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Should Financial Fair Play be in existence in Scottish fitba?


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Just now, velo army said:

Yes, and that can be part of a "fit and proper" assessment perhaps. You say "distort", but the champions league money has done just that to our league. I don't care much about football anywhere in the world, but I would welcome someone coming in to "distort our league" by providing a different champion. It's the only way it would ever happen 


I don't see any actual benefit in providing a different champion if it's just done by artificially creating a third massively untouchable club. Man City were a different Champion in the English Premier League and Champions League, but if anything their successes have been even more soulless and plastic than anything which went before.

The real value would be in gradually building a club in a sustainable manner, perhaps investing substantially in youth, and then becoming successful that way. FFP encourages that sort of investment because you know all your gradual building isn't going to be blown out of the water by some oil billionaire just deciding to randomly chuck money at one of your rivals.

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17 minutes ago, Lex said:

With Wrexham, they’ll see what similarly sized clubs are doing in the EPL just now and think that there’s no reason that won’t be them within 10 years, and then they may be able to sell for a profit. 
 

iirc wrexham have enough turnover to easily get out of the third/fourth tier

then when they hit that batshit financial meltdown of a league called the championship who knows what will happen

Edited by Comrie
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1 hour ago, coprolite said:

You seem to approve of a very specific form of financial doping which only one club in the premier currently uses. Funny that. 

 

 

I don't think think that some sort of financial rulebook would be a bad idea but it would have to be well thought out and well run to do more good than harm. And that's not happening. 

 

1 hour ago, VincentGuerin said:

You're clearly referencing Anderson, so let's talk about him as an example.

Firstly, he's not a threat to Hearts. He gives the club money and he wants nothing back. He's contributed to infrastructure projects, the women's team etc. I don't see how anyone can be against that kind of stuff.

Were Anderson presenting this money as big loans that we'd need to give him back, it would be completely different. He's not a risk to the club, and FFP should be about avoiding clubs being at risk.

I don't see the issue with a mechanism where you, or I, or anyone else can gift their club money. I see a clear problem with clubs being saddled with debt in a short-term rush for success.

What part of that do you object to?

Aye, this was something I was interested in looking at further as well.

I appreciate you've given further context on what Anderson's money goes towards, but out of interest, what would Hearts' wages to turnover ratio be without it? And do we know what level of costs his money goes towards would be considered ongoing costs (e.g. the women's team)?

Edited by AJF
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5 minutes ago, AJF said:

 

Aye, this was something I was interested in looking at further as well.

I appreciate you've given further context on what Anderson's money goes towards, but out of interest, what would Hearts' wages to turnover ratio be without it? And do we know what level of costs his money goes towards would be considered ongoing costs (e.g. the women's team)?

Couldn't tell you off the top of my head, but it was discussed when the accounts were released.

Our wages to turnover needs to come down a bit, imo, but I can't remember the exact figures.

We published accounts, so it's all available.

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9 minutes ago, craigkillie said:


I don't see any actual benefit in providing a different champion if it's just done by artificially creating a third massively untouchable club. Man City were a different Champion in the English Premier League and Champions League, but if anything their successes have been even more soulless and plastic than anything which went before.

The real value would be in gradually building a club in a sustainable manner, perhaps investing substantially in youth, and then becoming successful that way. FFP encourages that sort of investment because you know all your gradual building isn't going to be blown out of the water by some oil billionaire just deciding to randomly chuck money at one of your rivals.

Honestly mate it would be a laugh, and there is no chance that a wee club could be untouchable on the largesse of one individual. I would take your point, but that just isn't remotely realistic in Scotland. Bringing in regulations to prevent something that has never happened and is highly unlikely to happen is foolish and needlessly bureaucratic, which obviously means that the SFA are considering it.

I take your point about teams down the league but they, like Cove Rangers, will hit a ceiling and find their level. 

To your other point about building sustainably, that isn't realistic either. The second a youth player shows signs of promise they get poached. I sometimes fantasise about the 2004 Hibs team and if they'd stayed together I think they'd have won a title. They were all poached by bigger clubs.

It would take a perfect storm of a filthy rich fan with enough money to throw £30m at a wage bill for a season or two to even consider upsetting the apple cart. It's just never going to happen, but I'd love it if it did.

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2 hours ago, VincentGuerin said:

UEFA's FFP rules allow clubs to spend around £5m a year more than they bring in. I don't see how that is unreasonable in a Scottish context.

Because we'd just see a miniature version of how "superclubs" get around it.

Smaller clubs being bought up by "groups" so they can spend/sell money as/when they wish for however much they wish to help them balance the books.

Rangers struggling to stay in their limits? 

No bother, the "Rangers Group" will just buy a share in East Fife, make them spend £500k on a player, let East Fife get the punishment, then loan the player off them in 12 months to "help".

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1 minute ago, RandomGuy. said:

Because we'd just see a miniature version of how "superclubs" get around it.

Smaller clubs being bought up by "groups" so they can spend/sell money as/when they wish for however much they wish to help them balance the books.

Rangers struggling to stay in their limits? 

No bother, the "Rangers Group" will just buy a share in East Fife, make them spend £500k on a player, let East Fife get the punishment, then loan the player off them in 12 months to "help".

You don't want it, I get it.

But we see a lot of this "Oh, it can't be perfect".

It's about protecting your club and mine from bad owners. A lot of people lose sight of that.

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1 hour ago, VincentGuerin said:

UEFA allow the club owner to top up the losses.

Up to €60m- I didn't think it was near that much. But that only kicks in above €5m a year. 

Gifts aren't counted in the losses before the €5m. Neither are capitalised loans. And if you breach the upper limit gifts or conversion won't help at all.  

€5m a year is above the turnover and gross asset value of a few premier clubs and probably most championship clubs. €60m probably won't even affect Celtic. 

We'd need our own thresholds and the sort of money that's been pumped into Hearts and Aberdeen recently would be beyond existential for most clubs outside the biggest handful. Not insurmountable i guess, but an issue. 

If you're right and gifts are inherently better than loan conversion , the current UEFA model doesn't distinguish between them (other than stipulating that gifts can't have conditions). So we'd need some agreed way to distinguish in the rules between altruistic noble philanthropists and reckless egotistical sugar-daddies. I can't see that being a point that gets agreed on in any useful way. 

In principle some sort of rolling loss restriction with limited ability to debt fund those losses is a good idea. But i just can't see it working well in practice. 

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3 minutes ago, VincentGuerin said:

You don't want it, I get it.

But we see a lot of this "Oh, it can't be perfect".

It's about protecting your club and mine from bad owners. A lot of people lose sight of that.

I think there's better ways of protecting clubs, and the main one is an actual thorough check of their financial history.

I'd love it if we could replicate Germany and make sure fans are always the main shareholders of clubs, but I'm unsure that works with our clubs? Means that if needed they can fairly simply remove owners.

FFP to me just punishes the poor and allows those rich enough to buy loopholes freedom to do what they want. I don't think its a coincidence the Champions League sees the same 10 or so sides rotating for Quarter Final spots.

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1 minute ago, RandomGuy. said:

I think there's better ways of protecting clubs, and the main one is an actual thorough check of their financial history.

I'd love it if we could replicate Germany and make sure fans are always the main shareholders of clubs, but I'm unsure that works with our clubs? Means that if needed they can fairly simply remove owners.

FFP to me just punishes the poor and allows those rich enough to buy loopholes freedom to do what they want. I don't think its a coincidence the Champions League sees the same 10 or so sides rotating for Quarter Final spots.

I don't think we can replicate Germany, so it's not relevant to this discussion.

What is a "thorough check of their financial history" if not FFP?

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39 minutes ago, craigkillie said:



There are plenty of current examples in Scottish football of people chucking unsustainable money at clubs though, you just have to look a little bit below the top flight for it. Edinburgh City, Kelty, Darvel, Johnstone Burgh etc

Money is thrown about at part time level all the time. There’s obviously plenty of small investors willing to do that for various local reasons and becoming the best part time club in Scotland isn’t difficult. None of those clubs will ever play in the top flight. I was referring to the full time game, where the sums needed are very different. 

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1 minute ago, VincentGuerin said:

I don't think we can replicate Germany, so it's not relevant to this discussion.

What is a "thorough check of their financial history" if not FFP?

I meant of any new owner, more than a club overall. Sorry I never made that clear.

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We’re far too far down the line now but in a parallel universe you could have the SPFL a lot more centrally controlled in terms of these things. 

Some sort of mechanism where ‘growth’ is achieved as a league body in a sustainable way. Where external investment is in to the league and the league could have an infrastructure fund which clubs can use for various projects. 

A FFP model could be that the league as a whole needs to meet a certain wage to turnover ratio etc, instead of done at individual club level that just holds teams in a pecking order. 

This is pie in the sky and comes form about 5 minutes thinking so won’t be perfect in the slightest, but to me that’s the way for the game to grow in a proper manner that doesn’t stifle the actual thing we’re all there to see. A competition. 

Instead we are all in our own little silo’s keeping a fragile peace to get the games on, whilst engaging in an arms race to earn more money than one another. 

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20 minutes ago, RandomGuy. said:

Because we'd just see a miniature version of how "superclubs" get around it.

Smaller clubs being bought up by "groups" so they can spend/sell money as/when they wish for however much they wish to help them balance the books.

Rangers struggling to stay in their limits? 

No bother, the "Rangers Group" will just buy a share in East Fife, make them spend £500k on a player, let East Fife get the punishment, then loan the player off them in 12 months to "help".


Scottish clubs are not allowed to have stakes in other Scottish clubs.

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55 minutes ago, velo army said:

Yes, and that can be part of a "fit and proper" assessment perhaps. You say "distort", but the champions league money has done just that to our league. I don't care much about football anywhere in the world, but I would welcome someone coming in to "distort our league" by providing a different champion. It's the only way it would ever happen 

Correct.

What we have currently is hideously distorted.  However, because it's well established, and supported by our media, it's come to be seen as natural.  However, there is nothing remotely natural about how money is divided in our game.

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1 hour ago, Lex said:

Already mentioned the Browns troubles in trying to offload St Johnstone and I’m sure we’ve all seen the video of Motherwell whoring themselves for ‘investors’ on social media.
No one of any proper means is interested in investing in any of these clubs, all of whom are secure in the top flight and debt free,

🤔

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57 minutes ago, craigkillie said:


I don't see any actual benefit in providing a different champion if it's just done by artificially creating a third massively untouchable club. 

We get the same champions all the time now, due to 'artificial' conditions.

You just won't see it that way.

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25 minutes ago, craigkillie said:


Scottish clubs are not allowed to have stakes in other Scottish clubs.

Much like how "groups" like Red Bull weren't allowed to have 2 teams in the same European competition at the same time?

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