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They should've been docked points and denied a place in the Play Offs.
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09-09-2014, 19:42
(This post was last modified: 09-09-2014, 19:44 by El Car.)
It's not actually been demonstrated yet that they've broken the rules though so I don't think they could have punished them as far back as the playoffs. That said, they could start asking for clubs to provide, say, monthly abbreviated accounts to show the rough financial position ahead of time. But then they'd probably just fix them if it looked like they would run over the limit.
For me the big problems here are: (1) that the Premier League and Football League are separate, hence QPR wouldn't face any footballing sanctions until they were relegated, which might be this season or might be 30 years down the line and; (2) the notion of hitting clubs that make a huge loss with an equally massive fine. That's one way to send a struggling company right out of business when it might otherwise be salvageable. Obviously there are those with owners with deep pockets, and in those cases it's not so harmful, but as a general principle I don't think it's a clever punishment. Severe footballing sanctions would be just as painful but would give the club at least a chance to survive if it falls into financial strife. If there was more integration between the FL and PL a club like QPR in this situation could be docked points in the current season (and future seasons if necessary) or banned from promotion for x seasons.
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Correct. Fines for a club in financial difficulty is daft. Fines for a club with billionaire chairmen are daft. Points deductions are the way forward.
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While I agree with the sentiment of FFP I cannot help wondering why its any bodies business if a billionaire chooses to prop up a football team with his own money?? I know thats simplistic but these rules were set up to stop clubs overspending and racking up huge debts that they could never really hope to pay back, surely in QPRs case the owner is well capable of overspending to the tune of 60m anyway? Surely the problem here is the way clubs are set up when they have a rich owner and as a company are increasing their debt by overspending and the owner is not clearing that debt even though he can afford it. Maybe a better system would be to see the owners of the club be required to pay off all debt over a certain amount at the end of each season, if they don't then sanctions can be applied. Not sure how that would work, but having these corporations set up by wealthy owners for the football club to be part of is just for tax purposes, remove that option and make the owner immediately responsible. That way if an owner wants to spend 100m to get promoted, then as long as he puts up the money then thats fine.
In France the top flight clubs have to put forward a budget before the season, maybe thats another way to do it but the prem teams again will resist it.
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Ska'd to be fair football is well past the "principle of sporting integrity"!!!! The very first Sky deals put paid to that and since then it has just gradually moved further away!! The creation of the PL was another nail in that coffin and the parachute payments for teams who fail sealed the coffin shut.
The days of a team like Wimbledon moving up the leagues and winning an FA Cup are i am afraid gone now unless you have an owner who is prepared to pump money into the club. As football fans we all want our teams to do well, we wanted to play in Division One and we all knew that if we could just make a few key signings and have a good manager we might just get there no matter what size our club was or how much money we had. That was part of the romance of football.
Now FFP is trying to bring some sanity to the clubs by preventing them from overspending, and I am fully behind that!! My team nearly went to the wall a couple of years ago through mismanagement and overspending and about 50% of the teams in the 4 divisions have been in admin or other financial situations at some point, but until the revenues between the PL and the other divisions are closer, the need for the rich owner to get up to the promised land will not go away and as a consequence of the disparity in money, teams like QPR will way overspend to try to get there. FFP while laudable will only end up rewarding the rich clubs over and over again because it almost makes it impossible for a team such as Sheffield Wednesday to challenge consistently with the teams who have failed in the PL and are on parachute payments that amount to more than our total revenue!!!
To me, FFP will only work if the PL adopt the same principles and apply the same restrictions on the teams in the top flight. I know UEFA are doing something similar but it only applies to those in Europe and for them the money is already there. The championship is littered with clubs with proud histories of top flight football, league titles, FA Cups and even European Cup successes, but none of them had that rich owner at the right time!! I think its only a matter of time before the PL becomes a closed shop like US sports where relegation and promotion are removed and heaven forbid if that occurs while your team is sat in the Championship and not the PL!!!!
