Financial Fair Play / Profit & Sustainability

[r0cafella]

5 minutes ago, Yorkie said:

Fair market value rules are a good thing and I hope they prevail. 

 

I agree with the existence of a rule which fundamentally prevents clubs from artificially inflating their wealth to obscene levels, by virtue of something totally unrelated to that club. I look at Man City, Chelsea and PSG and see basically nothing in those case studies that I really love about football. They are soulless, manufactured superclubs - brands, commercial entities - defined by the wealth of their owners. I certainly could never, ever want that for us. 

 

I accept that some clubs will always be richer than others and those ones will probably be fighting for honours whenever May comes around. But I'd like to believe that there's a version of football where clubs can achieve great things by playing to their strengths; cultivating revenue opportunities by matching competency with ambition; and growing organically by investing relatively, effectively, with at least some risk attached.

 

'Winner = the richest owner' is a very, very boring game. 

 

PSR is the thing that truly needs revising. It's been said a thousand times but that's the drawbridge. "My sugar daddy isn't allowed to spend 1 zillion pounds on a left-back" is not a drawbridge.

I think your logic is somewhat flawed, owners wealth has always been the pre determining factor to success in football; for as long as I can remember at least. I want competitive balance too but FMV and FFP are the wrong tools to accomplish that goal especially as the rules aren’t consistent both domestically and in continental competitions. 

[Teslact]

10 minutes ago, gjohnson said:

The way they've been lauded this season compared to us last should suggest that the '6' should be more scared of them than they were/are of us

I think there has been a lot of glossing over their second half of the season (which was relatively piss poor), as the first half was so good. In the end they got 3pts less than we did and no cup final.

[gjohnson]

3 minutes ago, Teslact said:

I think there has been a lot of glossing over their second half of the season (which was relatively piss poor), as the first half was so good. In the end they got 3pts less than we did and no cup final.

True, but I don't recall there being such a media circle jerk over us than there has over them.

 

Probably just unconscious bias

[The Bonk]

2 minutes ago, r0cafella said:

I think your logic is somewhat flawed, owners wealth has always been the pre determining factor to success in football; for as long as I can remember at least. I want competitive balance too but FMV and FFP are the wrong tools to accomplish that goal especially as the rules aren’t consistent both domestically and in continental competitions. 

Luxury tax that gets divided between lower league clubs. Let the big boys success enrich the football pyramid.

 

Clubs keep their commercial revenue, but player transfers over a certain threshold (anything over say 100 million) gets taxed, along with payroll exceeding a certain amount too.

 

 

[gjohnson]

1 minute ago, The Bonk said:

Luxury tax that gets divided between lower league clubs. Let the big boys success enrich the football pyramid.

 

Clubs keep their commercial revenue, but player transfers over a certain threshold (anything over say 100 million) gets taxed, along with payroll exceeding a certain amount too.

 

 

Let's be realistic...any luxury tax will be proportionally awarded to league teams with the highest rolling positions over any period where the average top 6 has remained in the top 6. Qualification for a share will require a minimum of 3 years out of 6 in the top 6, and a single years Qualification will be deemed irrelevant unless a rolling 3 year term has been achieved, and then conditional on approval from the 6 members who have qualified with a 3 year rolling term.

 

Bloody hell....I could write PL rules 🙄 

[r0cafella]

5 minutes ago, The Bonk said:

Luxury tax that gets divided between lower league clubs. Let the big boys success enrich the football pyramid.

 

Clubs keep their commercial revenue, but player transfers over a certain threshold (anything over say 100 million) gets taxed, along with payroll exceeding a certain amount too.

 

 

Luxury tax is an idea, I’m not so keen personally because your encouraging transfer of funds between rivals for essentially nothing. Imagine us paying City in an attempt to catch them because we “over spent”. 
 

I think one of the reasons we’re ended up where we are is the protectionist rules are the most agreeable to majority. You can’t put the lid back on the amount of money in the game which in itself is a problem for a lot of Owners/shareholders as they are now actually priced out. 

[The Bonk]

1 minute ago, gjohnson said:

Let's be realistic...any luxury tax will be proportionally awarded to league teams with the highest rolling positions over any period where the average top 6 has remained in the top 6. Qualification for a share will require a minimum of 3 years out of 6 in the top 6, and a single years Qualification will be deemed irrelevant unless a rolling 3 year term has been achieved, and then conditional on approval from the 6 members who have qualified with a 3 year rolling term.

 

Bloody hell....I could write PL rules 🙄 

So you’re saying it’s even worse than FFP? 

[The Bonk]

Just now, r0cafella said:

Luxury tax is an idea, I’m not so keen personally because your encouraging transfer of funds between rivals for essentially nothing. Imagine us paying City in an attempt to catch them because we “over spent”. 
 

I think one of the reasons we’re ended up where we are is the protectionist rules are the most agreeable to majority. You can’t put the lid back on the amount of money in the game which in itself is a problem for a lot of Owners/shareholders as they are now actually priced out. 

Academy rich clubs would prosper in that type of environment until the resources dry up. 

[Yorkie]

21 minutes ago, r0cafella said:

I think your logic is somewhat flawed, owners wealth has always been the pre determining factor to success in football; for as long as I can remember at least. I want competitive balance too but FMV and FFP are the wrong tools to accomplish that goal especially as the rules aren’t consistent both domestically and in continental competitions. 

 

Of course, I think I acknowledged that. But I think it's been a factor, not the factor. There's wealthy businessmen who've injected their own personal capital into their favourite football team and then there's oligarchs and gulf states with literally unlimited resources. I don't think anyone felt there was much of a need for FMV when Jack Walker came along.

[gjohnson]

3 minutes ago, The Bonk said:

So you’re saying it’s even worse than FFP? 

Not exactly...just saying that I could see the PL coming out with something very close after Masters had been locked in a bondage dungeon for a few hours with Fenway, Levy, Boehly, Mansour, Kroenke and Radcliffe( who's obviously in a gimp suit tied to Glazier string)

[r0cafella]

2 minutes ago, The Bonk said:

Academy rich clubs would prosper in that type of environment until the resources dry up. 

Absolutely, it’s why coming up with something fair is easy but implementation is impossible. 
 

Fair would be. Calculate who’s spend the most historically and work out what inflation for football was and assign the amount which would bring parity to each club (so maybe we’ve spent 1b less total than the highest spender this would be our Historic FFP balance to use as we see fit). Second thing would be to work out an annual budget all clubs are bonded too and boom you have a fair-ish setup. (It’s still not fair as it’s likely inflation of player prices would jump after you do this) but it’s as close to fair as can achieved imo. 

[r0cafella]

2 minutes ago, Yorkie said:

 

Of course, I think I acknowledged that. But there's wealthy businessmen who've injected their own personal capital into their favourite football team and then there's oligarchs and gulf states with literally unlimited resources. I don't think anyone felt there was much of a need for FMV when Jack Walker came along. 

But that’s the issue Yorks, the horse has already bolted and by bringing in further rules all your doing is entrenching advantages gain when things were the Wild West. It’s the opposite of competitive balance. 
 

Don’t get me wrong, unfettered spending is also the enemy of competitive or balance which is why my proposal above would eradicate that as well. 

[The Bonk]

I am with ya, @r0cafella, it’s getting to that middle ground of have’s and have nots. Seemingly impossible task.

[r0cafella]

Just now, The Bonk said:

I am with ya, @r0cafella, it’s getting to that middle ground of have’s and have nots. Seemingly impossible task.

I think so, the problem with my proposal is your giving very large historical balances to clubs to spend and let’s be frank a lot simply can’t afford it so you’re basically sanctioning massive over leverage. You’d want guarantees in place so the owners are on the hook for the spend but they simply wouldn’t agree. 
 

And I doff my cap to those sneaky so called big six clubs who forced footballs version of Brexit it on us, they played an absolute blinder and really lined their pockets with that master stroke. 

[Yorkie]

3 minutes ago, r0cafella said:

But that’s the issue Yorks, the horse has already bolted and by bringing in further rules all your doing is entrenching advantages gain when things were the Wild West. It’s the opposite of competitive balance. 
 

Don’t get me wrong, unfettered spending is also the enemy of competitive or balance which is why my proposal above would eradicate that as well. 

 

I do get that; we're so far gone that doing it Man City's way is the only way, so removing that capacity (in addition to PSR) keeps us locked into the status quo.  

 

I guess for me it's a case of, if Man City's way is the only way, I'd rather not play. Quite happy seeing us do everything we can to defy the odds, as we did in 22/23 and on occasion in 23/24.

[r0cafella]

34 minutes ago, Yorkie said:

 

I do get that; we're so far gone that doing it Man City's way is the only way, so removing that capacity (in addition to PSR) keeps us locked into the status quo.  

 

I guess for me it's a case of, if Man City's way is the only way, I'd rather not play. Quite happy seeing us do everything we can to defy the odds, as we did in 22/23 and on occasion in 23/24.

I don’t think it’s about going the city way in particular, I mean we didn’t do the Robinho thing when we had the headroom too

 

Not to put words in your mouth but what your kind of saying is your perfectly satisfied with being also rans at best. With the current rules it’s almost impossible for us to win the league and it is impossible for us to be successful on a consistent basis. I’m not sure why you’d want to sell us short for some form of hollow morale victory. (Every club buys the league and we are still owned by the Saudis). 

[Sima]

The cynic in me feels that this ends with the PL dropping all 115 charges to fight off Man City’s threats.

 

They keep their titles and their position as the biggest ongoing spenders for the next god knows how long.

[McDog]

2 hours ago, r0cafella said:

Luxury tax is an idea, I’m not so keen personally because your encouraging transfer of funds between rivals for essentially nothing. Imagine us paying City in an attempt to catch them because we “over spent”. 
 

I think one of the reasons we’re ended up where we are is the protectionist rules are the most agreeable to majority. You can’t put the lid back on the amount of money in the game which in itself is a problem for a lot of Owners/shareholders as they are now actually priced out. 

 

 

While that is true, let's say for sake of argument for every pound you spend over 100M an equal amount is paid in luxury tax. PIF splashes 800M in the transfer market. An additional 700M is then distributed per what ever formula is the rule. PIF spends 1.6B then 700M gets spread out wide and far most likely. That works for Newcastle for sure. I'd be in favor of that because when Chelsea spends 1B same distribution applies and is way more.

Doubt it would ever happen but it does favor the rich. If the owner is the richest, better for them.\\

 

edit: Just clarifying the outlay.

 

 

Edited June 5 by McDog

[r0cafella]

Just now, Sima said:

The cynic in me feels that this ends with the PL dropping all 115 charges to fight off Man City’s threats.

 

They keep their titles and their position as the biggest ongoing spenders for the next god knows how long.

What we will find out in 2 weeks is separate from the charges though. It’s a specific challenge to the related party restrictions put in place after our takeover. 

[r0cafella]

1 minute ago, McDog said:

 

 

While that is true, let's say for sake of argument for every pound you spend over 100M an equal amount is paid in luxury tax. PIF splashes 800M in the transfer market. An additional 700M is then distributed per what ever formula is the rule. PIF spends 800M then 700M gets spread out wide and far most likely. That works for Newcastle for sure. I'd be in favor of that because when Chelsea spends 1B same distribution applies.

Doubt it would ever happen but it does favor the rich. If the owner is the richest, better for them.

And that has a huge bearing on the pyramid structure. You could totally see us and City getting into an arms race and the problem which then occurs is the gap between the bottom feeders of the premier league and that of the championship sides becomes even wider. Essentially you get promoted and have zero chance to compete because the wealth gap becomes even wider than it is presently. 

[McDog]

Just now, r0cafella said:

And that has a huge bearing on the pyramid structure. You could totally see us and City getting into an arms race and the problem which then occurs is the gap between the bottom feeders of the premier league and that of the championship sides becomes even wider. Essentially you get promoted and have zero chance to compete because the wealth gap becomes even wider than it is presently. 

 

 

Yes, that is true. Depending on the how that largess is distributed it could mean a fucking load of money for the lower leagues.

[McDog]

I mean, you are right there would be an arms race but it would be between the big six and whomever wants to splash the cash if they can afford it. Obviously there is no guard rails for morons.

[r0cafella]

4 minutes ago, McDog said:

 

 

Yes, that is true. Depending on the how that largess is distributed it could mean a fucking load of money for the lower leagues.

No way the league would distribute this money to the lower leagues, not a chance. 

1 minute ago, McDog said:

I mean, you are right there would be an arms race but it would be between the big six and whomever wants to splash the cash if they can afford it. Obviously there is no guard rails for morons.

Absolutely but realistically not many can compete, it’s one thing to spend 200m in a window but it figures doubled and spend increased faster than the clubs valuations did then owners would be running for the hill, the smart ones would be looking to sell before this ever became a thing. 

[McDog]

Just now, r0cafella said:

No way the league would distribute this money to the lower leagues, not a chance. 

Absolutely but realistically not many can compete, it’s one thing to spend 200m in a window but it figures doubled and spend increased faster than the clubs valuations did then owners would be running for the hill, the smart ones would be looking to sell before this ever became a thing. 

 

No idea on the lower leagues, but if I was setting up they get a percentage. I do see what you are saying. Just have to balance that with what is now a basically "New rule to stop Newcastle" mode of thinking.

 

[macphisto]

3 hours ago, Yorkie said:

 

Of course, I think I acknowledged that. But I think it's been a factor, not the factor. There's wealthy businessmen who've injected their own personal capital into their favourite football team and then there's oligarchs and gulf states with literally unlimited resources. I don't think anyone felt there was much of a need for FMV when Jack Walker came along.

Is that not more to do with the fact that there wasn't the riches of the Champions League as there are now? If you finished off top spot/Top 4 you weren't losing out on as much income as now.