duncanjwitham

I suspect at least one issue there will be to do with things like building new stadiums.  You'd have to exclude that debt from your calculations or basically no club would be able to build a new stadium. And as soon as you start having exclusions, you get into the same tangled mess as FFP.
Honestly, I think the limit on wages/turnover ratio in Leagues 1 and 2 is the best system around at the moment.  It's overspending on wages that kills clubs, not transfer spending, so lets regulate that.  Let the owner pump as much in as he wants to buy players, but the club themselves must be able to fund the wage bill in case the owner pulls the plug.

The problem with FFP is it's trying to solve 2 problems at once - stopping clubs overspending and risking financial ruin, and stopping clubs buying success because they are richer than other clubs.  If you lean towards solving the first problem (which is what the current FFP regs do), you just end up entrenching the financial advantage that some clubs have.  If you lean towards the second problem (as your fixed budgets idea above does), then you have the problem of solving where to put those thresholds.  You either set them low in which case it just entrenches the gap between the EFL and Prem (no matter how you structure the contracts, it's going to be harder to sign players if they know their wages might absolutely plummet in a years time, which makes it significantly harder for newly promoted clubs to stay up).  Or you set it quite high, in which case it solves nothing (the richer clubs can spend their riches, the poorer clubs can either risk overspending, or just not be able to compete).

The problem with FFP is it's trying to solve 2 problems at once - stopping clubs overspending and risking financial ruin, and stopping clubs buying success because they are richer than other clubs.  If you lean towards solving the first problem (which is what the current FFP regs do), you just end up entrenching the financial advantage that some clubs have.  If you lean towards the second problem (as your fixed budgets idea above does), then you have the problem of solving where to put those thresholds.  You either set them low in which case it just entrenches the gap between the EFL and Prem (no matter how you structure the contracts, it's going to be harder to sign players if they know their wages might absolutely plummet in a years time, which makes it significantly harder for newly promoted clubs to stay up).  Or you set it quite high, in which case it solves nothing (the richer clubs can spend their riches, the poorer clubs can either risk overspending, or just not be able to compete).

I suspect at least one issue there will be to do with things like building new stadiums.  You'd have to exclude that debt from your calculations or basically no club would be able to build a new stadium. And as soon as you start having exclusions, you get into the same tangled mess as FFP.
Honestly, I think the limit on wages/turnover ratio in Leagues 1 and 2 is the best system around at the moment.  It's overspending on wages that kills clubs, not transfer spending, so lets regulate that.  Let the owner pump as much in as he wants to buy players, but the club themselves must be able to fund the wage bill in case the owner pulls the plug.

I suspect at least one issue there will be to do with things like building new stadiums.  You'd have to exclude that debt from your calculations or basically no club would be able to build a new stadium. And as soon as you start having exclusions, you get into the same tangled mess as FFP.
Honestly, I think the limit on wages/turnover ratio in Leagues 1 and 2 is the best system around at the moment.  It's overspending on wages that kills clubs, not transfer spending, so lets regulate that.  Let the owner pump as much in as he wants to buy players, but the club themselves must be able to fund the wage bill in case the owner pulls the plug.

The problem with FFP is it's trying to solve 2 problems at once - stopping clubs overspending and risking financial ruin, and stopping clubs buying success because they are richer than other clubs.  If you lean towards solving the first problem (which is what the current FFP regs do), you just end up entrenching the financial advantage that some clubs have.  If you lean towards the second problem (as your fixed budgets idea above does), then you have the problem of solving where to put those thresholds.  You either set them low in which case it just entrenches the gap between the EFL and Prem (no matter how you structure the contracts, it's going to be harder to sign players if they know their wages might absolutely plummet in a years time, which makes it significantly harder for newly promoted clubs to stay up).  Or you set it quite high, in which case it solves nothing (the richer clubs can spend their riches, the poorer clubs can either risk overspending, or just not be able to compete).

I believe it was from this is the moment Karen Maguire took an interest in us.
The following season Brighton finished 20th in the table whilst we went on the spending spree.
Karen Maguire is a Brighton fan, but I believe his unhealthy interest in us is down to interactions.
Tweet/talk about Derby and you have not only Derby fans but Leeds, Forest, Boro fans all over it.
Same with the Daily Mail. 
Our name generates clicks, it has done for years now and the names Frank Lampard and Wayne Rooney have only cemented us into their daily lives.
Should get a job on the roadworks if he enjoys digging up dirt so much. Perfect job.
It’s just something we have to get used to until all this settles down. I unfollowed him on Twitter, not that I get to avoid it all.
He’s the resident busy body on radio and TV like Robbie Savage.

Their stadium is probably worth more than ours - their pitch has barely been used, given the amount of time the ball spends in the air.

Their stadium is probably worth more than ours - their pitch has barely been used, given the amount of time the ball spends in the air.

Their stadium is probably worth more than ours - their pitch has barely been used, given the amount of time the ball spends in the air.

Their stadium is probably worth more than ours - their pitch has barely been used, given the amount of time the ball spends in the air.

Their stadium is probably worth more than ours - their pitch has barely been used, given the amount of time the ball spends in the air.

Their stadium is probably worth more than ours - their pitch has barely been used, given the amount of time the ball spends in the air.

Their stadium is probably worth more than ours - their pitch has barely been used, given the amount of time the ball spends in the air.

And of course, using the transfer market (i.e. potential resale values) to calculate player book values is very, very explicitly what we lost the appeal on.

And of course, using the transfer market (i.e. potential resale values) to calculate player book values is very, very explicitly what we lost the appeal on.

The recruitment isn’t directly to blame, it’s just another symptom of the real problem - a lack of vision of what we actually want to be as a club.  Do we want to develop academy players, do we want to sign cheap players and add value before we sell them on, do we want to make big name signings, do we want a young hungry squad, or an experienced one, do we want to play attacking football, do we want to be hard to beat, do we want to play possession football and so on.  Until someone, somewhere is making those decisions, we’ll be stuck in a cycle of making random signings, random managerial appointments and year-on-year decline.

The recruitment isn’t directly to blame, it’s just another symptom of the real problem - a lack of vision of what we actually want to be as a club.  Do we want to develop academy players, do we want to sign cheap players and add value before we sell them on, do we want to make big name signings, do we want a young hungry squad, or an experienced one, do we want to play attacking football, do we want to be hard to beat, do we want to play possession football and so on.  Until someone, somewhere is making those decisions, we’ll be stuck in a cycle of making random signings, random managerial appointments and year-on-year decline.

Used to be every post was a pun,
and ok, that was quite fun,
now each ones a Limerick,
I’m really quite sick of it,
so wake me up when you’re all done.

That's the big point for me.  The standardised penalties (i.e. the FFP overspend ones, not necessarily the ones for us), are basically something like 1 point per £m overspend (up to 12), plus up to another 9 for bad-faith type behaviours.  From the long extract above, it's fairly clear that the IDC though we were basically being honest in what we were doing. We didn't describe it very well in the accounts, but it seems like we described it fairly well to the EFL in a meeting, and there is evidence that we were doing it well before we hit a serious FFP problems, and had been applying it consistently ever since.  It's also pretty clear that they believed that we thought it was acceptable under accounting regs.  So it's had to see them finding us massively at fault in a bad-faith sense.
My gut feeling is there will be a fine for the bad accounting explanation and a requirement to resubmit the P&S filings with straight-line amortisation applied.  Any failing there will obviously result in the specified points deductions. If we do fail, there's a discussion to be had about us not having the opportunity to address the failing at the time (i.e. if we knew we were going to fail we could have sold a player or something, but we can't do that retrospectively).  Obviously we will argue that any deductions should be reduced because we couldn't mitigate them at the time. And the EFL will want them bumped up because reasons.  We can only hope the the IDC are swayed to be lenient because they also believe what we were doing was allowed.

That's the big point for me.  The standardised penalties (i.e. the FFP overspend ones, not necessarily the ones for us), are basically something like 1 point per £m overspend (up to 12), plus up to another 9 for bad-faith type behaviours.  From the long extract above, it's fairly clear that the IDC though we were basically being honest in what we were doing. We didn't describe it very well in the accounts, but it seems like we described it fairly well to the EFL in a meeting, and there is evidence that we were doing it well before we hit a serious FFP problems, and had been applying it consistently ever since.  It's also pretty clear that they believed that we thought it was acceptable under accounting regs.  So it's had to see them finding us massively at fault in a bad-faith sense.
My gut feeling is there will be a fine for the bad accounting explanation and a requirement to resubmit the P&S filings with straight-line amortisation applied.  Any failing there will obviously result in the specified points deductions. If we do fail, there's a discussion to be had about us not having the opportunity to address the failing at the time (i.e. if we knew we were going to fail we could have sold a player or something, but we can't do that retrospectively).  Obviously we will argue that any deductions should be reduced because we couldn't mitigate them at the time. And the EFL will want them bumped up because reasons.  We can only hope the the IDC are swayed to be lenient because they also believe what we were doing was allowed.

Or possibly they figured we’d fail anyway because of the stadium thing, and never actually checked the case where we win the first charge and lose (part of) the second?

Or possibly they figured we’d fail anyway because of the stadium thing, and never actually checked the case where we win the first charge and lose (part of) the second?

It wouldn't surprise me if we'd done some kind of gardening-leave type thing, so instead of paying him a lump sum in compensation, we're still paying some fraction of his wages until he gets another job.  So maybe if he doesn't get another job for the next 4 years, we might in theory end up paying him £8m, which fits with Morris quote's about it being a worst case scenario.
Likewise, the £20m HMRC bill is presumably deferred PAYE/NIC etc, so it will have to be paid, but they're not going to be demanding it all tomorrow. Many clubs, and many other businesses in general, will have used this scheme, and if HMRC start demanding massive payments upfront, they're just going to cause mass bankruptcies, so they will probably take a sensible approach.
The Dell loan also presumably has a payment schedule attached. They won't be demanding £15m tomorrow.
The entire article seems to be taking the worst case scenarios, and the total payable over many years, and assuming we owe it all tomorrow.

It wouldn't surprise me if we'd done some kind of gardening-leave type thing, so instead of paying him a lump sum in compensation, we're still paying some fraction of his wages until he gets another job.  So maybe if he doesn't get another job for the next 4 years, we might in theory end up paying him £8m, which fits with Morris quote's about it being a worst case scenario.
Likewise, the £20m HMRC bill is presumably deferred PAYE/NIC etc, so it will have to be paid, but they're not going to be demanding it all tomorrow. Many clubs, and many other businesses in general, will have used this scheme, and if HMRC start demanding massive payments upfront, they're just going to cause mass bankruptcies, so they will probably take a sensible approach.
The Dell loan also presumably has a payment schedule attached. They won't be demanding £15m tomorrow.
The entire article seems to be taking the worst case scenarios, and the total payable over many years, and assuming we owe it all tomorrow.