[Archived] Football League Financial Fair Play Rules - Effect on Rovers

[AggyBlue]

If the owners want to sponsor their team, it isn't against the rules. Or is it? That's what I'd like clarified really.

Our owners have fingers in over 150 companies, should be easy enough to use these

[chaddyrovers]

According an Alan Nixon in Today's Daily Mirror that Rovers are looking cut the wage bill with players like Etuhu and Murphy leaving in summer. expect Robinson and Peds to leave in summer aswell plus Givet is out of contract summer.

[ABBEY]

Oh no the nicko teens are rising again.

[Stuart]

According an Alan Nixon in Today's Daily Mirror that Rovers are looking cut the wage bill with players like Etuhu and Murphy leaving in summer. expect Robinson and Peds to leave in summer aswell plus Givet is out of contract summer.

That article was anonymous.

Surely Etuhu could do a job in League One. Why pay off his contract? Of course if he wants to leave that's a different story but should be cheaper for us.

[cop]

Ewood Park will soon be Venkys Stadium. Funding sorted.

Thats the loop-hole a lot of clubs are taking advantage of, lucrative sponsorships and naming rights. Man Utd this week had their training ground sponsored by AON.

[Tom]

According an Alan Nixon in Today's Daily Mirror that Rovers are looking cut the wage bill with players like Etuhu and Murphy leaving in summer. expect Robinson and Peds to leave in summer aswell plus Givet is out of contract summer.

But we would still have to pay them off as nobody will want to take them off us

I still think Etuhu could do a job for us alongside a dynamic midfielder but his wages will be crippling

[chaddyrovers]

That article was anonymous.

Surely Etuhu could do a job in League One. Why pay off his contract? Of course if he wants to leave that's a different story but should be cheaper for us.

we are Staying up.

Come on you Blues!!!

[thenodrog]

That article was anonymous.

Surely Etuhu could do a job in League One. Why pay off his contract? Of course if he wants to leave that's a different story but should be cheaper for us.

Horse trading should see him leave for less than a paid up sum. Even if someone was willing to pay him just 5k pw it would save us close on a million.

Truth is if the Venky's had made me Chairman I could have taken us to this position and saved them countless millions in the process.

[Daniel Louis Grabko (Dan)]

Administration?

No. Fines, an incoming transfer embargo, etc.

FL rules also specify that all player contracts MUST have a relegation clause wage scaling mechanism of some sort. This is something that the PL does not require, stupidly enough. However, the rules don't appear to specify a minimum wage adjustment percentage or anything like that, so it seems this is still very much negotiable when drawing up a contract. In other words it could be a 1% wage reduction upon relegation as far as I know.

Basically you get hit with financial and administrative sanctions for breaking the FFP rules. With the 2013/14 Premier League parachute payment next year included, (if the owners haven't mortgaged it away) you would be looking at probably around £20m in turnover total should the club go down to League One, meaning you can only have a £12m wage bill without incurring sanctions.

I don't know the level of the sanctions, but they are on a sliding scale, so the more you break the rules, the higher the sanction.

As Kamy stated, League One and League Two have a wage cap as a percentage of turnover as their only financial fair play rule - it is simple but effective. You can invest as much as you want in the infrastructure and facilities of the club, but must operate within strict boundaries for the wage structure.

The Championship operates under a model that is a mirror image of UEFA's FFP regulations, there the entire financial picture is taken into account, not just the wages.

As seen by the Football League, it is the club's own fault that they did not have a suitable wage structure in place to follow the rules whatever competition they were playing in from year to year. The Club gambled by approving high wage multi-year contracts in an effort to achieve promotion straight away. Now they apparently neglected to negotiate sensible relegation clauses into these contracts, and will have to live with the consequences.

If the owners were ignorant of the implications of constructing this wage structure at the club, or if they were in fact unaware that it was being done, then they have only themselves to blame, and should hold the people charged with running the club responsible either for not informing them of the full consequences of all outcomes possible in various scenarios, or for wilfully ignoring said consequences. In either case, these people should be removed of their positions on the charge of incompetence.

If the owners were fully aware of what they were doing, then they can do nothing but blame themselves and put up the funding to keep the club running.

In either case the owners are ultimately culpable for putting the club in the situation it is in, and if they have a decent bone in their collective bodies, they need to come over here, clean house with everyone even remotely associated with an advisory or management role at the club or in their direct employment or having influence currently in their circles, and start over from nil. Unless they do this, the club and their ownership of it WILL fail in the most financial, legal, and real sense possible. Most likely sooner rather than later.

[davulsukur]

I used to think it was but Stoke are sponsored by bet365 and the majority shareholders of both are the Coates family.

Weren't Wigan sponsored by JJB at one point also?

[Majiball]

Horse trading should see him leave for less than a paid up sum. Even if someone was willing to pay him just 5k pw it would save us close on a million.

Truth is if the Venky's had made me Chairman I could have taken us to this position and saved them countless millions in the process.

You'd also have increased revenue and attendances by amalgamating all the lancashire clubs under one umbrella, Lancashire Rovers.

Weren't Wigan sponsored by JJB at one point also?

It was the JJB stadium till it was renamed the DW a few years back.

[davulsukur]

I thought they had shirt sponsorship for a season or so also?

[Stuart]

No. Fines, an incoming transfer embargo, etc.

FL rules also specify that all player contracts MUST have a relegation clause wage scaling mechanism of some sort. This is something that the PL does not require, stupidly enough. However, the rules don't appear to specify a minimum wage adjustment percentage or anything like that, so it seems this is still very much negotiable when drawing up a contract. In other words it could be a 1% wage reduction upon relegation as far as I know.

Basically you get hit with financial and administrative sanctions for breaking the FFP rules. With the 2013/14 Premier League parachute payment next year included, (if the owners haven't mortgaged it away) you would be looking at probably around £20m in turnover total should the club go down to League One, meaning you can only have a £12m wage bill without incurring sanctions.

I don't know the level of the sanctions, but they are on a sliding scale, so the more you break the rules, the higher the sanction.

As Kamy stated, League One and League Two have a wage cap as a percentage of turnover as their only financial fair play rule - it is simple but effective. You can invest as much as you want in the infrastructure and facilities of the club, but must operate within strict boundaries for the wage structure.

The Championship operates under a model that is a mirror image of UEFA's FFP regulations, there the entire financial picture is taken into account, not just the wages.

As seen by the Football League, it is the club's own fault that they did not have a suitable wage structure in place to follow the rules whatever competition they were playing in from year to year. The Club gambled by approving high wage multi-year contracts in an effort to achieve promotion straight away. Now they apparently neglected to negotiate sensible relegation clauses into these contracts, and will have to live with the consequences.

If the owners were ignorant of the implications of constructing this wage structure at the club, or if they were in fact unaware that it was being done, then they have only themselves to blame, and should hold the people charged with running the club responsible either for not informing them of the full consequences of all outcomes possible in various scenarios, or for wilfully ignoring said consequences. In either case, these people should be removed of their positions on the charge of incompetence.

If the owners were fully aware of what they were doing, then they can do nothing but blame themselves and put up the funding to keep the club running.

In either case the owners are ultimately culpable for putting the club in the situation it is in, and if they have a decent bone in their collective bodies, they need to come over here, clean house with everyone even remotely associated with an advisory or management role at the club or in their direct employment or having influence currently in their circles, and start over from nil. Unless they do this, the club and their ownership of it WILL fail in the most financial, legal, and real sense possible. Most likely sooner rather than later.

Back in the day, there was talk if clubs getting around the previous maximum wage cap by buying players washing machines and the like. What would stop a club reducing the wages but compensating players by giving them a handsome expense account to charge purchases / bills up to a limit, say, around the level of the amount of wage cut they took?

[pick32]

Expect football shirts to have more sponsorships than a rally car.

[TBTF]

No. Fines, an incoming transfer embargo, etc.

FL rules also specify that all player contracts MUST have a relegation clause wage scaling mechanism of some sort. This is something that the PL does not require, stupidly enough. However, the rules don't appear to specify a minimum wage adjustment percentage or anything like that, so it seems this is still very much negotiable when drawing up a contract. In other words it could be a 1% wage reduction upon relegation as far as I know.

Basically you get hit with financial and administrative sanctions for breaking the FFP rules. With the 2013/14 Premier League parachute payment next year included, (if the owners haven't mortgaged it away) you would be looking at probably around £20m in turnover total should the club go down to League One, meaning you can only have a £12m wage bill without incurring sanctions.

I don't know the level of the sanctions, but they are on a sliding scale, so the more you break the rules, the higher the sanction.

As Kamy stated, League One and League Two have a wage cap as a percentage of turnover as their only financial fair play rule - it is simple but effective. You can invest as much as you want in the infrastructure and facilities of the club, but must operate within strict boundaries for the wage structure.

The Championship operates under a model that is a mirror image of UEFA's FFP regulations, there the entire financial picture is taken into account, not just the wages.

As seen by the Football League, it is the club's own fault that they did not have a suitable wage structure in place to follow the rules whatever competition they were playing in from year to year. The Club gambled by approving high wage multi-year contracts in an effort to achieve promotion straight away. Now they apparently neglected to negotiate sensible relegation clauses into these contracts, and will have to live with the consequences.

If the owners were ignorant of the implications of constructing this wage structure at the club, or if they were in fact unaware that it was being done, then they have only themselves to blame, and should hold the people charged with running the club responsible either for not informing them of the full consequences of all outcomes possible in various scenarios, or for wilfully ignoring said consequences. In either case, these people should be removed of their positions on the charge of incompetence.

If the owners were fully aware of what they were doing, then they can do nothing but blame themselves and put up the funding to keep the club running.

In either case the owners are ultimately culpable for putting the club in the situation it is in, and if they have a decent bone in their collective bodies, they need to come over here, clean house with everyone even remotely associated with an advisory or management role at the club or in their direct employment or having influence currently in their circles, and start over from nil. Unless they do this, the club and their ownership of it WILL fail in the most financial, legal, and real sense possible. Most likely sooner rather than later.

Bang on Mr Grabko.In fact whilst answering under the banner of FFP most of what you have said is pertinent to the whole problems this club faces.The owners are culpable whatever else you throw up in their defence.Agnew bangs on about the ''owners don't deserve it'' referring to the PR they are getting.But actually , yes they bloody do.

They have appointed muppets to run it and so we have the muppet show.What nobody can understand is why , on the face of it successful business people can get this so wrong in the name of expanding their brand and worse than that fail to act when it has been going so badly wrong for so long.

So yes , these people should leave.What they leave behind as our legacy is the bit that freaks everybody out because the football debts that need clearing up would mean you would have to be clinically insane to do it and if they have mortgaged the parachute money then its game over .

The only answer is they stay but hand over the management reins to proper local football people, the chances of which are nil.

Administration is the word on everybodys lips just now-can you explain why or why not that would be an option for us thickos Dan cos i for one don't really understand the ins and outs of it.

[RevidgeBlue]

According to the LT article the sanction for breaking FFP rules is a transfer embargo. Is that the only sanction that can be applied because if so it doesn't seem very punitive at all.

Secondly the rules seem to have been poorly thought through with no thought having been given to the (unlikely) possibility of a Club dropping straight through from the

Premiership to the first Division. How can you just disregard existing contracts? I can't see any Court in the land upholding the FFP regulations over a player's contract and if a player refused to leave a Club because they were on too much money etc how can the League effectively prevent them from playing? That amounts to a restraint of trade which is illegal.

Thirdly, what is the actual position regarding donations and sponsorship? Are these classed as "turnover" effectively allowing Clubs with rich owners to completely circumvent the regulations or not?

[bypass06]

Blackburn Rovers supporters urging club's owners to sell and end 'disastrous' three-year reign at Ewood Park

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/blackburn-rovers/9996345/Blackburn-Rovers-supporters-urging-clubs-owners-to-sell-and-end-disastrous-three-year-reign-at-Ewood-Park.html

[Daniel Louis Grabko (Dan)]

Back in the day, there was talk if clubs getting around the previous maximum wage cap by buying players washing machines and the like. What would stop a club reducing the wages but compensating players by giving them a handsome expense account to charge purchases / bills up to a limit, say, around the level of the amount of wage cut they took?

This would not be a sustainable way to get around it. Having a background as an auditor myself, all you have to do is compare the player's income tax return with their reported wages on the club's books. Since the player is legally required to report the value of non-monetary benefits and pay taxes on them, as well as their source (club or personal sponsoring contract, etc.) it is a simple matter of reconciling the differences and that is the true value of the player's compensation. So in short, no that wouldn't work as it would be illegal and thus not only not get around the wage cap, but also get you in trouble with HMRC if you weren't paying the employer taxes on those non-cash wages!

Bang on Mr Grabko.In fact whilst answering under the banner of FFP most of what you have said is pertinent to the whole problems this club faces.The owners are culpable whatever else you throw up in their defence.Agnew bangs on about the ''owners don't deserve it'' referring to the PR they are getting.But actually , yes they bloody do.

They have appointed muppets to run it and so we have the muppet show.What nobody can understand is why , on the face of it successful business people can get this so wrong in the name of expanding their brand and worse than that fail to act when it has been going so badly wrong for so long.

So yes , these people should leave.What they leave behind as our legacy is the bit that freaks everybody out because the football debts that need clearing up would mean you would have to be clinically insane to do it and if they have mortgaged the parachute money then its game over .

The only answer is they stay but hand over the management reins to proper local football people, the chances of which are nil.

Administration is the word on everybodys lips just now-can you explain why or why not that would be an option for us thickos Dan cos i for one don't really understand the ins and outs of it.

It isn't really a matter of administration being an option or not - without continued significant funding or miracle-work on the wage side (i.e. players agreeing to renegotiate their contracts out of the benevolence of their hearts) or a combination of the two, the club is unsustainable, and it will be forced upon us.

Putting VLL in admin instead doesn't seem to help the situation at all for me, because the £21m debt to the owners and the player contracts are all in BRF&A Plc, not VLL. So I don't think that a strategy of the liquidation of VLL followed by a simultaneous VLL NewCo being established and buying Rovers for nil is on the cards. Besides, it appears the owners have some other interests there that they wouldn't want to have affected by such an action. If they were sinister enough to do it, it would have to be a liquidation of BRF&A Plc followed by a NewCo that buys up the assets of the dead company for basically nil. And that would mean a reapplication to the FA for admittance to the Football League Pyramid System and most likely non-league football, best case scenario League Two. Very similar to Rangers situation in Scotland. It would also mean a 99% assurance that all honours and historical results would be lost. It would not be BRFC est. 1875, but AFC Blackburn Rovers or some such est. 2013.

As it is the best case scenario is to hang on to Championship status this year by the skin of our teeth, pray that the parachute payments are not fully mortgaged out, and that the owners are up for doing some nasty but necessary restructuring over the summer.

Unfortunately, after this season's operations, the option of selling the club got a lot less lucrative for them. Any possible new owner coming in has lost any hope of inheriting an organisation that is standing on stable financial footing. That window of opportunity has come and gone. This is something the current owners were able to do when they bought the club.

[Mike E]

The new Financial Fair Play rules make very little sense to me (with regards to the modern game) unless there is ALSO a further, and fairer, redistribution of the TV money. I don't know the exact figures but if wealth was spread more like below, surely that would be better for all levels of English Footy? All amounts per club:

Premier League - £40m
Championship - £20m
League1 - £10m
League2 - £5m
Etc - continue the 'halving' pattern all the way down to the lowest league.

[Daniel Louis Grabko (Dan)]

The new Financial Fair Play rules make very little sense to me (with regards to the modern game) unless there is ALSO a further, and fairer, redistribution of the TV money. I don't know the exact figures but if wealth was spread more like below, surely that would be better for all levels of English Footy? All amounts per club:

Premier League - £40m

Championship - £20m

League1 - £10m

League2 - £5m

Etc - continue the 'halving' pattern all the way down to the lowest league.

Fully agree, dm, a much better revenue sharing scheme should be put in place to lift the whole of the English game. If you guys ever want to win another major international trophy again, it should be priority.

Sadly the powers that be (The PL) will never allow this for the simple selfish reason that it will mean less money for them.