JM2K6 wrote: ↑Wed Jul 15, 2020 10:02 am
Hugo wrote: ↑Tue Jul 14, 2020 7:05 am
earl the beaver wrote: ↑Mon Jul 13, 2020 10:37 am
FFP rules as they stand are designed to ensure that the teams at the top stay at the top and to prevent teams from challenging them.
There is a need for a mechanism to ensure clubs don't spend beyond their means and end up with clubs going under when an investor pulls their funding, but FFP is not it.
Good post.
What's the point of tying to prevent City spending what they can afford to spend while a club like Wigan went into administration two weeks ago?
Gary Neville said it perfectly, there is nothing wrong with people purchasing football clubs and investing their own money in them just so long as they honour their contracts and commitments. The goal should not be to place a ceiling on investment but to weed the chancers and parasites out of ownership.
Why penalise clubs who can afford the wages and transfers that they pay? By any measure Chelsea and City's owners have been better for their respective clubs than Kroenke at Arsenal and the Glazers yet its the former who are always more heavily criticized as being "bad for the game".
I'm not sure that last sentence is true. The Glazers have been subject to a lot of criticism. The problem with Abramovitch et al is that they drive up costs for everyone else and directly contribute to the inequality of the league, and damage the competitive nature of the sport. It didn't start with Chelsea - let's face it, United had an unfair financial advantage for years - but it can't be ignored. It has plenty of relevance in rugby, too, and is a really good reason why the English salary cap has to stay reasonable for all clubs, not just the top 3.
It's all well and good saying that City's owners are good for City. Well, yeah, they've spent well. But they've spent vast sums to buy success, and they're also using it as reputational whitewashing for an oppressive regime. It's a double-whammy of shite.
The reputational whitewashing line has been espoused by Miguel Delaney and a handful of Irish journalists but I'm not entirely convinced.
Most of the publicity that Man City's owners get as it pertains to their ownership of the club and their involvement in football is negative. Also, their ownership has opened them up to scrutiny that they would otherwise have never had to deal with. If its a PR exercise its very ineffective, if not entirely counterproductive.
The complaints about one team being able to buy success with a cheque book can be traced all the way back to the dawn of the professional era in England where the southern amateur clubs decried the professionalized northern clubs and their propensity to hire Scottish mercenaries. In that regard this is nothing new.
That said I'm instinctively in favour of mechanisms like salary caps that promote competitive balance and ensure clubs spend within their means thus making the sport and league more sustainable. I would actually welcome one in the Premier league but until that day I'm not going to get overly excited over one teams financial advantage when it was ever thus.
