FFP

[Rory]

Ah relax.

I got called 'a fat Alex Horne' the other night.

Didn't really get that at all, you look nowt like Alex Horne. And I'm bigger so can't say anything on the other front.

Haha, how sweet.

I love Alex Horne.

It was the 'fat' that wounded me deeply. I grew my beard for the express purpose of hiding my fatness, goddamnit!

[Skipper_The_Eyechild]

Ah relax.

I got called 'a fat Alex Horne' the other night.

Didn't really get that at all, you look nowt like Alex Horne. And I'm bigger so can't say anything on the other front.

Haha, how sweet.

I love Alex Horne.

It was the 'fat' that wounded me deeply. I grew my beard for the express purpose of hiding my fatness, goddamnit!

I remember my uncle once saying to me 'You've only grown your beard to hide your chins' and I just said 'no shit, Sherlock'.

I also love Alex Horne. I even went to the Chicken v Egg match a few weeks ago. Probably the only acceptable half and half scarf in existence.

[Beard82]

Poorer League is probably the wrong word - over hyped and less entertaining.   Also I think there should be rules - I just dont think the current rules are in English footballs best interest. I accept that I might be in a minority - and understand the other view points - but thats just my view.

[AV82EC]

Ah relax.

I got called 'a fat Alex Horne' the other night.

Didn't really get that at all, you look nowt like Alex Horne. And I'm bigger so can't say anything on the other front.

Haha, how sweet.

I love Alex Horne.

It was the 'fat' that wounded me deeply. I grew my beard for the express purpose of hiding my fatness, goddamnit!

Listen pork features you’ll accept the fat taunts in the spirit they were intended. I just looked at the photo and saw Alex Horne but jowlier.

[Dogtanian]

Ah relax.

I got called 'a fat Alex Horne' the other night.

Didn't really get that at all, you look nowt like Alex Horne. And I'm bigger so can't say anything on the other front.

Haha, how sweet.

I love Alex Horne.

It was the 'fat' that wounded me deeply. I grew my beard for the express purpose of hiding my fatness, goddamnit!

Gentlemen, please! Being big is nothing to hide. 

And I'm a completely impartial judge, honest! 

[VILLA MOLE]

Poorer League is probably the wrong word - over hyped and less entertaining.   Also I think there should be rules - I just dont think the current rules are in English footballs best interest. I accept that I might be in a minority - and understand the other view points - but thats just my view.

if we had a cap on spending using the highest Turnover club for all, it would make it far more competitive.  You then restrict the amount of players you are allowed to buy and loan so you cant stock pile   

[paul_e]

Loads of clubs were going into administration and/or bust before the rules. The rules as they are also mean loads of clubs have little chance of catching us. We don't like the rules because we have billionaire owners, if we supported someone like Sheff Weds we'd most likely think Villa are a massive part of the problem and the club and fans are wankers.

Sorry but that bold bit is massively over-simplifying things. I'm sure there are people who want to see us go out and spend £200-300m on whoever we like but I don't think that's anything like the majority of people or a position with much support on here.

For me there are 4 major problems with FFP:
1. It puts entirely too much emphasis on non-football income, which means means media exposure has much more impact than sporting excellence, I don't think that's good for the sport, winning trophies should be more important for the health of the club tan hosting Beyonce concerts.
2. It doesn't account for debt. Regardless of where that debt comes from I'd like to see an inclusion of a requirement to reduce debts before throwing huge sums of money around (my simplistic idea would be to include a percentage, say 10%, of debts as a negative in the calculation, so if you're a billion in debt you start the calculation with -£100m already baked in). If these rules really are about long-term sustainability then they need to address long-term debts.
3. It encourges 'pure profit' sales which has led to some clubs creating academy farms for the purpose of generating sales to prop up thge first team. For me that is disgraceful (and this is the bit where I feel we've let ourselves down recently with sales like Kellyman, and Iroegbunam).
4. By allowing a handful of clubs to offer ridiculous fees and wages they've created an inflationary effect which forces clubs to operate at the brink of the rules to stay in touch, again this isn't healthy for the sport and has the exact opposite effect to the stated aim of the regs.

As I've said my solution would be that team costs (wages, fees, etc but not anything related to the ground, academy) should be capped to the average prize money for the league in the previous season, so take the premier league prize money median. To keep things 'fairer' for the teams that are winning things/qualifying for Europe, you then top up with 50% of earnings from other competitions on top but with the other 50% split and divided evenly across the league.

In practice that would mean:
Premier league share (25/26): ~£160m
Other comp share: ~£15-20m

So everyone gets £175-200m

Then you can add on up to about £50-60m extra for teams that went to the latter stages of the champions league.

That still gives them about a 30% advantage over the smaller clubs but that's a significant improvement on the 3-400% advantage in the current system. It would also massively reduce the value of huge commercial deals and take away incentives to get everything sponsored and also reduce the push to massively drive matchday revenues, which would hopefully stop the exploitative ticket pricing. This would have to be something introduced slowly as many teams are spending well over those figures on wages alone (including us) but give teams 5 years of a sliding scale to get their finances sorted and we'd be in a much better place for the future of the sport as a competitive one.

[Dave]

Cool - if everyone else thinks the PL have nailed it than I'm happy to concede.

They clearly haven't "nailed it". I don't think it's possible to "nail it", there isn't a way to do this which is completely fair and will make everybody happy. But that's not a new development, things tend to be weighted towards bigger, more successful teams. Something we've benefited from more than most over the years. 

But my point of contention is the conflation between things being bad and annoying for us, also being something that is bad for football. If the rules changed tomorrow to allow us to spend willy-nilly, that's great for Villa. It's not something that makes the league or the game any better than it currently is.

[Monty]

For my money (so to speak), the worst bit isn't really the restrictions on our spending so much as the various types of cheating allowed - famously Man City of course, but also Man Utd and Chelsea being allowed to continue spending despite being loaded with debt by the leveraged buy-outs. Not only is it bullshit, but surely it's a whole lot worse for even those clubs themselves long-term that this has been permitted, that this kind of debt is never taken into account?

[Percy McCarthy]

If Man Utd were better run and had no debt, god only knows how much they’d be able to spend. Up the Glazers!

[LeeB]

If Man Utd were better run and had no debt, god only knows how much they’d be able to spend. Up the Glazers!

Yes but that's why the rules need to change, we can't always rely on knights in shining armour like the Glazers or Clearlake Capitol to work their magic.

[Dogtanian]

I do think it is a joke that there is nothing in the rules about debt.

[Beard82]

Cool - if everyone else thinks the PL have nailed it than I'm happy to concede.

They clearly haven't "nailed it". I don't think it's possible to "nail it", there isn't a way to do this which is completely fair and will make everybody happy. But that's not a new development, things tend to be weighted towards bigger, more successful teams. Something we've benefited from more than most over the years. 

But my point of contention is the conflation between things being bad and annoying for us, also being something that is bad for football. If the rules changed tomorrow to allow us to spend willy-nilly, that's great for Villa. It's not something that makes the league or the game any better than it currently is.

Yeah - but I am not suggesting for a minute that anyone should be allowed to spend willy nilly.  I just think if it was more of a level playing field it would make for a better league, and less stockpiling of players and wasting of talent.

[Stu82]

If Man Utd were better run and had no debt, god only knows how much they’d be able to spend. Up the Glazers!

Yes but that's why the rules need to change, we can't always rely on knights in shining armour like the Glazers or Clearlake Capitol to work their magic.

Not sure Man Utd fans would consider them knights in shining armour.

[Dave]

Cool - if everyone else thinks the PL have nailed it than I'm happy to concede.

They clearly haven't "nailed it". I don't think it's possible to "nail it", there isn't a way to do this which is completely fair and will make everybody happy. But that's not a new development, things tend to be weighted towards bigger, more successful teams. Something we've benefited from more than most over the years. 

But my point of contention is the conflation between things being bad and annoying for us, also being something that is bad for football. If the rules changed tomorrow to allow us to spend willy-nilly, that's great for Villa. It's not something that makes the league or the game any better than it currently is.

Yeah - but I am not suggesting for a minute that anyone should be allowed to spend willy nilly.  I just think if it was more of a level playing field it would make for a better league, and less stockpiling of players and wasting of talent.

I reckon the playing field is as level as it's been in decades, in the Premier League at least.

Pretty much every team is rich enough that if they really want to keep a player they've got the financial heft to do so. Brentford and Bournemouth can go and spend tens of millions of pounds on stars who go on to play for Brazil in the World Cup and there's no real chat about other teams coming and taking them off them. The possibility of any team beating any other is probably greater than any other major league. There are various different teams winning the title and loads of different names qualifying for Europe each season.

If any playing field needs levelling (and I don't think it does) to make things "fairer", the place to start is the one between the Premier League and the other leagues in Europe.