[Archived] Debate of the Week - Will UEFAs new Financial Fair Play rules achieve its goal or punish smaller clubs chances of competing against the big-boys?

[Glenn]

Time to try debate of the week again. Each week we'll take a meaty and contentious subject and let seasoned debaters thrash it out. This is no place for one line answers or poor English skills, it's about quality debate, if you can't manage at least a couple of paragraphs of more or less grammatically correct English IN EVERY POST then you're out. Resort to personal insults, going off topic or sniping, then you're out. Remember, this is debate, not argument.

Would English football be stronger and/or better if the top few teams left the PL for a European Super League

If you wish to make a comment on the debate, rather than actually debate, please use this thread ==> http://www.brfcs.co....s-and-feedback/

Update 1: This isn't an edict for the entire site. It's a little game/experiment in a single thread.

Update 2: So many of you are struggling with "a couple of paragraphs" I see.

[j166429]

The basic concept being that you cannot spend more money than you generate, I'm not convinced in the slightest that this will some how protect teams.I believe it will only serve to widen the gap between small clubs and the Man Uniteds of this world even more. Utimately this could indeed be the ruin of smaller clubs who will be able to compete less and less (Imagine this legislation coming into play circa 1994-95!!!) and may ultimately lead to them "going under". Who knows? This could be what Uefa want as it could "naturally" generate a European super league as only the wealthiest survive.

The way I see it, there will be two sides to how it will turn out (and to the leagues in general). There will be those teams with high turn over and therefore greater purchasing power and those teams that will try to scrape by on free transfers thus creating a very obvious imbalance.

Surely it would be better to cap every team's spending to a maximum of£50 million per seaspon or cap salary budgets?

[colin]

It might be useful to the debate to have a look at EUFA's rules on this then we all know what we are talking about.

here

[thenodrog]

Good topic for debate but the low number of responses to this topic suggest that most people do not think it will ever be an issue for us, and certainly not in the near future... despite recent statements from our owners and our manager to the contrary. I'd suggest a lot of spirits have been well and truly broken in and around the town.

[Mattyblue]

It's a farce, if City's owner can get one of his other companies to 'sponsor' the stadium for £400million, it makes a mockery of the whole thing.

[K-Hod]

If you look at the debt levels of all the teams in the UCL (Manure, Barca, to name a couple) and the levels of debt that exist between them, it is a good idea in principle.

However, the clubs in question will no doubt find a way around it- i.e Etihad Airways stadium

[thenodrog]

Something has to be done which is workeable and enforceable. We turned out a rag bag of a team in a rag bag formation on the first day of the season, whilst Robinson plus the players collecting splinters in their arses on MU and Chelsea's bench (never mind City) would surely result in a top four final placing for any team who finished bottom half last year (unless Kean was managing them of course ).

Whichever way one views this the paying public are being prevented from watching the best players ply their trade and cheated from the enthrallment of viewing closely matched contests. It's a marketeering nightmare for the Premier League and one which they will surely be viewing with their hands before their eyes and through their fingers with trepidition as one would watch a slow motion car crash.

As supporters we actively gaze around Ewood attempting to guage the crowd (we do it on here regularly) but in reallity who cares? What does it matter? The answer to that is surely very little. The lifeblood of football now is the corporate stuff and anybody who thinks the crowds are down at BRFC and are attempting to calculate 3000 X 200 or whatever needs to apply some thinking to how much corporate revenue we are down on past seasons. My own company was being hounded regularly with calls from the Rovers offering much discounted matchday packages. May suprise some but for the past few years these have been actually negotiable!

BRFC... "We'd like to offer you a table for 4 for the Anyclub match in three weeks time at the specially discounted price of £200. These tickets are really worth much more. So thats a 3 course meal in the Premier League suite, matchday programme and a seat in the JW Upper inner, plus the choice of alcoholic drinks or coffee after the match. Would you be interested"

Client... "No thanks. Make it £150 and we'll take it."

BRFC... Done. Thank you very much Sir. Hope you enjoy the match.

I'd imagine the corporate revenue loss is massive in both real terms and %age ones. The major problem is that many companies these days who take a table or a suite can rarely fill it. So many firms customers or clients these days choose to refuse invitations unless MU or Lpool are in town. One of the reasons is that for a non supporter of either club mowing the lawn is preferable to driving 50 miles to watch a match like BRFC v Wolves on Sat. As the economic situation bites deeper the corporate football no longer makes any sense.

Compare our mood on Sat lunch if we had the prospect of Drogba up front and with Jason on the bench? How about Bellamy up top or Joe Cole replacing Keith? So many talents are not even lacing their boots on match days because of the CL influenced Prem League set up. The Championship provides much more even contests. This situation is cutting the blood flow of top flight football and it will have to change, the majority must surely triumph over the minority over time. The only question is to what will it change and will we still be part of it?

[roversmum]

I wanted to comment on this thread, but think Drog has put it very aptly.

I really can't see how anyone could have thought this idea made any sense or even had any hint of fairness.

It's patently obvious to me that the only winners are those already at the top of the tree, able to afford the best players and fill their benches with others who could at least give other teams some chance of competing. In fact, given the way things are going, the number of matches in which many of the teams have any hope of snatching a point or three is decreasing. Yes it still happens here and there and there are only eleven against eleven on the pitch at any one time but still...

What we need is some way of making things more fair all round and these Fair Play Rules do not, in my opinion, do that at all.

[Driftpeasant]

So if you look at the (successful) leagues with the greatest parity in the world over the last 2 decades, you find the NFL and NBA. Both of which have salary caps. They get away with this because they're essentially a closed system. No American Football player can go earn a decent wage playing in England or France. If the players have nowhere to go, then you can get away with capping salary. In an open global market such as football (soccer), that breaks down. If the Premier League instituted a 60m Euro/GBP/whatever salary cap, players would move to other leagues to make money. It might make the Prem more exciting to watch from a parity standpoint, but the quality of play would likely decrease.

The Fair Play rules I think are a misnomer. While they pay lip service to the concept of league parity, I think they are more aimed at keeping storied clubs from going bankrupt, and, in so doing, dragging other clubs/leagues down with them. Can you imagine the turmoil in Spanish football if, say, Real Madrid were the target of a winding up order? They do separate the league into the haves and the have nots. If you're a have, like Man U, and have a massive turnover, you can invest in the team, the facilities, and so forth, and keep being extremely successful. If you're Blackburn, you start striving for the League or FA Cups and maybe the occasional Europa League spot. It basically becomes a tiered system. Maybe you can get around that by creating the fabled G14 Super League, and making the national leagues somewhat secondary to it, but I think that has its own massive set of problems.

Ultimately what we all want is a relatively level playing field on which to compete. Ideally as supporters we want the realistic belief that this is our team's year to make a charge at the title. I don't think that's possible in an entirely open market, though, Fair Play rules or not.

[thenodrog]

Ultimately what we all want is a relatively level playing field on which to compete. Ideally as supporters we want the realistic belief that this is our team's year to make a charge at the title. I don't think that's possible in an entirely open market, though, Fair Play rules or not.

Exactly and in a nutshell Driftpeasant. The disenchantment at the current inequality which has partly prevented me renewing my season ticket is surely spreading throughout the nation ... and rightly so.

[neekoy]

SFor ssupporters of clubs this is a plus, financial parity smarity, you only need to look over the past 100 years and see a pattern establishing favouring the larger clubs, they have won more, they will continue to win more, the difference with fair play rules is that smaller clubs like ours and bigger clubs like Leeds may not go broke trying to compete financially with owners with ambitions bigger then bank balance.

In the last 20 years alone Stoke, Portsmouth, West Ham, Cardiff, Millwall, Southhampton, Sheffield Wed, Middlesbrough have all made an FA Cup final, and going through the League Cup even more smaller clubs have won it. Nothing down to fair play, just ability, hard work and some luck.