Financial Fair Play / Profit & Sustainability

[Stifler]

2 minutes ago, The Prophet said:

Absolutely mental if those chances are allowed anywhere near a Premier League football club.

Aye, glad PIF stayed away from forming a partnership with them. They had red flags all over, even before their move for Everton. Just a group of chancers punting everything they have into football, hoping it will pay off, like a nerdy kid trying make crypto investments work.

[Dokko]

So are the PL delaying Evertons takeover so they can put them into administration and be done with them? Be approved next day no doubt. 

[Crayola Kid]

51 minutes ago, Dokko said:

So are the PL delaying Evertons takeover so they can put them into administration and be done with them? Be approved next day no doubt. 

The delay isn’t coming from the league this time as far as I can see?

 

777 had asked for an extension on repaying the loans which were due yesterday until late May, which sounds a bit like they want to know which division the club will be in before completing.  

[The Prophet]

The PL gave them a "conditional approval" which is often seen as a polite decline. One of those conditions was to repay the loan if I recall correctly.

 

They have a bit if cavalier attitude to complying with loan agreements, so we'll see.

[The Prophet]

A rare interating listen from Talksport.

[r0cafella]

21 minutes ago, The Prophet said:

A rare interating listen from Talksport.

Thanks for sharing this, your absolutely right a very rare 13 mins well spent with talk sport. 
 

no wonder they just keep spending with abandon though, especially if they are just going to flip none football assets to the owners to cover any shortfall. 
 

FFP for you but not for me. 

[SteV]

27 minutes ago, The Prophet said:

A rare interating listen from Talksport.

Sounds like even if they manage to get away with it for 22/23, they’ll change the rules and then they’ll be scuppered for 23/24

[OCK]

PIF to sue themselves and settle out of court for £1bn

[Toontimes]

6 hours ago, Terraloon said:

It’s quite interesting when I read comments like this simply because Chelsea certainly weren’t the first to offer contracts over five years nor will I suspect will the restrictions imposed for FFP/PSR stop clubs protecting what are very expensive assets by signing them on long term contracts.

 

There is ,despite the rule change, absolutely no restrictions as to the length of a contract the change purely limits the time over which amortisation in accounts can take place it would be a minefield if UEFA or the PL tried to restrict contract lengths if such contracts are allowed in the UK which they are just as they are in many jurisdictions 

 

When I first started to watch football it was very very rare that a player signed a contract over 3 years now a player under say 25 signed for a decent fee is given a five year deal as a minimum now quite a few clubs regularly offer contracts that are longer than 5 years. Look at the big Spanish clubs for instance and in particular Real Madrid or 6 year deals at Newcastle .
 

 

There is absolutely nothing wrong with offering deals of 3-5-6- 7 years or whatever there is absolutely no obligation for a player to sign them but the haste with which UEFA and the PL restricted the period over which a fee can be amortised won’t just impact Chelsea it has wider repercussions in the PL because many many clubs extend players contracts over five years and with that they historically have been after a couple of years reduce their own amortisation charge that can not happen and I wonder how it impacts when it comes to to amortisation of agents fees when it comes to contract extensions 

 

The irony is restricted time lines for amortisation will potentially work against clubs that aspire to break into the top 6 or perhaps just push on because whilst they might want to sign say a £40 million player clubs  may well find the £8 million annual charge too much 

 

 

 

Totally agree with that, I am old enough to remember players getting one-year contracts. Very good point about it being a way clubs like ourselves could do the same thing to lessen the annual amortisation figures. I’ll scrap that letter to Masters.

[The College Dropout]

16 hours ago, ikri said:

 

The big loophole here is that infrastructure costs aren't included in FFP analysis but income from selling that infrastructure is included.  In theory, our owners could give the club the money to buy Newcastle Race Course, which wouldn't impact our FFP figures, and then a month later the club could realise that they had no reason to own a race course and sell it to PIF for £500m and solve our FFP issues for a decade.  No one really noticed the blatant flaw in the rules until Chelsea tried this with the hotel.

It would only be accounted for 3 years and only 1 year under the new proposed rules.

 

16 hours ago, Slim said:

Credit to Chelsea they have found some good loop holes for FFP recently.

 

 

 

They actually try. We don't.

 

No club is blocked from offering 6+ year contracts. But the amortisation of the fee is capped at 5 years. 

[The Prophet]

Difficult to argue they're acting in good faith though, could easily come back to bite.

[OCK]

Sell Hotel to self

Give Self hotel management contract

Infinite money

 

Problem Premier League? 

[Terraloon]

17 hours ago, ikri said:

 

The big loophole here is that infrastructure costs aren't included in FFP analysis but income from selling that infrastructure is included.  In theory, our owners could give the club the money to buy Newcastle Race Course, which wouldn't impact our FFP figures, and then a month later the club could realise that they had no reason to own a race course and sell it to PIF for £500m and solve our FFP issues for a decade.  No one really noticed the blatant flaw in the rules until Chelsea tried this with the hotel.

When the likes of Arsenal built their new stadium they in effect retained ownership of the old Highbury site  and redeveloped it into hoses / flats etc. They claimed 100% of the costs to build the new stadium and no body blinked an eye when they included property sales in their income. Ok you might say but they didn’t sell it to another company with links to an owner. So maybe then let’s look how they settled huge and expensive commercial borrowings to both banks  and government loans . but not by increased equity but by way of less expensive loans.

Or what about City or WHU who sold the grounds they owned and moved into what in effect are government or local authority funded modern and bigger grounds.

Scratch beneath the surface and you see all sorts of questionable but sanctioned activities at clubs it’s just that some loop holes are more acceptable when it’s your own loop holes

[The Prophet]

 

[Ikon]

Masters even looks like one of those evil corrupt CIA cunts in movies. 

[Abacus]

3 hours ago, Terraloon said:

When the likes of Arsenal built their new stadium they in effect retained ownership of the old Highbury site  and redeveloped it into hoses / flats etc. They claimed 100% of the costs to build the new stadium and no body blinked an eye when they included property sales in their income. Ok you might say but they didn’t sell it to another company with links to an owner. So maybe then let’s look how they settled huge and expensive commercial borrowings to both banks  and government loans . but not by increased equity but by way of less expensive loans.

Or what about City or WHU who sold the grounds they owned and moved into what in effect are government or local authority funded modern and bigger grounds.

Scratch beneath the surface and you see all sorts of questionable but sanctioned activities at clubs it’s just that some loop holes are more acceptable when it’s your own loop holes

 

I don't actually have a problem with the hotel sale thing, more a problem with the rules and how they are being applied in the first place. So, as long as it's a fair market value, because that's the dance we all have to dance for now at least, there's nothing really wrong with it. It was the club's, it was sold, so what.

 

In your examples, I didn't fully follow the issue with Arsenal building their stadium (they did suffer a bit for that with spending for a few years), or that they then refinanced their loans at better rates, so apologies if I'm being thick there.

 

In your shoes, from the outside the thing I'd be slightly more worried about would be selling off long term infrastructure designed to make income for the club to pay for shorter term player trading, if indeed that's what it was for.

 

But my first thought was to wonder about what that means for the "sustainability" part of the argument for those rules to exist in the first place if you're selling long term stuff to buy short term stuff like players.

 

Maybe it's worth it and will prove to be so. Don't know myself, genuinely, just asking your opinion.

 

NB, maybe that's all moot if the stadium redevelopment promised at the takeover goes ahead and the hotel was just surplus to what the club needs (not a trick, asking as without looking into it you'll know better than me on all this).

[ikri]

On paper there's nothing wrong with the Arsenal stadium redevelopment or Chelsea selling a hotel.  It just looks all a bit dodgy when you start to consider the potential ramifications.

 

If PIF want to redevelop our training facilities, or move to a new site, what's to stop them from fronting the money for the club to then buy a bunch of potential sites in the area then allowing the club to sell off any of the sites that don't get the right permissions and banking the profit on paper for FFP purposes?  It would be both a completely legitimate, football related activity and at the same time an obvious trick to increase our revenue.

 

How do you account for an asset when it isn't counted when bought but is when it's sold?

[LFEE]

If we sold for argument sake Wilson & Almiron for a total of approximately £30m. What does that then allow us to spend this coming season?

[Jack27]

4 minutes ago, LFEE said:

If we sold for argument sake Wilson & Almiron for a total of approximately £30m. What does that then allow us to spend this coming season?

30m

[Dr.Spaceman]

9 minutes ago, LFEE said:

If we sold for argument sake Wilson & Almiron for a total of approximately £30m. What does that then allow us to spend this coming season?

 

Isn't it like 100 million or something?

[Colos Short and Curlies]

1 hour ago, ikri said:

On paper there's nothing wrong with the Arsenal stadium redevelopment or Chelsea selling a hotel.  It just looks all a bit dodgy when you start to consider the potential ramifications.

 

If PIF want to redevelop our training facilities, or move to a new site, what's to stop them from fronting the money for the club to then buy a bunch of potential sites in the area then allowing the club to sell off any of the sites that don't get the right permissions and banking the profit on paper for FFP purposes?  It would be both a completely legitimate, football related activity and at the same time an obvious trick to increase our revenue.

 

How do you account for an asset when it isn't counted when bought but is when it's sold?

in the real world the purchase goes on your balance sheet and then when you sell you first remove the asset and then take the profit through the P&L just like player sales.

 

so buying and selling land would only generate a profit if you bought it for less than you sold it.

 

fuck knows how ffp deals with it, I’d guess that the hotel Chelsea have sold has been owned for a while so was likely on the balance sheet at quite a low value compared to the sales price, regardless of any fmv shenanigans 

[duo]

How are PSG not breaching FFP rules? 

[Rod]

9 hours ago, The Prophet said:

A rare interating listen from Talksport.

I'm not sure where it is in the video but I listened to it live this morning.

Jim White asked Simon Jordan "why did you think Newcastle selling Alan St Maxim to a Saudia Arabia team was so wrong but you think Chelsea selling themselves a hotel is clever accounting"?  It's the first time I've heard that gobshite stutter and stammer.  Brilliant Jim.  Simon still never answered by the way.  Just used loads of long words that we mere normal people supposedly wouldn't understand.

[Conjo]

1 hour ago, duo said:

How are PSG not breaching FFP rules? 

 

They are, but they just pay the fine and move on.

[midds]

1 hour ago, duo said:

How are PSG not breaching FFP rules? 

From wiki:

 

Al-Khelaïfi was honored by ESPN as the seventh most influential individual in the realm of world football in 2015. His influence was further solidified in May 2020 when a France Football ranking positioned him as the most influential personality in the sport.

 

Draw your own conclusions