Its looks pretty certain that City are going to sweep up a treble this season.
You cannot take away from them the quality of their players, the coach and their play. They are a mighty impressive outfit !
We all know that they have been fast-tracked from a yoyo club to a global superpower through massive owner investment. At the outset of this 'project' it was largely unregulated by UEFA FFP was introduced to limit the ability of hugely wealthy owners stepping in and unlevelling the playing field with limitless spending.
It was called Financial Fair Play as it intended to limit this ability for any one club to have an uncompetitive financial advantage which would allow them to dominate.
This was, of course, encouraged by the traditional big European clubs who suddenly found their cosy position of domination under threat, and unable to compete financially, or at least being challenged financially by what some would call financially doped clubs. The Old Boys club was being upset, and you can see the same thing with the big European being dominated financially by the PL.
Chelsea achieved similar success at every level and while PSG havent quite, they have been able to spend wild sums of money. On a smaller scale similar approaches have seen the Red Bull teams promoted to high levels in the European games
The question is, is this harmful? Man City have certainly enriched the Premier League, but now they are beginning to dominate it which is less desirable.
Would you say City's quick rise to the top has been harmful to the PL? Yes it's upsetting to some and especially those seeking to organically grow.
Has Chelsea's ability to spend massively under Roman, racking up huge debts, unbalanced things? I would say they, more so than City, are responsible for skewing the transfer market.
If you imagine a world where these clubs were not allowed to invest money they didnt earn, we'd probably be looking at even greater levels of domination by United and greater success and growing domination of Liverpool in recent years. Great for those clubs but would it have made the PL any better, for other clubs and other fans?
Spurs would likely have made Top 4 more often, which may have allowed them to develop quicker and give them a better chance of success and ability to challenge the top teams.
If the rules were removed then would we see more owners like Boehly happy to spend massively, without limit or fear that they'll have to balance the books to be more FFP compliant.
Would this grow the gap between the haves and have nots, or would it mean that any old club could win the lottery and be projected onto a path of glory, making the league more competitive?
Long term would this be sustainable or would it just implode at some point leaving some clubs in financial ruin?
Right now is seems like an unfair competition in that there are some "drug cheats" who used the old system to get to the top and its very hard for others to close that gap in an organic way and with FFP preventing such investment.
So should the ability to do this be removed and tightened further, or should the rules just be removed and allow market forces to determine what happens?
Football Owner Investment
posted on 7/6/23
Maybe other super rich teams should just get better and try and compete that way instead of just moaning it's not fair all the time? Manchester United, Chelsea, Leicester and Liverpool have all won the PL title since City won their first, and Arsenal should have won it this year too, so teams CAN compete with Man City.
So long as spending doesn't put the future of a club at risk then I don't see the problem. I have far more issues with a club being run (or fleeced for wont of a better term...) whilst a billion in debt than I do one with no debts whatsoever, and so should the authorities. FFP was supposedly brought in to prevent clubs going to the wall. Given it was clearly never about that after all, then I couldn't care less if City win the league every season for the next 50 years.
posted on 7/6/23
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't FFP introduced to prevent clubs bankrupting themselves through unsustainable borrowing and spending practices, rather than to prevent owners from investing infinitely on playing staff?
posted on 7/6/23
comment by Jose Mauricio (U6489)
posted 13 minutes ago
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't FFP introduced to prevent clubs bankrupting themselves through unsustainable borrowing and spending practices, rather than to prevent owners from investing infinitely on playing staff?
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The clue is in the name. Financial Fair Play.
It may have been spun as a means to prevent clubs over stretching but the driving force was to stop outliers being fast tracked into financial powerhouses and upsetting the European Elite.
posted on 7/6/23
comment by Champers - Pow! Right in the kisser (U6859)
posted 19 minutes ago
Maybe other super rich teams should just get better and try and compete that way instead of just moaning it's not fair all the time? Manchester United, Chelsea, Leicester and Liverpool have all won the PL title since City won their first, and Arsenal should have won it this year too, so teams CAN compete with Man City.
So long as spending doesn't put the future of a club at risk then I don't see the problem. I have far more issues with a club being run (or fleeced for wont of a better term...) whilst a billion in debt than I do one with no debts whatsoever, and so should the authorities. FFP was supposedly brought in to prevent clubs going to the wall. Given it was clearly never about that after all, then I couldn't care less if City win the league every season for the next 50 years.
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Man City are a very well run club but to to suggest that they dont have debt is wrong. They racked up recod breaking losses which have been covered by their owners. They just happen to have had owners willing to suck that up. Not every club is in a position to do this. In 2011 City made £195m losses in a single season, their wages alone exceeded their entire revenue. That could not be sustained by most owners and that is where the unfairness comes in. It would be like playing fantasy football with mates but you have an unlimited budget. Guess who wins?
I agree that teams like United and Liverpool could have been better run to take advantage of their financial position but the likes of Leicester could never compete off, their revenues, their purchasing power is nothing compared to City et al.
You say Arsenal SHOULD have won it this year but why? They clearly lacked the depth of squad to be able to compete for the whole season and they looked spent in the last month or 2. City's depth of squad saw them through, able to rest key players at will.
posted on 7/6/23
Most clubs have owners who are fabulously rich, FFP has been a Godsend to those owners who just want to skim the profits but are shy about actually investing money to boost the value of their 'brand'.
posted on 7/6/23
“Man City are a very well run club but to to suggest that they dont have debt is wrong.“
Depends on the point that’s being made. We don’t have debt but like you say, it’s due to the owner converting it into equity up to 2016. That’s an issue if people think football clubs should only spend what they earn themselves. If it’s around protection of clubs, then actually it’s a very good thing and more owners should be encouraged to do it - I’ve always argued ffp should look at the balance sheet as well as the p&l.
In terms of the dominance side of things, we’re in a position now where (putting the potential outcome of the charges to one side!) we’re now at the top table and once there, due to the distribution of wealth within the game ignoring everything else, it’s difficult not to stay there.
I do think that our current level of dominance will significantly drop once Pep goes though too. It’s just that a bad season now is still probably going to mean CL qualification or challenging for it
Personally, I’d love to see a complete Renault of the distribution within the game and rules of ownership. The boat on that has long since sailed, I’m still bitter about the formation of the PL and changes made to ownership in the late eighties.
posted on 7/6/23
Rehaul not Renault!
posted on 7/6/23
U-Haul
posted on 7/6/23
Newcastle will not be able to spend in the same way that City did. They may have the resources to do so but the need to balance the books for FFP is a limitation on the speed of growth.
What i find interesting, and a constant struggle at Spurs, is that few clubs in this league can guarantee UCL qualification and the masses of money that brings. All of Spurs United Arsenal Liverpool Chelsea have missed out over the years so its hard to plan spending and budgets if revenues could be wildly different from year to year. Spurs European revenues went from about 90m to 55m to about 15m in 3 years.
Much like the drive to get promoted to the PL, the need to come top 4 puts pressure on clubs to spend to make sure it happens but the fall out from that can also set you back.
The current structure with the massive rewards for UEFAs Champions League are all part of the problem that UEFAs fair play is trying to address.
I wouldnt want a contrived system like the US draft system but a better distribution of revenue would be better all round but never voted for by the major clubs, as the ESL showed. They want an even bigger slice.