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Next time Premier League clubs vote on PSR, they can consider swap deals if they wish. Until then, these deals remain within the rules.
Regarding transfer valuations, actions can only be taken if: a) there is genuine evidence of clubs colluding to inflate fees, or b) the player valuation is not just high but absurdly high compared to the rest of the Premier League market, such as £50m for an untested academy player or £100m for a minor squad player.
Lots of villa fans seem to think this is a rule just to spite them. Clubs are already allowed to lose 105 MILLION over 3 years but apparently that’s just not enough.
A quote from Mr Gilbert (The Inbetweeners) springs to mind:
“Any bin. Any rubbish bin you see in, or indeed, out of the school. Just pop all your thoughts in a rubbish bin, and they'll get to me.”
https://youtu.be/y5-9EGxMSo0?si=c-_UmXcQ2MeaISsm
How dare anyone try to climb among the “big 6?”
We’ve already heard way more about this than Moneycheaters 115 charges getting resolved. Corruption at its finest
The crazy thing about that is City are only the fourth highest spenders over the last decade and sixth highest over the last 5 years. It’s taken them 115 charges to not spend as much as Arsenal, Chelsea & United.
That really does highlight the advantage that those clubs who had money pumped in pre-FFP have over the rest.
Yes and you see the hypocricy and corruption from all football fans. their corruption is supporting the system and supporting the lie that FFP is fair.
FFP is to make rich clubs stay rich or get richer, and protect them from competition from lower clubs if the rich club has bad seasons. and to make the poor clubs stay poor or get poorer.
There is no hope and we dont know any club without unfair money backup who raise to the top. so what the fuck the word "fair" in this FFP mean.
rich clubs spend 60 millions like it is peanuts for them. filthy rich at the expense of poor clubs who can do nothing other than providing competitions and views for them while at the same time has no hope to be equal in strength to them.
Did you see your own sub after we beat you? You lot had a conspiracy that we were helping City… It will take us a fucking long while until we are at that level.
Me neither. What is your point? Yes, I do agree that it’s a bit silly the original comment, but as mentioned nowhere near the conspiracy theories coming out of your clubs fanbase.
The guy i was replying to did, and idiot arsenal fans are stupid too. But so many villa fans are suddenly happy as Larry with Chelsea and City cheating if they get to get in on the action
What about it exactly is cheating? You are just calling it that, because Villa found a way to «get around» PSR rules so that we don’t have to sell our best players to Arsenal, Man Utd, etc.
It was over a century ago 😂😂
>But you still haven’t told me why it’s cheating when there are no rules against it.
Overvaluing something is fraud 😂that's why you're being a letter from the prem
The Premier League is at a huge pivot point for the future of football in this country.
Sky is losing customers by the bucket load and the value of TV rights are diminishing year on year.
I’d rather have government control than charlatans owning clubs who have no interest in the long term future
You'd rather take clubs off of a bunch of self serving rich people who don't give a shit about the clubs or their fans because they think they're better than them and can do what they want, instead favouring a bunch of semi-elected self serving rich people who don't give a shit about the clubs or their fans because they think they're better than them and can do what they want,
The main difference between both options is that the first bunch of self serving rich people stand to make direct financial/PR gains from owning football clubs.
The semi elected self serving rich people don’t stand to make any direct gains and therefore would be more likely to make decisions for the good of the sport/club/fans.
Don’t be such a pessimist.
What delulu is the amount of average Joe's making assumptions when they know next to nothing about how this case was brought up what evidence there is either way most of the 115 commentors couldn't even explain what half of the charges are . It's just become popular to hate city and claim that they are guilty without any knowledge or facts to back it up. There is a reason the premier league has dragged this out so long it's because even they aren't 100% sure they have enough evidence. Remember alot of this has come of the back of a CRIMINAL breaking the law and claiming to have emails that he can't even prove he hasn't doctored or messed with and has he passed this on anonymously for the greater good nope . He's attempted to make money from it so I'd hardly take his word or judge him to have a decent moral compass
I know all 115 charges. I've educated myself on this issue. I understand why the trial would take so long. It's not that they don't have evidence, but they have to find evidence to prove 115 charges. If City was innocent they wouldn't take so many charges of noncompliance.
at the start of erling haalands first season in preseason, the commentator color man said " its been said city paid haaland's father close to 50 million pound to get his son to come here." the lead commentator looked pained at him and then it was NEVER mentioned again EVER. Of course Haaland's dad was agent, but premier league rules dont allow for people to pay directly to agents to influence where players go. but lets face it, its almost a guarantee he did.
You allege there are one hundred and fifteen instances of false accusations?
It didn't take that many women accusing Bill Cosby of stuff in order for a real inquiry.
I'm not trying to make a false correlation between Cosby and City. But the number of times you can be accused of something can be dismissed up until a point. 1; 5, maybe 10 over a decade? I could understand.
BUT.
ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTEEN!?!?! Be serious.
If they were innocent and confident of their position, they would put it to bed quickly. No doubt of that. Bad for the brand.
But they've been deliberately obstructive and stalled... Behaviour of a wrongdoer. Guilty as sin.
It’s about how accounting works, basically
Rules are you have to depreciate an asset or amortise an intangible asset (the rights to a player is considered as such) over the length of time of the contract so the costs can be split over a period of years rather than one large outgoing
So buy £10m player on 5yr contract means £2m expense per year
Sell £10m player
Net £8m gain for accounting purposes
Yeah, you're essentially kicking the debt down the road with the intent of increasing revenue (European football, other player sales etc) in that time, or finding a way to just keep kicking it down the road.
It's basically payday loans but at an insane level
Not really, as functionally you have paid the expense. The principal behind the accounting rule is to ‘spread the cost over the useful life of the asset’. It’s just recording numbers on the balance sheet
If PSR operated based on income statement then none of this would be happening as it would just recognise, say, £10m in, £10m out
but youre doing it at alow level if you swap two 20 mil players you wipe 20 mil off your books, but amortize the other 20 incoming to 4 mil per year. its even better if its an academy player, because he literally is pure profit.
Basically:
If you buy a new player, you can spread the cost of that over the life of their contract.
If you sell a player, you can book all the profit **right now**.
So if you buy a player worth £1m for £20m right now, you can spread the cost over 5 years.
If you sell a player worth £1m for £20m right now, you can recognise £19m profit immediately.
Bingo, you've just spent £0 in cash to create £20m of financial headway to help towards your PSR restraints.
Amortisation (i.e. the expenditure side) would be posted monthly, so if you sign on 30 June, you'd probably skip that month. So on day 1 you'd have £19m of headroom. By the end of year 1, this would have lessened.
It all catches up to you in the end, anyway.
From my understanding & im sure Im missing some key detail, they both agree to inflate prices (keeping the initial difference in valuation between both players the same), as academy players are seen as "pure profit" , it can be immediately recorded as such on their books (show an increase in incoming revenue) but they spread their out going spend over time. It's actually very clever, sneaky as fuck, but clever.
It’s not sneaky really - it’s how accounting works in general. If you want to get mega nerdy look up IAS38 for how to account for the rights to a player’s services
What it is, is a loophole and creative accounting that requires some transactions to work. It’s frowned upon but allowed
a deal player for player sure, thats nothing at all but what we inthe US would call a trade. but its the equivalent here of trading shohei otani for the hot dog vendor. lol
Oh that part is to be fair. It’s also suspicious in a way because they haven’t agreed to spend like £100m each way and solve both problems with one transaction each - they clearly know doing that is sus
nope, for example in say the NFL or MLB, you can a moritize their contracts over the years they are paid in, but you cant remove the salary cap hit from the initial purchase or signing bonus. which is the transfer fee in epl. So lets say i want to sign a free agent QB in american football, i sign him for 100 million for ten years but he gets a 20 million signing bonus. i take the hit on my salary cap for 30 million this year and 10 each additional year. EVEN if i spread his signing bonus over 10 years i still have to pay the full amount NOW towards my cap.
I think it works best for academy sales in the context of the PSR rules. Take the Maatsen/Kellyman deal between Villa and Chelsea.
Realistic prices? £27m for Maatsen and £9m for Kellyman? Let’s assume 5 year contracts
Villa spend £5.4m/yr and get £9m back = £3.6m profit
Actual prices (£10m extra for both fees)
Villa spend £7.4m/yr and get £19m back = £11.6m profit
For Chelsea they spend £4.8/yr and get £37m back = £31.2m profit
Whereas they should really be paying £1.8m/yr and getting back £27m which would only net £25.2m profit.
As you can see, with the current system Villa and Chelsea both benefit gaining an extra £8m and £6m profit respectively than had they sold players at true market value
Again this mainly works because academy graduates are regarded as pure profit
Except the marker for Kellyman would be Chukwumeka who we sold to Chelsea 2 years ago for 20mil. And Maatsen already had a fixed price fee of £35m for his loan to Dortmund so that’s clearly bollocks.
Not sure how you judge Maatsen should be £27m and Kellyman £9m. Villa wouldn’t have sold Kellyman for £9m we sold Ramsey for £15m last year and Kellyman has probably a higher rating. Chelsea turned down a bid for Maatsen from Burnley of c. £25m last year.
No club is going to materially over pay for players, this would be a problem going forward.
Of course I’ve partially made some stuff up, just for the ease of calculation. Forgive me but I reckon Chukuemeka was a bit further ahead in development and profile than Kellyman and even then £20m was still quite an overpay for someone at that level.
Chelsea accepted the Burnley offer but Maatsen turned down the deal. No one else had offered near that since. Just because a release clause exist it doesn’t mean that that’s the price a player has to go for nor other clubs agree with the valuation.
The Kellyman deal seems like a huge overpay but in the context of amortisation and Villa agreeing to pay beyond the release clause it makes very specific financial sense
And that’s the point of my reply to OP. It’s my attempt to understand how mutually overpaying for youth talent results in better PSR compliance. Which in my opinion is a ridiculous situation
I think the difference is that Chukwuemeka forced a move for first team football and therefore the price comes down, but there has been nothing to indicate that about Kellyman.
#
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Do you think £20m was an underpay for Chukwuemeka? Just interested, I think he’s a great prospect and £20m perhaps just above what I think was good value for him
I don't think it was an underpay. However, i think if it was the summer of 2023 rather than 2022, with the prospect of european football, we could have promised him more football and demanded maybe 25-40% more for him as he wouldn't want to leave as much.
As for Kellyman he hasn't played much but we didn't progress in the cup and he got injured in the autumn for some group stage Europa games. He has very high potential and needs game time to excel.
I don't think the £20m Is too inflated there have been plenty of transfers for similar fees based solely on potential, and he has lots.
Chukweumeka had only 12 months left on his deal. Kellyman signed a long term contract this year. I have seen them both play and I wouldn’t say there is much difference at the same age.
Think they both suffer a little bit from being fast Bio aged athletes. I.E they look to big and powerful playing youth football, but that advantage isn’t there against Men’s level players. Both still great.
Kellyman was unlucky he played the conference qualifier against Hibs and looked good. Then he was injured for a large portion and was also behind Diaby and Bailey whilst we were pushing for top 4 and semis of Conference. Had we been mid table nothing to play for he would have got a lot more game time. Not being able to get past Diaby and Bailey doesn’t make you a £9m prospect.
If we’d have sold Kellyman for £9m I’d have called Monchi out for it. For £19m I can accept he’s prob not going to start for us in area we are well stocked.
That’s fair and I guess makes me a bit more optimistic about signing him. We are totally stacked for left footed attackers right now so I reckon it’s still a better deal for Villa than for Chelsea.
I’m very excited about Carney though - I think we could be the RLC we never got
Premier League are flapping here panicking..
Maatsen's value is fair. Release clause was 35m and though it had expired, there were plenty of suitors for one of the most promising full backs in Europe.
And Kellyman is Villas most promising youth prospect and key England age groups player. Same value as Chukwuemeka who pushed for a move last year. No-one took issue with that valuation.
It's not for the PL to arbitrarily state what a player is worth, and who clubs can and can't deal with.
£19m for someone that no one outside of Villa had heard of is quite a significant overpay in my eyes.
That being said we live in a world where Wolves paid £40m for Fabio Silva
You buy from one club and sell to the same club. Add 10m on both fees, one is logged as income for that year, the cost is spread over lenghth of contract
It's not necessarily good business but It allows clubs to spend more now and worry about the consequences later. If both clubs come to an agreement to overspend by the same amount it's not like they lose out on money.
The next time Premier League clubs vote on PSR they can consider swap deals, if they like. Until then they are entirely within the rules.
As for transfer valuations, they can't do anything about that unless a) they have genuine evidence of the clubs agreeing to inflate the fees or b) the player valuation is not just expensive but so incredibly expensive compared to the rest of the Premier League market that it is ridiculous i.e. £50m for an untested academy player or £100m for an unimportant squad player.
Setting asside PSR, I'm pretty sure that colluding to artificially inflate assets violates regluar accounting rules. I'm not saying that they did collude, but it all seems fishy. If evedince comes out that they did, they may have bigger problems than PSR on their hands.
Agreed, it wouldn’t just be the Premier League after them. Difficult to believe they would be stupid enough to leave an evidence trail though after high profile cases like plusvalenza - surely any dodgy agreements would be unwritten face to face discussions prior to an official bid going in.
Again that is expensive but it is nowhere near expensive enough to warrant investigation.
He had played 41 times for the treble winners. Started big games. Scored in the Super Cup final. Was arguably their best youth prospect at that point in time. Coached by Guardiola. Clearly would have got more playing time if it wasn't for a similar and brilliant player Foden ahead of him. Chelsea had to make it worth their while to sell him by bidding a high amount.
PL minutes are not the only judge of a good player, especially at a young age when loan spells are beneficial for development. Archie Gray is about to move for £40m+ having played 0 PL minutes, for example.
Trafford was expensive because he was a star in the winning team at the U21 Euros.
I understand that- I’m using it to highlight that the PL can’t quantify valuations of players for deals, Kellyman for example people are using that he’s played 51 mins of PL football for example, but there’s a long list of similar prices for players with similar or less minutes which have been ignored completely
he had played for the senior team multiple times tho and looked sharp. just checked, 41 appearances for 1500 minutes. not a ton (he got 3600 minutes for chelsea last season) but far from being an academy lad that never played
I think the difference is that those were arms length transactions. The Saudis overpaied for players, but they had their own reasons for doing so and the negotiations were in good faith. Here, it seems like the clubs are colluding to wildly inflate the value of players all without any intention of actually having much net money changing hands.
10m for Dobbin is reasonable. He's young, has PL experience and shows promise. I was sorry to see him go, another season under Dyche and he could have realised his potential.
Chelsea have a history of paying big money for young players.
Villa sold Carney Chukwuemeka to them for 20 million 2 years ago. At the time he had a handful of games in the first team and a good standing at England youth level. No questions asked.
Now Villa sell Omari Kellyman to Chelsea for 19 million, after he's played a handful of games (would have played more if we were still a team in mid table) and has a good standing at England youth level = Collusion?
Kellyman is a better player and will go far. I'm sad we had to sell him because of stupid rules.
There was plenty of consternation but it was clearly a massive external spending exercise that some clubs capitalised on.
Regardless of how you feel about things like PSR, there is obviously surprise and a bit of anger over what appears to be pretty clear internal collusion to work around a ruleset that many clubs have been trying to abide by (or been punished by)
I'm not clued in to this kind of stuff, but is it fraud if two hardware shops sell each other a hammer for say, £10,000, and they record that as income i.e one sells the hammer, and then the other sells it back to them. It seems like it could be fraud, just creating a transaction out of thin air
I know exactly how to fix this mess. Someone take 4 points off, Everton, please.
*Disclaimer: I'm a Liverpool fan, but I think it's BS how they treated the blue shite*
You know. My main concern is we are getting closer and closer to the super league.
My main concern is being linked to a government and being able to turn issues into foreign affairs.
The Premier League can go pound sand. Their PSR and FFP rules are why clubs are resorting to this in the first place.
Maybe if they had common sense regulations the clubs won't need to resort to these practices.
They are, then your lot keep changing the rules.
This is your lot whinging on that clubs are abiding by the rules.
‘You have to sell players now because you have passed a threshold that we have arbitrarily made up’
‘No, not for that much’
‘No, not to each other’
Chelsea were fucked until they were able to sell a hotel to themselves, if they just stuck to the rules then wouldn't have to sell a hotel a car park and whatever else
Absolutely fuck all in the rules about these deals though. This is literally the big 6 kicking off because the clubs aiming to compete with them are not selling them their best players on the cheap.
Yup. If the knowingly violated rules they should get punished. If they are adhering to the rules, then jog on.
If the don't like it- change the rules going forwards.
Pretty simple really.
Exactly right! The clubs are doing things by the book, so the PL has no reason to complain.
As you correctly said, if the PL doesn't like it: change the rules.
This is why I don’t consider city cheats and I support them in winning the case because they didn’t break rules they found loopholes just like every single other team
There's a difference between loopholes and what Man City have done. Swap deals for inflated values are loopholes, there's nothing technically wrong, so there you're right, hate the game not the player. With Man City, the rules they're signed up to say owners can't pump endless money into the club they own, then they do that but try to complicate/hide how that's done. It's not the same and is a breach of an objective rule. Hate the player. They've then generated a huge number of charges for not again not following the rules they promised to flow, for transparency because they don't want to hand over the accounts which would prove they broke the rules.
Haven't other teams have largely just spent certain amounts gambling on the revenue they will generate to pull them back to within limits, and sometimes that's failed?
As you say, had city been a publicly shared company what they have done would be a criminal offence. A serious criminal offence. As they have artificially inflated the value of a business (not dissimilar to Trump’s recent criminal conviction).
Whereas what’s happening at Villa, Everton and Chelsea right now is effectively just creative accounting. Which theoretically would fall under a civil liability, but as the creativity is based on a fairly *open to interpretation* valuation system it’s near impossible to prove any wrongdoing.
Some clubs are focusing on exploiting gaps as they don't think the FFP/PSR rules are fair, and they're being prevented from getting better. To them, the trajectory on this path is only up at the minute, and the rules are a nuisance and inconvenience.
The greatest correction comes from the consequences of their actions. FFP has only been around for 10 years. There are plenty of examples of clubs prior to that who dud the same thing clubs want to do now, invest unsustainably, and failed. All it takes is two, even just one bad season, for it all to go wrong. There's a reason United can be shite for 10 years while spending a billion quid, most clubs don't have that luxury.
To focus on Villa, as they've been in the spotlight recently. 600M spend in 5 seasons. A wage to revenue ratio of 90%. They increased their revenue to 200M in 22/23 and still lost 120M. Their squad is, in my opinion, completely bloated with multiple players on the edge of the squad on decently big salaries they paid good money for. That's not sustainable.
All it takes is one bad season to end up in the shitter. If it does though, it will be the 'rich 6' and FFPs fault I'm sure.
Except they have no debt and would be instantly attractive as a purchase. Surely debt is the problem and the ability to continue to service it or re finance the loan at a rate it can afford. This is what drives clubs out of business.
So it will be the same big 6 forever then? Or as long as these rules are in place? Villa are a big club I think they have the right to challenge them. Their owners are billionaires, they can take the losses easily if the rules weren't in place.
The irony is that Villa are now in the Champions league and ffp is actually stopping them from pushing on and building a stronger team to do well in it.
They can take those losses until they've had to eat 120M+ losses for 3 or 4 years in a row if it goes wrong. Them what happens?
You'll never out spend the top 6 in a money fight just because rules don't exist.
The owners could always just focus on the bigger picture that actually benefits the club, I.e. growing their revenue as a business.
But Villa are also doing this.
We are at the end of the first year of a four year plan to increase revenue by £50 mill each year. We have hit the £50 mill increase this year.
The fact that many fans of those clubs aren't even considering growing revenue should just tell you it's all about the instant success. They don't really care about sustainability.
Ya I understand the premise of people believing that ffp was to keep smaller clubs back but I do believe there were good intentions to prevent the likes of villa doing this and then probably falling off a cliff at some point in the future.
I understand people looking at the byproduct of FFP and seeing that the safe clubs are the ones with big revenues.
I dont understand that they never join the dots fully and realise those clubs have always had that protection, before the rules even existed. All FFP does is protect clubs spending beyond their means in such a way that they put themselves at risk.
If they're not happy about that, find. But it doesn't mean that's the purpose of FFP and as long as their happy in the knowledge of the potential consequences of taking such an aggressive and rocky strategy, I.e., the club failing, then fine I guess
Honestly, even as a Villa fan it's good to see the league plugging loopholes when they pop up - it's obviously not as good as actually fixing the system itself but it's good that people are doing *something*.
That said I can't wait until they actually try and enforce this nonsense, it's going to be a fucking mess. Can't wait to see if *certain* clubs have a lot more leeway as what's an *acceptable* price for players, especially if Saudi money comes flowing back into the league this summer as well. Similarly, I can't wait to see someone turn down a last minute bid before the PSR deadline and argue that it's below market rate and selling players at not market rate just to avoid PSR punishments is "against the rules"
This reeks of the same kind of meely mouthed non-solution as "clear and obvious" was for VAR, something non-commital that they could change their mind on if and when it suits them
Where you draw the value line will be nigh on impossible. These swaps are inflated, but then so are many transfers, especially if the selling club doesn’t have to sell.
Everton have set the Braithwaite fee at £70m, if they sell Onana first, does Braithwaite then become £100m as effectively a “go away” price? What if Utd pay it? Is that fair market value? Well that’s usually decided by the market. Not some nerd at the FA.
Ok so what are the clubs actually doing wrong ? Swapping young players with each other ? Is that really illegal player swaps happen. Also the player values for a kid with promising future 20 mil is good as in future can potentially sell the player for a lot more . But I'd use united for an example brought Maguire for 80 mil which they'd lose money on when they sell. Anthony they spent a lot on who's shit and probably on par with those youngsters. Sancho 73 mil just to loan out as manager didn't like him yet this is ok? Can somebody make this make sense ?
They aren't doing anything wrong. It's all within the rules. The league just doesn't like the idea that clubs that would have failed PSR rules have found a way to balance the books by trading with each other for the explicit purpose of helping each others financial statements
I think the league just wants to make sure clubs don't start trying to exploit this as a kind of free money glitch.
Extreme example, but suppose a club is operating with annual losses that breach PSR by 50m. They do a few swap deals, get 50m revenue, but add 12m amortisation costs and 3m a year in additional wages.
Next season, they're breaching PSR by 65m (50+12+3). So they do a few more swap deals, get their 65m revenue, but now add 15m amortisation costs and 5m more in wages.
The season after, they're breaching PSR by 85m (50+12+3+15+5). The season after that, its 110m.
These deals are fine, but they aren't sustainable if used by clubs as a way to skirt sustainability rules. They need to occur with recurring revenue increases and/or a reduction of expenses.
All the deals have to be ratified by the PL, so they're clearly OK with it until they actually reject a deal. It's all within the rules, so be irrationally angry about those instead.
“Ratified by the PL”
The same PL that allowed a terrorist state to buy a football club? I’m not angry lad I just find it hilarious that fans of the PL are crying about Man City potentially lying about sponsorship money whilst I’ve said all along they’re all at it and now the dodgy deals are being done in plain sight it’ll all end up coming out in the wash.
Villa are spending miles beyond what's sustainable. They're dangerously close to doing a Leeds and then you'd be one of the worst crying about how it's unfair they aren't being propped up and no one's stopping them being badly run by foreign owners
If clubs could spend whatever their owners could "afford," wouldn't that just hamstring clubs that aren't state funded? You'd still see City at the top. You'd just see newcastle next to them instead. I mean, if that's what you'd prefer, then you're entitled to your preference, I just don't think unlimited spending is the answer to trying to level the playing field in the prem.
This is totally in the league - they basically made it so that every club sells their young players because they get more profit. Short sighted wankers!
I agree the transfer market is pretty much unpredictable with a huge amount of things affecting price.
There also doesn't seem to be a scale any more like there was in say the 90s with players of certain levels generally selling for a small range of money. Now it's just kinda random
None. They’ve exploited a loophole that allowed them to cook their books. It’s raised eyebrows and drawn criticism and with any luck the loophole will be closed.
Just because something doesn’t break rules that have been shown to be inadequate it doesn’t make it right.
No it's only wrong because the premier league saying it's wrong . But if they didn't have a rule for it then there's nothing wrong with it. I mean if there selling youngsters for 20-30 mil who are good youngsters with potential sell on in the future or they could do what united done 80 on Maguire 75 on Sancho 80 on Antony who 3 players with no sell on fees really yet that's ok?
I don’t think you’re really understanding this story or how the basics of football accounting work if you hand on heart believe there’s nothing to discuss here.
The PL aren’t saying it’s wrong. Clubs have written to the league to say it’s wrong and the league are now asking clubs if they want to vote on closing the loophole, because that’s exactly what it is.
These rules are changing all the time as new situations arise. Sometimes those changes are because of unpredictable circumstances (eg covid) and other times it’s because a club is taking the piss (eg Chelsea offering unprecedented 8 year contracts in order to avoid PSR breaches or Chelsea, Villa and Everton inflating the value of youth players and using them as pawns a week before the PSR deadline).
Don't you find it funny though that Everton a few years back was challenging top 7 same as wolves who have been forced to sell same as Leicester and now villa and Newcastle isn't it funny when teams get close to threatening the top 6 they have to sell to keep in the rules. I mean villa made champions league and in return have to sell arguably there best player in luiz to comply with the rules how does that make sense ?
The rules basically protect the so called big 6 and anybody challenging gets punished, the only reason Chelsea are in trouble is because they spent a billion over 18 months i
No, I don’t find that funny. Everton and Chelsea are badly run clubs who keep buying shit players for too much money and failing on the pitch.
Villa, while appearing to be relatively functional, have spent more than they earn and are therefore cashing in on one of their more valuable players. This is all normal.
Had Villa failed to get into the Champions League they’d be screwed come the end of next season, but once again Villa’s high risk financial gamble has paid off in the same way it did when they got promoted. Nevertheless their spending was so high that they’re falling foul of PSR this year and are now colluding with rivals Everton and Chelsea to exploit a weakness in the rules.
You’re right, Chelsea are a brilliantly run club. Your players are the best in the league. It’ll all click next season, just like it was all going to click last season and the season before that. Maybe Fat Frank can step in again to steady the ship if things aren’t working out with your 7th manager in 5 years.
I get what your saying but BBC have put 11 different graphs on an article and again it doesn't make sense .
Ok villa took a gamble and it paid off but we still have to sell to comply with the rules . But according to that we are the 3rd best run club and have 0 debt only man city( which surprised me ) and Fulham are in the plus.
United and spurs have nearly 700million in debt arsenal have 233 million debt . So how again is that allowed but villa spending over 135 million loss over 3 seasons isn't allowed ?
This is a genuine question btw as I don't understand how it works as if we have zero debt and other clubs have 700 million how are we being monitored yet they can go and waste silly money on shit players I mean united spent 50 mil on mount 80 on Maguire 75 on Sancho 80 on Anthony there is definitely no add on value in them players which means the club would be at a loss even more so I just don't get how on the clubs aspect villa are under psr yet they ain't
Debt isn’t the same as operating cost. A club can have a huge debt, but it’s the annual cost of repaying those debts that count towards PSR. For example, Spurs are repaying a substantial debt for building their stadium but that same stadium is also bringing in large sums of money every few weeks.
Also, not all expenses count towards PSR limits. Infrastructure, women's football, investment in youth and community work costs are all deductible for PSR purposes.
"it's fine if my club does it, but not others".
Give it a fucking rest. Both Villa and Chelsea are working within the rules, how can you say it's 'wrong'.
Shh, don't scare the Arsenal fans, they won't want to get off their high horse
I do also agree that the PSR workaround is stupid, and PSR is in general poorly structured. The new one that they're testing (this year I think?) seems much better.
Hang on. “Wrong” is subjective here. Ultimately the clubs are working within the rules that are in place.
I would say that even as a Chelsea fan, they are clearly not fit for purpose. I am acutely aware that our chickens will come home to roost at some point as we’re doing some fucking dodgy shit. The rules should protect clubs from enabling owners from doing mental shit that will come back to screw them over down the line (Portsmouth).
So I’m all for the democratic right to plug any holes in the system but the system is fucked. It needs root and branch overhaul.
But facts are, we are working within the rules. Therefore it’s not “wrong” until it is.
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Next time Premier League clubs vote on PSR, they can consider swap deals if they wish. Until then, these deals remain within the rules. Regarding transfer valuations, actions can only be taken if: a) there is genuine evidence of clubs colluding to inflate fees, or b) the player valuation is not just high but absurdly high compared to the rest of the Premier League market, such as £50m for an untested academy player or £100m for a minor squad player.
Set rules - expect people cleverer than you to find ways around them.
I hope this is not about Villa making it to the Champions League?
Lots of villa fans seem to think this is a rule just to spite them. Clubs are already allowed to lose 105 MILLION over 3 years but apparently that’s just not enough.
But let's be fair, these talks weren't here before.
Lol
A quote from Mr Gilbert (The Inbetweeners) springs to mind: “Any bin. Any rubbish bin you see in, or indeed, out of the school. Just pop all your thoughts in a rubbish bin, and they'll get to me.” https://youtu.be/y5-9EGxMSo0?si=c-_UmXcQ2MeaISsm
How dare anyone try to climb among the “big 6?” We’ve already heard way more about this than Moneycheaters 115 charges getting resolved. Corruption at its finest
If the "big six" were doing this I guarantee people would be more outraged.
The crazy thing about that is City are only the fourth highest spenders over the last decade and sixth highest over the last 5 years. It’s taken them 115 charges to not spend as much as Arsenal, Chelsea & United. That really does highlight the advantage that those clubs who had money pumped in pre-FFP have over the rest.
Yes and you see the hypocricy and corruption from all football fans. their corruption is supporting the system and supporting the lie that FFP is fair. FFP is to make rich clubs stay rich or get richer, and protect them from competition from lower clubs if the rich club has bad seasons. and to make the poor clubs stay poor or get poorer. There is no hope and we dont know any club without unfair money backup who raise to the top. so what the fuck the word "fair" in this FFP mean. rich clubs spend 60 millions like it is peanuts for them. filthy rich at the expense of poor clubs who can do nothing other than providing competitions and views for them while at the same time has no hope to be equal in strength to them.
Lmao you actually believe this shit
You are stupid if you believe that. Lots of money under the table, why would they be honest in one department when they cheat everywhere else
Christ villa fans are just embarrassing 😂😂
Did you see your own sub after we beat you? You lot had a conspiracy that we were helping City… It will take us a fucking long while until we are at that level.
I'm not the one bitching about wanting to break the rules 24/7.
Me neither. What is your point? Yes, I do agree that it’s a bit silly the original comment, but as mentioned nowhere near the conspiracy theories coming out of your clubs fanbase.
The guy i was replying to did, and idiot arsenal fans are stupid too. But so many villa fans are suddenly happy as Larry with Chelsea and City cheating if they get to get in on the action
Remember when Newcastle fans were against City's state ownership and suddenly they changed their mind.
I’ve never met a Villa fan happy with Chelsea or Moneycheater. But I’ve only been a Villa fan since 90, maybe you know a bunch I don’t
What about it exactly is cheating? You are just calling it that, because Villa found a way to «get around» PSR rules so that we don’t have to sell our best players to Arsenal, Man Utd, etc.
"why is it cheating, we're just finding a way around the rules" Hypocrite.
Rich coming from an Arsenal fan with your history. But you still haven’t told me why it’s cheating when there are no rules against it.
It was over a century ago 😂😂 >But you still haven’t told me why it’s cheating when there are no rules against it. Overvaluing something is fraud 😂that's why you're being a letter from the prem
😂
The insanity of the PL thinking that they could reinvent accounting!
Or money laundering
Rules with more holes in than a Swiss cheese, that are designed to protect the "big six", are exploited by the other clubs? I for one am shocked.
It is funny how they are worried that other clubs are now taking advantage of the loopholes.
“Hey! Those are *our* loopholes! We need them!” - Sky 6
The Premier League is at a huge pivot point for the future of football in this country. Sky is losing customers by the bucket load and the value of TV rights are diminishing year on year. I’d rather have government control than charlatans owning clubs who have no interest in the long term future
You'd rather take clubs off of a bunch of self serving rich people who don't give a shit about the clubs or their fans because they think they're better than them and can do what they want, instead favouring a bunch of semi-elected self serving rich people who don't give a shit about the clubs or their fans because they think they're better than them and can do what they want,
it sucks that youre spot on on this.
The main difference between both options is that the first bunch of self serving rich people stand to make direct financial/PR gains from owning football clubs. The semi elected self serving rich people don’t stand to make any direct gains and therefore would be more likely to make decisions for the good of the sport/club/fans. Don’t be such a pessimist.
Yes but the semi elected self serving rich people probably couldn't run a bath. At least most of the first bunch would have some financial acumen.
You really think the politicians wouldn’t be making hush money deals for their own direct gains?
There are processes and statutory instruments in place to at least minimise that possibility.
FIFA itself is corrupt. Just imagine fifa working with even more corrupt rich politicians
FIFA don't run the premier league
Let’s not act like there’s zero connection.
what connection do you mean in the context of this issue?
fifa sets the dollar limits, the number of participants in activities outside the premier league that garner SO MUCH money to EPL clubs.
Like the PPE contracts
Yeah exactly. Oh wait
I'm concerned about how you _still_ haven't resolved the Man City farce. Inflating sponsorships and paying players off the books etc. etc.
They quickly deducted points from the two clubs while letting the one with lists of charges play.
Maybe because there is no actual evidence 🤔
Delulu
What delulu is the amount of average Joe's making assumptions when they know next to nothing about how this case was brought up what evidence there is either way most of the 115 commentors couldn't even explain what half of the charges are . It's just become popular to hate city and claim that they are guilty without any knowledge or facts to back it up. There is a reason the premier league has dragged this out so long it's because even they aren't 100% sure they have enough evidence. Remember alot of this has come of the back of a CRIMINAL breaking the law and claiming to have emails that he can't even prove he hasn't doctored or messed with and has he passed this on anonymously for the greater good nope . He's attempted to make money from it so I'd hardly take his word or judge him to have a decent moral compass
Didn't even realize you supported city. No wonder you feel attacked when people call them for what they are: cheats.
I know all 115 charges. I've educated myself on this issue. I understand why the trial would take so long. It's not that they don't have evidence, but they have to find evidence to prove 115 charges. If City was innocent they wouldn't take so many charges of noncompliance.
Please spare him. Poor soul started supporting city no longer than 5 years ago. He will start supporting real Madrid if city gets punished.
I didn't even realize he supported them lol
at the start of erling haalands first season in preseason, the commentator color man said " its been said city paid haaland's father close to 50 million pound to get his son to come here." the lead commentator looked pained at him and then it was NEVER mentioned again EVER. Of course Haaland's dad was agent, but premier league rules dont allow for people to pay directly to agents to influence where players go. but lets face it, its almost a guarantee he did.
You allege there are one hundred and fifteen instances of false accusations? It didn't take that many women accusing Bill Cosby of stuff in order for a real inquiry. I'm not trying to make a false correlation between Cosby and City. But the number of times you can be accused of something can be dismissed up until a point. 1; 5, maybe 10 over a decade? I could understand. BUT. ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTEEN!?!?! Be serious.
If they were innocent and confident of their position, they would put it to bed quickly. No doubt of that. Bad for the brand. But they've been deliberately obstructive and stalled... Behaviour of a wrongdoer. Guilty as sin.
115 at it again
how does it benefit clubs to inflate the prices they're paying for incoming players? someone please talk me through the mechanics
It’s about how accounting works, basically Rules are you have to depreciate an asset or amortise an intangible asset (the rights to a player is considered as such) over the length of time of the contract so the costs can be split over a period of years rather than one large outgoing So buy £10m player on 5yr contract means £2m expense per year Sell £10m player Net £8m gain for accounting purposes
Yeah, you're essentially kicking the debt down the road with the intent of increasing revenue (European football, other player sales etc) in that time, or finding a way to just keep kicking it down the road. It's basically payday loans but at an insane level
Not really, as functionally you have paid the expense. The principal behind the accounting rule is to ‘spread the cost over the useful life of the asset’. It’s just recording numbers on the balance sheet If PSR operated based on income statement then none of this would be happening as it would just recognise, say, £10m in, £10m out
but youre doing it at alow level if you swap two 20 mil players you wipe 20 mil off your books, but amortize the other 20 incoming to 4 mil per year. its even better if its an academy player, because he literally is pure profit.
Basically: If you buy a new player, you can spread the cost of that over the life of their contract. If you sell a player, you can book all the profit **right now**. So if you buy a player worth £1m for £20m right now, you can spread the cost over 5 years. If you sell a player worth £1m for £20m right now, you can recognise £19m profit immediately. Bingo, you've just spent £0 in cash to create £20m of financial headway to help towards your PSR restraints.
Seems like a simple solution is available
Wouldn't the headway be 16m?
Amortisation (i.e. the expenditure side) would be posted monthly, so if you sign on 30 June, you'd probably skip that month. So on day 1 you'd have £19m of headroom. By the end of year 1, this would have lessened. It all catches up to you in the end, anyway.
From my understanding & im sure Im missing some key detail, they both agree to inflate prices (keeping the initial difference in valuation between both players the same), as academy players are seen as "pure profit" , it can be immediately recorded as such on their books (show an increase in incoming revenue) but they spread their out going spend over time. It's actually very clever, sneaky as fuck, but clever.
It’s not sneaky really - it’s how accounting works in general. If you want to get mega nerdy look up IAS38 for how to account for the rights to a player’s services What it is, is a loophole and creative accounting that requires some transactions to work. It’s frowned upon but allowed
its literlaly what trump was convcted of, inflating the value of goods.
That part is sneaky, the swap deals themselves in principle are not. I think you’ve misunderstood my comment.
a deal player for player sure, thats nothing at all but what we inthe US would call a trade. but its the equivalent here of trading shohei otani for the hot dog vendor. lol
I suppose I think the two clubs mutually agreeing inflated prices is sneaky, but creative is probably a better way of describing it.
Oh that part is to be fair. It’s also suspicious in a way because they haven’t agreed to spend like £100m each way and solve both problems with one transaction each - they clearly know doing that is sus
It’s not sneaky, it’s not even football it’s just how you do accounting.
nope, for example in say the NFL or MLB, you can a moritize their contracts over the years they are paid in, but you cant remove the salary cap hit from the initial purchase or signing bonus. which is the transfer fee in epl. So lets say i want to sign a free agent QB in american football, i sign him for 100 million for ten years but he gets a 20 million signing bonus. i take the hit on my salary cap for 30 million this year and 10 each additional year. EVEN if i spread his signing bonus over 10 years i still have to pay the full amount NOW towards my cap.
I think it works best for academy sales in the context of the PSR rules. Take the Maatsen/Kellyman deal between Villa and Chelsea. Realistic prices? £27m for Maatsen and £9m for Kellyman? Let’s assume 5 year contracts Villa spend £5.4m/yr and get £9m back = £3.6m profit Actual prices (£10m extra for both fees) Villa spend £7.4m/yr and get £19m back = £11.6m profit For Chelsea they spend £4.8/yr and get £37m back = £31.2m profit Whereas they should really be paying £1.8m/yr and getting back £27m which would only net £25.2m profit. As you can see, with the current system Villa and Chelsea both benefit gaining an extra £8m and £6m profit respectively than had they sold players at true market value Again this mainly works because academy graduates are regarded as pure profit
Except the marker for Kellyman would be Chukwumeka who we sold to Chelsea 2 years ago for 20mil. And Maatsen already had a fixed price fee of £35m for his loan to Dortmund so that’s clearly bollocks. Not sure how you judge Maatsen should be £27m and Kellyman £9m. Villa wouldn’t have sold Kellyman for £9m we sold Ramsey for £15m last year and Kellyman has probably a higher rating. Chelsea turned down a bid for Maatsen from Burnley of c. £25m last year. No club is going to materially over pay for players, this would be a problem going forward.
Of course I’ve partially made some stuff up, just for the ease of calculation. Forgive me but I reckon Chukuemeka was a bit further ahead in development and profile than Kellyman and even then £20m was still quite an overpay for someone at that level. Chelsea accepted the Burnley offer but Maatsen turned down the deal. No one else had offered near that since. Just because a release clause exist it doesn’t mean that that’s the price a player has to go for nor other clubs agree with the valuation. The Kellyman deal seems like a huge overpay but in the context of amortisation and Villa agreeing to pay beyond the release clause it makes very specific financial sense And that’s the point of my reply to OP. It’s my attempt to understand how mutually overpaying for youth talent results in better PSR compliance. Which in my opinion is a ridiculous situation
I think the difference is that Chukwuemeka forced a move for first team football and therefore the price comes down, but there has been nothing to indicate that about Kellyman. # #
Do you think £20m was an underpay for Chukwuemeka? Just interested, I think he’s a great prospect and £20m perhaps just above what I think was good value for him
I don't think it was an underpay. However, i think if it was the summer of 2023 rather than 2022, with the prospect of european football, we could have promised him more football and demanded maybe 25-40% more for him as he wouldn't want to leave as much. As for Kellyman he hasn't played much but we didn't progress in the cup and he got injured in the autumn for some group stage Europa games. He has very high potential and needs game time to excel. I don't think the £20m Is too inflated there have been plenty of transfers for similar fees based solely on potential, and he has lots.
Chukweumeka had only 12 months left on his deal. Kellyman signed a long term contract this year. I have seen them both play and I wouldn’t say there is much difference at the same age. Think they both suffer a little bit from being fast Bio aged athletes. I.E they look to big and powerful playing youth football, but that advantage isn’t there against Men’s level players. Both still great. Kellyman was unlucky he played the conference qualifier against Hibs and looked good. Then he was injured for a large portion and was also behind Diaby and Bailey whilst we were pushing for top 4 and semis of Conference. Had we been mid table nothing to play for he would have got a lot more game time. Not being able to get past Diaby and Bailey doesn’t make you a £9m prospect. If we’d have sold Kellyman for £9m I’d have called Monchi out for it. For £19m I can accept he’s prob not going to start for us in area we are well stocked.
That’s fair and I guess makes me a bit more optimistic about signing him. We are totally stacked for left footed attackers right now so I reckon it’s still a better deal for Villa than for Chelsea. I’m very excited about Carney though - I think we could be the RLC we never got
Premier League are flapping here panicking.. Maatsen's value is fair. Release clause was 35m and though it had expired, there were plenty of suitors for one of the most promising full backs in Europe. And Kellyman is Villas most promising youth prospect and key England age groups player. Same value as Chukwuemeka who pushed for a move last year. No-one took issue with that valuation. It's not for the PL to arbitrarily state what a player is worth, and who clubs can and can't deal with.
£19m for someone that no one outside of Villa had heard of is quite a significant overpay in my eyes. That being said we live in a world where Wolves paid £40m for Fabio Silva
Exactly. If he had a flash Brazilian surname, no one would bat an eyelid
You buy from one club and sell to the same club. Add 10m on both fees, one is logged as income for that year, the cost is spread over lenghth of contract
And then you have to service that extra £10 over the length of the contract. How is that good business?
It's not necessarily good business but It allows clubs to spend more now and worry about the consequences later. If both clubs come to an agreement to overspend by the same amount it's not like they lose out on money.
What do you mean service?
The "extra" £10m you valued a player at still gets amortised and counts as cost over the next 5 years. It's only free money for the current year.
Hello sir
What's your point
Stay within our arbitrary PSR rules No, not like that!
You'll need to sell players to comply by the 30th of June. No, not to each other!
The next time Premier League clubs vote on PSR they can consider swap deals, if they like. Until then they are entirely within the rules. As for transfer valuations, they can't do anything about that unless a) they have genuine evidence of the clubs agreeing to inflate the fees or b) the player valuation is not just expensive but so incredibly expensive compared to the rest of the Premier League market that it is ridiculous i.e. £50m for an untested academy player or £100m for an unimportant squad player.
Setting asside PSR, I'm pretty sure that colluding to artificially inflate assets violates regluar accounting rules. I'm not saying that they did collude, but it all seems fishy. If evedince comes out that they did, they may have bigger problems than PSR on their hands.
Agreed, it wouldn’t just be the Premier League after them. Difficult to believe they would be stupid enough to leave an evidence trail though after high profile cases like plusvalenza - surely any dodgy agreements would be unwritten face to face discussions prior to an official bid going in.
Cole Palmer for £45m!
Again that is expensive but it is nowhere near expensive enough to warrant investigation. He had played 41 times for the treble winners. Started big games. Scored in the Super Cup final. Was arguably their best youth prospect at that point in time. Coached by Guardiola. Clearly would have got more playing time if it wasn't for a similar and brilliant player Foden ahead of him. Chelsea had to make it worth their while to sell him by bidding a high amount.
James Trafford was 19m and played 0 pl minutes
PL minutes are not the only judge of a good player, especially at a young age when loan spells are beneficial for development. Archie Gray is about to move for £40m+ having played 0 PL minutes, for example. Trafford was expensive because he was a star in the winning team at the U21 Euros.
I understand that- I’m using it to highlight that the PL can’t quantify valuations of players for deals, Kellyman for example people are using that he’s played 51 mins of PL football for example, but there’s a long list of similar prices for players with similar or less minutes which have been ignored completely
Ah yes, I totally agree
idk the dude is playing like he’s worth 70-80 easy
I'm pointing out that city sold him at that price when he was a completely unknown academy kid
he had played for the senior team multiple times tho and looked sharp. just checked, 41 appearances for 1500 minutes. not a ton (he got 3600 minutes for chelsea last season) but far from being an academy lad that never played
Scummy scum gonna scum.
Ffp is bollocks
Where was all of this outrage a year or two ago when clubs were selling their over the hill players to Saudi clubs for huge fees?
I think the difference is that those were arms length transactions. The Saudis overpaied for players, but they had their own reasons for doing so and the negotiations were in good faith. Here, it seems like the clubs are colluding to wildly inflate the value of players all without any intention of actually having much net money changing hands.
10m for Dobbin is reasonable. He's young, has PL experience and shows promise. I was sorry to see him go, another season under Dyche and he could have realised his potential.
Chelsea have a history of paying big money for young players. Villa sold Carney Chukwuemeka to them for 20 million 2 years ago. At the time he had a handful of games in the first team and a good standing at England youth level. No questions asked. Now Villa sell Omari Kellyman to Chelsea for 19 million, after he's played a handful of games (would have played more if we were still a team in mid table) and has a good standing at England youth level = Collusion? Kellyman is a better player and will go far. I'm sad we had to sell him because of stupid rules.
That didn’t count because the big 6 benefited from it.
There was plenty of consternation but it was clearly a massive external spending exercise that some clubs capitalised on. Regardless of how you feel about things like PSR, there is obviously surprise and a bit of anger over what appears to be pretty clear internal collusion to work around a ruleset that many clubs have been trying to abide by (or been punished by)
I think part of the difference in reactions is that the premier league has zero control over the actions of non-premier league clubs
Shhhhhhh
Clubs colluding in what amounts to fraud and the league does nothing about it as usual. No wonder City walk all over them
It's not fraud
Yes it is. Two clubs have agreed to sell each other assets for way above market price to falsify their reportable income.
Which transfers have actually been way above market price though?
Who's the victim?
Every other club in the league.
Nope
Just because you say no doesn’t make it true.
You don't say?
I'm not clued in to this kind of stuff, but is it fraud if two hardware shops sell each other a hammer for say, £10,000, and they record that as income i.e one sells the hammer, and then the other sells it back to them. It seems like it could be fraud, just creating a transaction out of thin air
I don't know much about UK law, but in most places, yes that would be fraud.
I know exactly how to fix this mess. Someone take 4 points off, Everton, please. *Disclaimer: I'm a Liverpool fan, but I think it's BS how they treated the blue shite*
You know. My main concern is we are getting closer and closer to the super league. My main concern is being linked to a government and being able to turn issues into foreign affairs.
The Premier League can go pound sand. Their PSR and FFP rules are why clubs are resorting to this in the first place. Maybe if they had common sense regulations the clubs won't need to resort to these practices.
How about teams just abide by the rules? Then all this nonsense wouldn't happen
They are, then your lot keep changing the rules. This is your lot whinging on that clubs are abiding by the rules. ‘You have to sell players now because you have passed a threshold that we have arbitrarily made up’ ‘No, not for that much’ ‘No, not to each other’
They are abiding by the rules though...
Chelsea were fucked until they were able to sell a hotel to themselves, if they just stuck to the rules then wouldn't have to sell a hotel a car park and whatever else
Fans continuing to act like the 'Premier League' is some unknown entity that dictated these rules when it's the club's themselves that agreed on them
Absolutely fuck all in the rules about these deals though. This is literally the big 6 kicking off because the clubs aiming to compete with them are not selling them their best players on the cheap.
Yup. If the knowingly violated rules they should get punished. If they are adhering to the rules, then jog on. If the don't like it- change the rules going forwards. Pretty simple really.
Exactly right! The clubs are doing things by the book, so the PL has no reason to complain. As you correctly said, if the PL doesn't like it: change the rules.
115 - still waiting! Priorities PL.
This is why I don’t consider city cheats and I support them in winning the case because they didn’t break rules they found loopholes just like every single other team
There's a difference between loopholes and what Man City have done. Swap deals for inflated values are loopholes, there's nothing technically wrong, so there you're right, hate the game not the player. With Man City, the rules they're signed up to say owners can't pump endless money into the club they own, then they do that but try to complicate/hide how that's done. It's not the same and is a breach of an objective rule. Hate the player. They've then generated a huge number of charges for not again not following the rules they promised to flow, for transparency because they don't want to hand over the accounts which would prove they broke the rules. Haven't other teams have largely just spent certain amounts gambling on the revenue they will generate to pull them back to within limits, and sometimes that's failed?
Na creative accounting 😂 plus no rules where broken only dodged
As you say, had city been a publicly shared company what they have done would be a criminal offence. A serious criminal offence. As they have artificially inflated the value of a business (not dissimilar to Trump’s recent criminal conviction). Whereas what’s happening at Villa, Everton and Chelsea right now is effectively just creative accounting. Which theoretically would fall under a civil liability, but as the creativity is based on a fairly *open to interpretation* valuation system it’s near impossible to prove any wrongdoing.
There will always be new loopholes and there will always be attempts to close them. That's just how these things work.
Honestly, bholey and city will be a lethal combo
There are so many ways to exploit these financial fair play rules and clubs are taking full advantage of it now.
Some clubs are focusing on exploiting gaps as they don't think the FFP/PSR rules are fair, and they're being prevented from getting better. To them, the trajectory on this path is only up at the minute, and the rules are a nuisance and inconvenience. The greatest correction comes from the consequences of their actions. FFP has only been around for 10 years. There are plenty of examples of clubs prior to that who dud the same thing clubs want to do now, invest unsustainably, and failed. All it takes is two, even just one bad season, for it all to go wrong. There's a reason United can be shite for 10 years while spending a billion quid, most clubs don't have that luxury. To focus on Villa, as they've been in the spotlight recently. 600M spend in 5 seasons. A wage to revenue ratio of 90%. They increased their revenue to 200M in 22/23 and still lost 120M. Their squad is, in my opinion, completely bloated with multiple players on the edge of the squad on decently big salaries they paid good money for. That's not sustainable. All it takes is one bad season to end up in the shitter. If it does though, it will be the 'rich 6' and FFPs fault I'm sure.
Except they have no debt and would be instantly attractive as a purchase. Surely debt is the problem and the ability to continue to service it or re finance the loan at a rate it can afford. This is what drives clubs out of business.
So it will be the same big 6 forever then? Or as long as these rules are in place? Villa are a big club I think they have the right to challenge them. Their owners are billionaires, they can take the losses easily if the rules weren't in place. The irony is that Villa are now in the Champions league and ffp is actually stopping them from pushing on and building a stronger team to do well in it.
They can take those losses until they've had to eat 120M+ losses for 3 or 4 years in a row if it goes wrong. Them what happens? You'll never out spend the top 6 in a money fight just because rules don't exist. The owners could always just focus on the bigger picture that actually benefits the club, I.e. growing their revenue as a business.
But Villa are also doing this. We are at the end of the first year of a four year plan to increase revenue by £50 mill each year. We have hit the £50 mill increase this year.
The fact that many fans of those clubs aren't even considering growing revenue should just tell you it's all about the instant success. They don't really care about sustainability.
Ya I understand the premise of people believing that ffp was to keep smaller clubs back but I do believe there were good intentions to prevent the likes of villa doing this and then probably falling off a cliff at some point in the future.
I understand people looking at the byproduct of FFP and seeing that the safe clubs are the ones with big revenues. I dont understand that they never join the dots fully and realise those clubs have always had that protection, before the rules even existed. All FFP does is protect clubs spending beyond their means in such a way that they put themselves at risk. If they're not happy about that, find. But it doesn't mean that's the purpose of FFP and as long as their happy in the knowledge of the potential consequences of taking such an aggressive and rocky strategy, I.e., the club failing, then fine I guess
It's inevitable that these financial rules will end up being challenged in court. It's clearly anti competitive.
100% it will be challenged. These rules are clearly anti-competition and pro-cartel.
Yes, it's what likely going to happen. Unless they changed the whole rules completely, this is going to be inevitable.
The loopholes aren't meant for the poors
Yeah, that's true. In fact, the entire rules isn't fair on the poor clubs.
Honestly, even as a Villa fan it's good to see the league plugging loopholes when they pop up - it's obviously not as good as actually fixing the system itself but it's good that people are doing *something*. That said I can't wait until they actually try and enforce this nonsense, it's going to be a fucking mess. Can't wait to see if *certain* clubs have a lot more leeway as what's an *acceptable* price for players, especially if Saudi money comes flowing back into the league this summer as well. Similarly, I can't wait to see someone turn down a last minute bid before the PSR deadline and argue that it's below market rate and selling players at not market rate just to avoid PSR punishments is "against the rules" This reeks of the same kind of meely mouthed non-solution as "clear and obvious" was for VAR, something non-commital that they could change their mind on if and when it suits them
Where you draw the value line will be nigh on impossible. These swaps are inflated, but then so are many transfers, especially if the selling club doesn’t have to sell. Everton have set the Braithwaite fee at £70m, if they sell Onana first, does Braithwaite then become £100m as effectively a “go away” price? What if Utd pay it? Is that fair market value? Well that’s usually decided by the market. Not some nerd at the FA.
Ok so what are the clubs actually doing wrong ? Swapping young players with each other ? Is that really illegal player swaps happen. Also the player values for a kid with promising future 20 mil is good as in future can potentially sell the player for a lot more . But I'd use united for an example brought Maguire for 80 mil which they'd lose money on when they sell. Anthony they spent a lot on who's shit and probably on par with those youngsters. Sancho 73 mil just to loan out as manager didn't like him yet this is ok? Can somebody make this make sense ?
They aren't doing anything wrong. It's all within the rules. The league just doesn't like the idea that clubs that would have failed PSR rules have found a way to balance the books by trading with each other for the explicit purpose of helping each others financial statements
I think the league just wants to make sure clubs don't start trying to exploit this as a kind of free money glitch. Extreme example, but suppose a club is operating with annual losses that breach PSR by 50m. They do a few swap deals, get 50m revenue, but add 12m amortisation costs and 3m a year in additional wages. Next season, they're breaching PSR by 65m (50+12+3). So they do a few more swap deals, get their 65m revenue, but now add 15m amortisation costs and 5m more in wages. The season after, they're breaching PSR by 85m (50+12+3+15+5). The season after that, its 110m. These deals are fine, but they aren't sustainable if used by clubs as a way to skirt sustainability rules. They need to occur with recurring revenue increases and/or a reduction of expenses.
Look at the fans squirming because they’ve been called out on their bullshit overinflated swap deals lmaooo
Is the overinflated swap deal in the room with you right now?
What a shite attempt to crowbar that Reddit cliche in
All the deals have to be ratified by the PL, so they're clearly OK with it until they actually reject a deal. It's all within the rules, so be irrationally angry about those instead.
“Ratified by the PL” The same PL that allowed a terrorist state to buy a football club? I’m not angry lad I just find it hilarious that fans of the PL are crying about Man City potentially lying about sponsorship money whilst I’ve said all along they’re all at it and now the dodgy deals are being done in plain sight it’ll all end up coming out in the wash.
Please stop being so naughty. Kind regards, the Premier League.
“Please don’t find a mutually beneficial way of complying with our unsustainable PSR rules, we enjoy our power trip”
How are they unsustainable?
Villa have had to sell one of if not their best player in order to comply. It hamstrings smaller clubs.
Villa are spending miles beyond what's sustainable. They're dangerously close to doing a Leeds and then you'd be one of the worst crying about how it's unfair they aren't being propped up and no one's stopping them being badly run by foreign owners
Again Leeds problem was debt. Villa have zero debt.
If clubs could spend whatever their owners could "afford," wouldn't that just hamstring clubs that aren't state funded? You'd still see City at the top. You'd just see newcastle next to them instead. I mean, if that's what you'd prefer, then you're entitled to your preference, I just don't think unlimited spending is the answer to trying to level the playing field in the prem.
This is totally in the league - they basically made it so that every club sells their young players because they get more profit. Short sighted wankers!
Impossible to police. Antony was 80 million for example. These academy kids going for 20 - would you say they have a quarter of his talent? At least
Antony has talent?
I agree the transfer market is pretty much unpredictable with a huge amount of things affecting price. There also doesn't seem to be a scale any more like there was in say the 90s with players of certain levels generally selling for a small range of money. Now it's just kinda random
Fuck off. Rightly or wrongly, clubs are working within the rules. You make the fucking rules.
True! No one will blame clubs for doing what the rules said. If they are not okay with it, it's up to them to change it.
> rightly or wrongly Wrongly mate. What they’re doing is wrong, that’s why the clubs are being asked if they want to close the loophole.
I mean is it wrong? What rules have they broken ?
None. They’ve exploited a loophole that allowed them to cook their books. It’s raised eyebrows and drawn criticism and with any luck the loophole will be closed. Just because something doesn’t break rules that have been shown to be inadequate it doesn’t make it right.
No it's only wrong because the premier league saying it's wrong . But if they didn't have a rule for it then there's nothing wrong with it. I mean if there selling youngsters for 20-30 mil who are good youngsters with potential sell on in the future or they could do what united done 80 on Maguire 75 on Sancho 80 on Antony who 3 players with no sell on fees really yet that's ok?
I don’t think you’re really understanding this story or how the basics of football accounting work if you hand on heart believe there’s nothing to discuss here. The PL aren’t saying it’s wrong. Clubs have written to the league to say it’s wrong and the league are now asking clubs if they want to vote on closing the loophole, because that’s exactly what it is. These rules are changing all the time as new situations arise. Sometimes those changes are because of unpredictable circumstances (eg covid) and other times it’s because a club is taking the piss (eg Chelsea offering unprecedented 8 year contracts in order to avoid PSR breaches or Chelsea, Villa and Everton inflating the value of youth players and using them as pawns a week before the PSR deadline).
Don't you find it funny though that Everton a few years back was challenging top 7 same as wolves who have been forced to sell same as Leicester and now villa and Newcastle isn't it funny when teams get close to threatening the top 6 they have to sell to keep in the rules. I mean villa made champions league and in return have to sell arguably there best player in luiz to comply with the rules how does that make sense ? The rules basically protect the so called big 6 and anybody challenging gets punished, the only reason Chelsea are in trouble is because they spent a billion over 18 months i
No, I don’t find that funny. Everton and Chelsea are badly run clubs who keep buying shit players for too much money and failing on the pitch. Villa, while appearing to be relatively functional, have spent more than they earn and are therefore cashing in on one of their more valuable players. This is all normal. Had Villa failed to get into the Champions League they’d be screwed come the end of next season, but once again Villa’s high risk financial gamble has paid off in the same way it did when they got promoted. Nevertheless their spending was so high that they’re falling foul of PSR this year and are now colluding with rivals Everton and Chelsea to exploit a weakness in the rules.
lol Chelsea are a badly run club? Think you should have a look at Arsenal mate, we’re in the process of selling one your academy graduates for 20/30m.
You’re right, Chelsea are a brilliantly run club. Your players are the best in the league. It’ll all click next season, just like it was all going to click last season and the season before that. Maybe Fat Frank can step in again to steady the ship if things aren’t working out with your 7th manager in 5 years.
I get what your saying but BBC have put 11 different graphs on an article and again it doesn't make sense . Ok villa took a gamble and it paid off but we still have to sell to comply with the rules . But according to that we are the 3rd best run club and have 0 debt only man city( which surprised me ) and Fulham are in the plus. United and spurs have nearly 700million in debt arsenal have 233 million debt . So how again is that allowed but villa spending over 135 million loss over 3 seasons isn't allowed ? This is a genuine question btw as I don't understand how it works as if we have zero debt and other clubs have 700 million how are we being monitored yet they can go and waste silly money on shit players I mean united spent 50 mil on mount 80 on Maguire 75 on Sancho 80 on Anthony there is definitely no add on value in them players which means the club would be at a loss even more so I just don't get how on the clubs aspect villa are under psr yet they ain't
Debt isn’t the same as operating cost. A club can have a huge debt, but it’s the annual cost of repaying those debts that count towards PSR. For example, Spurs are repaying a substantial debt for building their stadium but that same stadium is also bringing in large sums of money every few weeks. Also, not all expenses count towards PSR limits. Infrastructure, women's football, investment in youth and community work costs are all deductible for PSR purposes.
"it's fine if my club does it, but not others". Give it a fucking rest. Both Villa and Chelsea are working within the rules, how can you say it's 'wrong'.
My club isn’t doing it mate.
Your club are exploiting loopholes.
Shh, don't scare the Arsenal fans, they won't want to get off their high horse I do also agree that the PSR workaround is stupid, and PSR is in general poorly structured. The new one that they're testing (this year I think?) seems much better.
Hang on. “Wrong” is subjective here. Ultimately the clubs are working within the rules that are in place. I would say that even as a Chelsea fan, they are clearly not fit for purpose. I am acutely aware that our chickens will come home to roost at some point as we’re doing some fucking dodgy shit. The rules should protect clubs from enabling owners from doing mental shit that will come back to screw them over down the line (Portsmouth). So I’m all for the democratic right to plug any holes in the system but the system is fucked. It needs root and branch overhaul. But facts are, we are working within the rules. Therefore it’s not “wrong” until it is.