Is FFP fair on fans?

[sillytuna]

Read this from a QPR fan and find myself agreeing. Essentially he is saying FFP is just hurting the clubs not at the top, and nor is it working anyway since clubs like Leicester and now us gamble.

As a fan, even as a neutral, I couldn't give a crap about Leicester and FFP. All fans would have killed for that chance as long as the club itself isn't put into long term debt.

https://www.fansnetwork.co.uk/football/queensparkrangers/news/46804/coming-home-to-roost-–-column

There is also an article on the Guardian today about the boredom factor if you aren't in the top six clubs, which had been commented on here with regard to Pulis down the road.

 

[Deleted member 5962]

Read this from a QPR fan and find myself agreeing. Essentially he is saying FFP is just hurting the clubs not at the top, and nor is it working anyway since clubs like Leicester and now us gamble.

As a fan, even as a neutral, I couldn't give a crap about Leicester and FFP. All fans would have killed for that chance as long as the club itself isn't put into long term debt.

https://www.fansnetwork.co.uk/football/queensparkrangers/news/46804/coming-home-to-roost-–-column

There is also an article on the Guardian today about the boredom factor if you aren't in the top six clubs, which had been commented on here with regard to Pulis down the road.

The bolded part is exactly why FFP is here. Is it perfect? No, not at all, but this is attempt by the football league to basically force teams to show fiscal resposibility, because too many want bust when they were throwing money around like kids in a sweet shop.

 

[sillytuna]

Is it perfect? It's not really working.

At the moment some clubs find ways around it, even at the very top (psg, city) and it's locking in the status quo elsewhere.

 

[Deleted member 5962]

Is it perfect? It's not really working.

At the moment some clubs find ways around it, even at the very top (psg, city) and it's locking in the status quo elsewhere.

Clubs that can earn more, can spend more, that was always the case. The FFP rules technically are only there to stop small teams bankrupting themselves trying to compete.

 

[Bugsy911]

Clubs that can earn more, can spend more, that was always the case. The FFP rules technically are only there to stop small teams bankrupting themselves trying to compete.

Or is It actually to keep the status quo of the elite as you'll never compete with the financial clout and fan babase they've had time to build.

Take us for example we can afford pretty much anything yet are restricted by for so at what point do you get to bridge the ever growing gap between us and the top clubs?

 

[Trill]

When FFP was first announced, I was rather supportive of the idea, but as time passed that plummeted and while yes I think it is a necessary measure to stop clubs from potentially destroying themselves. FFP does little more but maintains the status quo, we all saw how much money City had to throw at it to become one of the big boys.
I can just imagine fans of many long-term Premier League clubs wondering "What's the point?". Whats the point when the best you can hope for is staying in the Premier League. How monotonous must it be for that to be considered an achievement?

And here's the Guardian article mentioned in OP, pretty decent article to be honest: https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...-league-dissatisfaction-fans-everton-west-ham

 

[Ironfistedmonk]

The big clubs must love FFP, it means no one else can join their little cartel, FFP is well intentioned but it does kill any kind of serious competition for the established sides, Leicester being a one off and a bit of an anomaly IMO

 

[SingYourHeartsOut]

When Blackburn won the league I remember telling a mate who is a supporter of their's that it was rubbish to just buy the league. Then SJH came along and suddenly I thought spending to buy success was a great idea. Then we had Morgan and Moxey and FFP seemed like a good idea again, now we have Fosun it's OK if we spend (invest?) more than we earn.

The best thing that has happened in the Prem is that the TV deal means that there is more of a level playing field than when being in the Champions' League was everything. It was never fair and it never will be but we shouldn't have a league where some reckless idiot can borrow a fortune win trophies and then vanish leaving a mess behind.

 

[Dan G WWFC]

It's aim is to stop teams doing a Leeds or a Portsmouth.

But it just helps teams monopoly the leagues.

Hinders teams moving onto another level.

 

[ShropshireLad]

And here's the Guardian article mentioned in OP, pretty decent article to be honest: https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...-league-dissatisfaction-fans-everton-west-ham

To be fair, the fans of clubs in all three lower divisions (to a much lesser extent in the Chump) know that they'll never dine at the top table. They dream of promotion and a couple of Cup wins with a dream of an extended run in the lower league trophy. That's why I really like talking to fans of lower league clubs, they're as passionate about their team and their players as anyone.

 

[ShifnalWolf]

FFP essentially ensured that the top 6 or so teams that were at the top in 2010 will remain there for the next 50 years, which is grossly unfair.

You can't lock in the top teams, if you looked at 1950/1960/1970/1980/1990/2000 you would have had a different 6.

 

[Poztin]

To be fair to Jez, despite working under strict financial constraints, he was against FFP due to it enforcing the status quo as mentioned above.

The rules should have some sort of change to allow rich owners to inject more capital, with safeguard guarantees in place providing financial buffers of x number of years.

 

[Deleted member 4023]

Its QPR - the fine is long overdue.

 

[sillytuna]

FFP is well intentioned but it hasn't stopped clubs like Blackburn and QPR ending up a mess.

The principles are agreeable but in reality it just isn't working.

If you haven't read the two articles in this thread, they make some good points.

It takes money to succeed. I see little point in locking in the top six. What we should be doing is making a better job of ownership and ways to invest money at the owner's risk and not the club's.

FFP is not protecting QPR and it won't protect Wolves if Fosun leave us high and dry. It's doing the very opposite. It incentives gambling, impedes progress, and locks in the current big clubs.

 

[astraltrader]

Clubs that can earn more, can spend more, that was always the case. The FFP rules technically are only there to stop small teams bankrupting themselves trying to compete.

And yet if clubs fall foul of the FFP rules what happens to them??
They get fined a huge amount of money.
That really helps prevent them from bankrupting themselves!!

 

[Deleted member 5962]

And yet if clubs fall foul of the FFP rules what happens to them??
They get fined a huge amount of money.
That really helps prevent them from bankrupting themselves!!

What other punishment would you advocate? The current ones of a huge fine or expulsion from the league are the equivalent of holding an axe over someones head, yet teams still try and play it. What other punishment could you propose that would not result in teams just outright laughing it off?

 

[astraltrader]

What other punishment would you advocate? The current ones of a huge fine or expulsion from the league are the equivalent of holding an axe over someones head, yet teams still try and play it. What other punishment could you propose that would not result in teams just outright laughing it off?

Mate you were the one who said the FFP rules technically are only there to stop small teams bankrupting themselves.
I just pointed out that imposing a huge fine on those that break the rules would hardly help them stay financially stable.
With regard to what other punishment would be appropriate is not down to me to suggest!

 

[Deleted member 5962]

Mate you were the one who said the FFP rules technically are only there to stop small teams bankrupting themselves.
I just pointed out that imposing a huge fine on those that break the rules would hardly help them stay financially stable.
With regard to what other punishment would be appropriate is not down to me to suggest!

I agree about disliking the fine, my point was basically, that the fines as they are are basically like holding an axe over the club's head to scare them into not breaking FFP, Ideally I'd think another punishment would be better, I just dont know what you could do that wouldnt basically just kill off any club that broke the rules.

 

[Honved]

I support FFP in principle.

I'm sure we all grew tired during the last premier league stay, of running out against teams who had over a decade of being able to throw money around, while we'd been stuck in the championship watching our bottom line. It was draining. Knowing that, in modern football, the best we could ever hope for was a (low) top ten finish.

In practise, though, FFP isn't helping.

It's stopping teams from being able to grow. Football Manager should almost never be used to support an argument on real football, however, in the most recent game I've run into trouble for progressing Wolves to a point where they can compete at the top, only to be in breach of FFP because signing top players has pushed me over the allowable wage growth. As I say, I'm loath to use FM for real arguments, but I think it speaks to an issue.

I see two fixes.

Firstly, new owners should be allowed to invest a certain amount up front, free from FFP (e.g., Fosun should be able to have said 'we're putting 100 million into the team and wages free from FFP, FFP kicks in after that.)

Secondly, do away with it, and create a tax instead. So we set a threshold. Say, for the current market, 70 million in fees and 150k a week in wages. If Man City, for instance, want to spend over that? If they want to spend 300 million on Messi, and pay him 500k a week in wages? They can. But for everything they spend over the threshold, they pay a percentage into a pot. The money from that pot is divided between other clubs, and also used to create an emergency fund for clubs who run into trouble.

 

[sillytuna]

The point is that it isn't working. Owners just gamble anyway and put the club at risk!

The rules are not protecting us one bit from Fosun doing us over.

 

[Derby Wolf]

It hinders the 'social mobility' within football. Well intentioned but doesn't fulfil its intended function.

 

[SakosRightFoot]

If you look at the lower leagues and to an extent even the championship the divisions are generally pretty competitive and you get different clubs at the top, Huddersfield being promoted last year, Shrewsburys turnaround this year in league one. FFP is a vital barrier to stop clubs spending beyond their means, because when they were all going bust there was a nice rule that said football creditors get paid in full and the rest including the taxman and all the local businesses who dealt with the clubs got shafted.

The problem comes because being in the prem is so lucrative over half the league are just trying to stay in it. Theres no real incentive to try and build something or change a philosophy because like Palace and De Boer or Everton and Koeman owners panic after a few games. The result becomes pretty sterile matches in sterile stadiums where fans just aren't that bothered anymore.

Theres probably quite a nice irony in that a lot of people calling for limits to be taken off and clubs to be allowed to borrow and spend what they dont have driving up debt are likely also against moneyshop being a sponsor

 

[sillytuna]

No one is saying clubs should be able to spend what they don't have. They are saying the current rules just don't work because clubs can and do still do precisely that. It has had some effect but that causes the market to stale. Read the two links.

Owners should be able to chuck cash in but at their risk and not the club's. The current rules allow Fosun to leave us up **** creek. Also consider that Porto fans have seen us grab neves on the cheap. The same could happen to us, leaving us in the red (his salary will be huge too).

QPR have been left in an situation where owner excesses have left the club in a mess with absolutely no requirement on the owner to deal with it. The fine punishes everyone but the guilty and in theory takes QPR out of business (in practice they couldn't fine that much). So who is it helping and who is it hurting?

QPR's owner took on the debt so it wasn't the club's even, and still it's the club who get hit. Basically, owners can still do what they wish and walk away having destroyed clubs, just in a slightly different way

 

[SakosRightFoot]

No one is saying clubs should be able to spend what they don't have. They are saying the current rules just don't work because clubs can and do still do precisely that. It has had some effect but that causes the market to stale. Read the two links.

Owners should be able to chuck cash in but at their risk and not the club's.

The current rules aren't perfect but the clubs who've broken them are generally those suffering longer term issues, for instance QPR fell foul under the previous rules, not as they are set out now. Had the current system been in place at the time they wouldn't have been allowed to be promoted, which is when they then overspent again causing them such issues now.

Not sure which market you mean when you say its stale, The transfer market is far from stale, it's driven by the ever increasing income from premier leagues dribbling down. It's probably true clubs in leagues one and two spend less in terms of transfer fees but thats not necessarily a bad thing, things like bosman mean there is far bigger churn in squads than before.

It's all very well saying owners should be able to chuck their own cash in but that doesn't make the game any fairer, it just means those with the richest owners have more success, not sure how thats any different to now. Plus owners just wouldn't do that anyway, famously the glazers transferredall the debt from buying the club onto the club not themselves, you'd basically have man city and chelsea at the top and everyone else struggling.

What will happen over the next few years is clubs will develop new strategies, look at us, we've put in place a policy of buying young foreign talents with high potential resale values, we worked out you can spread the cost of a Costa or Neves over a lengthy contract but sell and the money all counts now. It's kind of what Chelsea and Man City are doing with their academies, look at the figures they've been selling academy players for and how it reduces their net spends

 

[that bloke there]

Maybe Redknap should just have been banned from being a manager years ago.

 

[astraltrader]

I agree about disliking the fine, my point was basically, that the fines as they are are basically like holding an axe over the club's head to scare them into not breaking FFP, Ideally I'd think another punishment would be better, I just dont know what you could do that wouldnt basically just kill off any club that broke the rules.

Fairly put AW. Maybe a points penalty might be a fairer option??

 

[sillytuna]

I much prefer a system where incumbents face increased competition and where small clubs have a better chance to make it.

Money talks anyway, whether we like it or not. Our way is still to get a rich owner and spend a lot of money. Sure money which finally seems well spent but time will tell.

 

[that bloke there]

Wouldn't point deductions be the best way forward?

 

[Deleted member 5962]

Wouldn't point deductions be the best way forward?

Points deductions are within the current punishment spectrum I believe.

 

[SakosRightFoot]

Points deductions are within the current punishment spectrum I believe.

Yes they are, clubs have to submit a projection of the current season early in the new year so their accounts can be studied, anyone found to be flouting the rules and going for promotion can be docked points or demoted a number of positions so it takes effect that season.

The reason QPR are subject to a fine is they broke the rules under the previous system. They can have no complaints, they knew what they were doing, same as Bournemouth and Leicester, they just thought they were untouchable in the prem, that loophole is now closed and they came back down anyway.

 

[SakosRightFoot]

I much prefer a system where incumbents face increased competition and where small clubs have a better chance to make it.

Money talks anyway, whether we like it or not. Our way is still to get a rich owner and spend a lot of money. Sure money which finally seems well spent but time will tell.

Apologies but that doesn’t make sense, on one hand you want a fairer system to give smaller clubs a chance and on the other you want to be able to have a rich owner buy success?

FFP isn’t perfect, but it is the best system for allowing a team like Huddersfield to challenge for promotion, or Burton to be in the championship at all.

 

[purplepault69]

Wouldn't point deductions be the best way forward?

But wouldn't that just poke all fans in the eye--much prefer to hit the Directors in the pocket--not the clubs pocket the Directors own back pocket or suspend them from being Directors.

 

[that bloke there]

But wouldn't that just poke all fans in the eye--much prefer to hit the Directors in the pocket--not the clubs pocket the Directors own back pocket or suspend them from being Directors.

It will hurt the fans but it will help the fans of the clubs that are playing the game the right way. But banning the individuals from owning or running clubs as well would help, I agree. I don't believe Wolves are going to break the rules, I think it's all in hand. We seem to be buying well.

 

[BlahBlah]

Surely the point here is that football, as a world competition has no barrier to anybody spending whatever they like?
Pointless bringing it in at such a point when clubs like ManU are already 100x bigger than some clubs they could compete against.
It's different to sports like NFL, Rugby, Baseball, Basketball....where the integrity of the competition is more important than any single club to ensure that supporters do not become disenfranchised and end up slipping away because they know their team will never have a chance of winning anything.
FFP is not designed to franchise supporters or prevent them from getting bored or "worse off". It's no different to the way our country is being run, just pure capitalism where there are more losers than winners, and the winners make sure they stay in control.

 

[sillytuna]

Apologies but that doesn’t make sense, on one hand you want a fairer system to give smaller clubs a chance and on the other you want to be able to have a rich owner buy success?

FFP isn’t perfect, but it is the best system for allowing a team like Huddersfield to challenge for promotion, or Burton to be in the championship at all.

Richer clubs always have an advantage however how rich a club is can change at any time due to owners, over and above their core commercials anyway.

You can't buy success but you can buy a potential advantage.

FFP puts a ceiling there for Huddersfield unless they gamble. Leicester did and won. QPR did and lost. FFP be damned.

 

[SakosRightFoot]

Richer clubs always have an advantage however how rich a club is can change at any time due to owners, over and above their core commercials anyway.

You can't buy success but you can buy a potential advantage.

FFP puts a ceiling there for Huddersfield unless they gamble. Leicester did and won. QPR did and lost. FFP be damned.

But it didn’t did it as Huddersfield won promotion on a budget far far smaller than other teams, look at Sheffield United this season or Preston or Bristol City being amongst the top 8. They all provide evidence that clubs can be successful and challenge without needing to spend beyond their means.

FFP isn’t the reason QPR are in financial trouble, their irresponsible owners who knowingly flouted the rules by 7 times the permitted losses and operated with a wage bill more than twice their turnover are to blame.

 

[astraltrader]

But it didn’t did it as Huddersfield won promotion on a budget far far smaller than other teams, look at Sheffield United this season or Preston or Bristol City being amongst the top 8. They all provide evidence that clubs can be successful and challenge without needing to spend beyond their means.

FFP isn’t the reason QPR are in financial trouble, their irresponsible owners who knowingly flouted the rules by 7 times the permitted losses and operated with a wage bill more than twice their turnover are to blame.

Indeed but fining them over £50M will hardly help their situation.
I think I was the first person in this thread to state that a points deduction would be a fairer way to punish clubs who break the FFP rules.
I will never understand that if FFP rules are there to help prevent clubs getting into a near bankrupt situation then fining them a massive amount of money on top makes no sense, surely??
So to answer the OP, FFP is ultimately NOT fair on fans....

 

[SakosRightFoot]

Indeed but fining them over £50M will hardly help their situation.
I think I was the first person in this thread to state that a points deduction would be a fairer way to punish clubs who break the FFP rules.
I will never understand that if FFP rules are there to help prevent clubs getting into a near bankrupt situation then fining them a massive amount of money on top makes no sense, surely??
So to answer the OP, FFP is ultimately NOT fair on fans....

It won’t help the situation that’s true but those were the rules at the time, and as I keep saying they knew those were the rules and broke them anyway.

It’s like a guy driving at 60 miles an hour in a 30 zone and gets pulled by police asking to have the awareness course instead of the points and likely ban.

 

[sillytuna]

Yes but the problem is it hurts the fans more than anyone else and it hasn't stopped the problem.

Did you read both the links? It's actually more complicated than that anyway.