Football Titbits

[bodacious benny]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/68630567

...And mollycoddled PL players and managers with the best of everything cry at 2 games a week

[seaside nipper]

City have already been charged. It's just they are using £££ to have expensive lawyers stymy the process. The PL are weak, but they are trying something

Exactly...nothing is happening.

The lesson to everyone is to break the rules so many times that it will take years (or decades) to resolve. Don't do it just once as that's easy for them to punish you. Easy. Lets win 10 PLs, a few FA Cups, CLs etc. and worry about the punishment in 2036. I'd take that.

Yup
In all seriousness if Man City are proven as guilty then the credibility of the entire league is completely shot.
We know it is in all its finely choreographed glory in any guise, but to legitimately condemn Champions would be way too far for all parties

[bodacious benny]

https://www.givemesport.com/over-35s-wo ... n-england/

This will actually be decent! I’m more interested in seeing this than the EUROs!

[UlversToon]

https://www.givemesport.com/over-35s-wo ... n-england/

This will actually be decent! I’m more interested in seeing this than the EUROs!

"Many football legends are set to participate, including Ronaldinho, Kaka, Carlues Puyol, Thierry Henry and Frank Lampard."

Almost sounds like Lampard was an after thought!

[bodacious benny]

Leicester doing their best Arsenal impression to absolutely bottle winning the league.

[Colback's Orange Tufts]

Exactly...nothing is happening.

The lesson to everyone is to break the rules so many times that it will take years (or decades) to resolve. Don't do it just once as that's easy for them to punish you. Easy. Lets win 10 PLs, a few FA Cups, CLs etc. and worry about the punishment in 2036. I'd take that.

In all seriousness if Man City are proven as guilty then the credibility of the entire league is completely shot.
We know it is in all its finely choreographed glory in any guise, but to legitimately condemn Champions would be way too far for all parties

I feel the credibility is shot is they are NOT found guilty. It's obvious they've been economical with the truth. If they manage to get out of it (court of arbitration for sport?) then it's open season

[beatski]

Iron Mike is in the running for league 2s manager of the season

[bodacious benny]

Another 2 point deduction for Everton.

[TJR]

Comical how low the point deductions are. We might as well just breach ffp as the benefits far outweigh the punishment.

[Timshorts 2]

2 points per season is next to nothing. Wolves have lost 3 times that (probably more) just through var decisions.

And the Russians invading Ukraine doesn't seem much of an excuse. What next? Liz truss happened?

[Chappy]

I don't fully understand it all tbh... deduct them 10, to reduce to 6, then add on 2?? Where's the logic there?

[Colly]

I don't fully understand it all tbh... deduct them 10, to reduce to 6, then add on 2?? Where's the logic there?

Two separate charges across two separate periods. They were deducted 10 (reduced to 6) for I believe 21/22, this latest 2 points is for 22/23.

[Don Sholeone]

There is no logic, FFP isn't worth the paper it's written on, if Everton wanted they could probably appeal and take the whole thing beyond the PL. The fact that they don't even know how to punish teams shows how little thought went into the rules. They only cared about keeping an artificially induced gap between clubs by trying to eliminate financial competition.

I have a theory that the Man City one has gone nowhere is because they have the financial muscle to go toe to toe with the PL, they are almost taking the piss out of the whole thing and they have owners who will fight to the very end in the case. The rules are weak as piss and have no foundation to them, people are starting to see it hence all the changes being touted and scrapping of deductions in favour of a "Tax".

Also think the government regulator coming up has a lot of people shitting their pants.

[bodacious benny]

So how much was their breach to only get a 2 point deduction?

If you can be say, £50m over and only get a 2 points deduction it’s absolutely worth doing! That’s a decent player who could in theory earn you more than 2 extra points a season…

[TJR]

Everton £19.5m over limit - deducted 10 points (reduced to 6 on appeal)
Forest £34.5m over limit - deducted 4 points (awaiting appeal)
Everton £16.5m over limit - deducted 2 points (awaiting appeal)

Should be a consistent penalty based on level of breach. Something like 10 points for anything up to £0.1 to £10m over, 20 points for £10m to £20m, 30 points for £20m to £30m etc. If you're just handing out 2 point deductions then there is no deterrent whatsoever and just makes the whole thing laughable.

Everton should have been deducted 20 points per breach (40 in total). Forest 40 points. That would be enough to send both them down which is exactly what they deserve. If the points deductions aren't going to be great enough to cause relegation then it's pointless having the rules in place.

[Remember Colo]

I think there's a key distinction here - is the FFP intended to manage parity and performance, or dissuade overspending and risking financial bankruptcy? I feel like people are conflating the two. Despite what clubs like Leicester would suggest, FFP isn't intended to mitigate overperformance based on overspending, it's meant to scare financially vulnerable clubs from overspending and risking future insolvency. Irrespective of (fair) cynicism that it's meant to prop up the richest clubs, that's actually the communicated intention of the program, and they're not wrong that the richest clubs can bear more financial risk, wherein even a club like Everton have seen how their owner is unwilling to continue propping up past losses (even before penalties started being levied).

Now do I agree with that intention? My North American bias will always push me towards policies that at least attempt to encourage league parity, but sadly (depending on perspective) the FA/PL never has had interest in that, they really just want to allay blame if English clubs go broke, and penalty warnings are their often lazy solution.

[Colly]

The problem with applying North American bias is that North American sports leagues exist in a bubble, nothing above, below or around. A salary cap in the PL wouldn't be matched across Europe, meaning big players suddenly start going back to Spain and Italy. Truth be told I could live with that if it made the domestic product more competitive and kept ticket prices down, but I'm not the guy trying to maximise profits at the PL.

Your point is spot on though, FFP in theory is there to stop someone "doing a Leeds" (god that's a dated reference these days, I was at uni and a few of us bought shares...), and I believe the reason why Forests point deduction was higher than Everton was because as a proportion of incomings their loss was higher. It does make sense to have something in place, but the way it works whereby ways round it are (were) the ludicrous 8 year contracts Chelsea were handing out, or us selling a home grown player then buying another for the same price, the implementation is awful.

[bodacious benny]

Whatever the reasoning behind it, it seems completely scattergun as to what might happen to you if found guilty. What are the criteria for a 2 point deduction? What are the criteria for a 10 point deduction? Surely this must have been decided when the laws were agreed? It can’t be subjective, or can’t be done on a case by case basis as that’s unfair. If there are definitions of what points deductions will be applied then make them public.

[Colly]

https://www.theguardian.com/football/20 ... r%E2%80%9D.

There are no hard and fast rules, but the commission have explained the differences.

[Don Sholeone]

Neville mentioned something on the Overlap about how in league 2 a club can spend whatever they like as long as the owner puts the money in up front to cover the cost of the outgoing spend. It just makes so much sense. If an owner can afford to and is willing to put their money in then just let them do it, just put rules in place that say owners can't "loan" their clubs the money like Ashley did. Keep financial liability strictly with the ownership.