FFP

[Dave]

^^
Especially when it’s not a fair and level playing field.

I keep banging on about it, and I know it’s monotonous, but the fact we are so hamstrung by pathetic financial governances, imposed by 2 different football authorities, while other clubs spend money with impunity purely because of who they are, is really pissing me off.

I appreciate this isn't going to be a popular opinion, but we don't want it to be "a fair and level playing field", we want the thumb that's currently on the scales to be moved a tiny bit more so that it benefits us more than it already is.

Other clubs spend money that we can't spend due to their greater revenues. Just like we've been spending money that clubs earning less than us can't spend. I'm sure, I dunno, Eintracht Frankfurt or Villarreal would love to have chucked a couple of hundred million and a few hundred thousand a week at new players when we were. But they can't.

Sporting CP's wage bill (now they've sold Gyokeres) is around one twelfth of ours. How about rather than levelling the playing field so that one more club can spend whatever they want, how about levelling it the other way so that a solid Premier League side isn’t able to spend ten times on wages what the best sides in most other countries can?

If the rules meant that everything was done on integrity,  sporting merit, wise investment and club administration rather than the bigger clubs just bullying the rest, we'd probably still be pissing around in the Championship. But we're not, because we used our size and greater spending power to smack the likes of Bristol City and Middlesbrough out of our way. I imagine we'd have given their moaning about fairness and level playing fields pretty short-shrift at the time.

[Toronto Villa]

All of that is correct. But in the PL the gap to those who have generated those commercial revenues in past years means under the new rules the rest can’t catch up. And it’s not like Man City or Chelsea as examples did it solely through footballing means. Neither club prior to massive ownership investment were anything in the football landscape prior to that. I’ve no issue with Man U, Liverpool, even Arsenal. They won a load of trophies before the likes of Abramovich and Mansour rolled in. It’s just that now, commercial revenues through football is much harder to achieve and so the gap is harder to close. And if we cannot close the gap because we cannot spend and we don’t win then we get trapped in the cycle.

[Stu82]

Excellent points Dave, puts a different perspective on the situation.

We are still being held back by the corrupt rules, but one of many.

[PeterWithesShin]

We're football fans, so we're generally hypocrites. It's part of being a fan We want rules changed so as they benefit us and we can spend more. At the same we want to be able to spend more than Palace/Fulham etc so as they stay behind us. Most wouldn't want the rules changed if we were already one of the Sky6.

[Toronto Villa]

Yes. But teams above us in large part got there generating revenues in a manner that would be banned today. So how do you now catch up to those teams if the methods to get there are much more restrictive? The essence of the rule is correct but when like Chelsea or Man City they found “creative” ways to generate revenues to spend more and acquire success, now clubs that didn’t under the current rules cannot bridge the gap. This isn’t about us. It’s about any club looking to improve. Sure every so often a Palace wins something. But the obvious few will win most of the trophies because they can continue to invest heavily and disproportionately to every other team.

[PeterWithesShin]

We've sold our ground to ourselves, we've sold our women's team, we've done mutually benficial transfers, we buy and sell players like they are merchandise where our only interest is resale, we charge obscene ticket prices, we've spent money most clubs can only dream of spending. We're not some plucky little club fighting against all odds, we're as big a part of the problem as other clubs. We are many of the things wrong with modern football.

[Toronto Villa]

We’ve done all those things just to stay on the right of the current rules. None of which bridges the gap to the sides above us. Who in large part got ahead because they did things that aren’t allowed today. The question is how do we grow commercial revenues significantly enough so that we can actually compete for the best players and win things. Because winning things ultimately drives up commercial revenues. Again this isn’t about us. It’s about every team trying to catch up. It won’t ever be a level playing field. But the field seems overly lopsided right now.