Financial Fair Play

[SCOTTISH LEEDS]

From the YEP:-

The future of financial fair play rules for Championship clubs remains in doubt after four proposed changes were all defeated.

Several clubs have threatened legal action against the regulations but efforts to agree changes have failed.

The legal threat and concern about the impact of the new £23million parachute payments for the three clubs relegated from the top flight led league chiefs to review the regulations.

But all four proposals – three of them related to boosting the level of losses and owner investment permitted – were defeated in a vote by the 24 clubs.

The fourth proposal was for the rules to be imposed based on ‘real time’ financial figures instead of the existing retrospective system, but it too failed to attract the necessary 75 per cent backing.

Football League chief executive Shaun Harvey (pictured right) said other alternatives would now be examined.

Harvey said: “While a majority of clubs did vote in favour of each of the four proposals, they did not achieve the 75% support required. We will now continue the positive and collaborative dialogue we have had with Championship clubs on this issue to see if there is any appetite for alternative forms of change.”

Under the current system clubs will be permitted to lose £6million next season, but £3million of that must be covered by owner investment. There were three proposals to increase that allowance to either £10million, £11.4million or £12.8million.

Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore has also expressed serious concerns about the existing system – it is based on one year while controls over the top-flight clubs take into account three years’ figures and allow more owner investment. The first sanctions against Championship clubs will be announced in December based on accounts for the 2013/14 season.

QPR are the club most in danger – if they repeat the same figures as their record 2012/13 £65million loss they could be fined up to £48million even if they are promoted back to the Premier League. If they are still in the Championship they could also face a transfer embargo.

[Sheepy]

QPR will be fine, they are a London club.

But the whole mess about this proposed rule just goes to show how football is all wrong. In this country we literally have two league systems that can not work together. The fair play system itself is a decent idea, but the money in the Premier League and particular the money that filters to relegated premier league clubs makes such a rule impossible.

They keep going on about making a second tier of the premier league, hows about making a third and a fourth and going back to having all the 92 clubs under the same league system?

[Year Zero ITK]

Are you daft? Joking there, S.

Seriously though, it's brand brand brand, the bigger the better. If the PL had their way then they wouldn't even allow clubs in unless they had average gates of 30k plus. It's like the film industry, the big studios v the indies, generally the more money thrown at something makes it more audience appealing, though you frequently do get great quality coming from smaller clubs/films etc. I'll shut up now, I feel a tangent getting bigger and bigger

[Deleted User 2747]

Are you daft? Joking there, S.

Seriously though, it's brand brand brand, the bigger the better. If the PL had their way then they wouldn't even allow clubs in unless they had average gates of 30k plus. It's like the film industry, the big studios v the indies, generally the more money thrown at something makes it more audience appealing, though you frequently do get great quality coming from smaller clubs/films etc. I'll shut up now, I feel a tangent getting bigger and bigger

The Championshit (sorry Freudian mistype!!) Championship does need radical change, it is neither one thing or the other. The whole parachute payments thing, that is just like trying to cure a chronic disease by bandaging someone up!

Football is in a big mess, it basically like Mr Cellino says, teams need stop thinking they can live off caviar when all they can actually afford is fish paste!! If that were to happen, then parachute payments, which to me seem a bit of a crazy idea, wouldn't really be necessary.

There is something superbly right about teams in League 1 and 2 and below, who just go out and play football as it was meant to be, without all of this commercial and egotistical nonsense that goes on in the rest of the football world.

[dlw10]

The parachute payments are there to try to ensure it is difficult to break into the Prem.....they are so worried that a decent side will get relegated that they want to make sure everything is in favour of them getting back in quickly. It is all about self protection rather than fair competition. It is money protecting money as usual.

[Mellor]

I thought the parachute was there to help relegated clubs acclimatise to their reduced income whilst employing players on Prem wages/contracts who couldn't be moved on?

I doubt the Prem league are interested in protecting the Burnley's of this world when they drop. They'd rather have big hitters like ourselves in the top flight surely?

Interestingly droppers rarely get back first time even with their parachute.

Once upon a time the difference between no. 20 in the Prem and no. 1 in the Champs was little more than the grounds they visited. Separating the ruling bodies was bad for football, great for Premiership regulars. That plus Sky and the loss of flat caps ruined football as we knew it.

[Year Zero ITK]

When I hear the complaints about the parachute payments I try to think of how many clubs went straight back up in to the Prem. Not many of them.

[SCOTTISH LEEDS]

Interesting article about the FFP if QPR get promoted back to the Premier league:-

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/27538802

[Deleted User 2747]

Well I don't get it!

QPR have spent more than they should and are massively over the debt allowance in spite of receiving a parachute payment. They must be doubly guilty of breaching the intentions of these rules, yet are allowed to win promotion over other teams who haven't bent the rules to such an extent. There's a word for that!!!

[Year Zero ITK]

UNfair as it all seems, I've always been of the opinion that docking points or disallowing promotion/honours etc for financial irregularities isn't the right way to punish a club. I'd love to see qpr strongly dealt with but only in money terms.