spurs). It was the smaller clubs who wanted the Sky money cash-grab that created this situation. Oldham, Notts County, QPR, Wimbledon, Coventry etc. You’d think smaller clubs would look at them (they all voted for the Sky breakaway) and think ‘yeah, perhaps this short-term thinking doesn’t help’.

The adidas deal next year will be balanced out by the loss of CL revenue. The Sela deal isn’t worth megabucks. We’ll go over £300m turnover this season and likely the same next, but as things stand I doubt we’ll see growth next year unless some trees start being pulled up.

Yeah, the PL are much happier with debt than investment. Which just further proves that the FFP regs are not there to stop clubs going ‘pop’

Got you. Yeah, they’ve got that wrong - it’s more that it means we’re snookered this month. Once 21/22 drops off we’ve got wriggle room again.

It does have an impact, until this season drops off the books (in three years time)

It still has an impact, and we’ll likely be running a sizeable loss this year too, and next year’s income is unlikely to grow at all. I know everyone has been excited by the size of the growth so far, but the reality is that the growth was really down to how badly Ashley ran the club - that was easy. It isn’t easy to see how much more growth is achievable without success on the pitch. There will be room again in the summer to spend, but nothing like what you’d want to push on. Selling a player for big money would allow us to fill the squad with more quality. The other unsaid thing is that our current big names aren’t here to finish mid table. They’ll be off if a big offer comes their way.

No club’s is. Leveraged buy-outs are the norm in the stock market and has been equally treated as the norm in football.

There isn’t a £74m loss in terms of FFP for last season. There will be tens of millions in acceptable FFP write-offs. The big issue is 21/22, which was a £70m FFP loss - that drops off the three year rolling cycle on 1st July. It is us spending big to fix Ashley’s mess which has caused the problem, and means that we’d be very close to the limit this season

They stayed up last season when others were relegated. That’s worth a few bob.

Yeah, agreed - I think you can already see an improvement in performance levels vs the Mackems and Man City. We’ll be winning more games than we lose between now and the end of the season I’d be willing to bet.

I’m happy to cut Howe slack too, as in I think his job shouldn’t be under threat at all this season. But that doesn’t mean that entire seasons just get written off. This season - irrespective of context - will have spent a lot of that ‘credit in the bank’ that he has. I think valid criticisms can be laid at his door this season - I don’t think he handled the schedule of his first European campaign all that well. I’ve never been convinced that a ‘game by game’ philosophy works at this level - all top European managers think about more than simply the next game. But like other good NUFC managers before him, he deserves time. Chancers like Pardew or Bruce didn’t.

Context is about thinking through all of it. Injuries are part of that - but you’re implying that injuries are simply all down to bad luck. The context for some us would be - why is the same medical team here from Ashley’s time? Why has the head physio appointed by Ashworth left when it became abundantly clear that there was a problem? Why is the manager playing football with an intensity level unsuited to playing two games per week? That sort of context is important, too.

Yeah, I’ve read that too. Money talks though. Of course if the option to sell a player abroad or to another English club happens, we’ll prefer to sell abroad. But I wouldn’t be too sure that we’ll refuse to sell to Liverpool. We will if it suits us. We’re not in competition with them at the moment.