Non - Derby County

kirsikka

UTC Legend
Avoided failing FFP rules this season by selling their stadium, valued at £41m on the books, for £80 million to their owner.

https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/47789258

Why didn't we think of that? Oh...

Still, it's good to see this FFP set-up has done everything it set out to do then in helping big clubs at Championship level with big budgets at Championship level like Derby keep an advantage over the smaller clubs without having to overspend.
 
Even if we had done something like that, fans of other Champ clubs still would've kicked off and accused us of cheating.
It's more down to the size of club and keeping at your station.
If a big clubs fails (Nottm Forest for example) or uses creative tactics to avoid failing, it's all part of the game in their eyes, it seems.

Worth adding this is a one time trick. It'll give them protection from FFP for this and another couple of years to try getting that elusive promotion (how many years have they been chucking money at it now?). But it's not a trick that can be repeated.
 
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Full article is here but it's behind a pay-wall:
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/...=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1567620539

The English Football League have reportedly launched an investigation into Derby County’s purchase of Pride Park.

The Rams revealed that owner Mel Morris had bought the ground from the club in their most recent accounts as they looked to avoid breaking Financial Fair Play regulations.

FFP rules state that clubs must not exceed a loss of £39m over a three-year period and with Derby toeing the line, Morris stepped in to ensure the club posted a profit on their yearly accounts.

This same accusation has been made towards Sheffield Wednesday and Reading over the summer as they look to avoid FFP punishment.

However, whilst the trio of clubs may have thought their concerns were over, with no rules being broken, The Times have revealed that may not be the case.

The report explains that the EFL have launched private, independent stadium valuations on Derby, Wednesday and Reading.

In the case of the Rams, the plot thickens as The Times says that Morris used a separate company to buy the ground for £80m, with a deal to lease it back to the club.

However, the ground was listed on the club’s list of valuable assets at the time, but at a price of £41m, just over half the sum Morris paid.

It ensured Derby reported a pre-tax profit of £14.6 million on their accounts, ending any fears over a potential sanction for exceeding spending limits.
 
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Well technically we deserved a fine, because we broke FFP. Still don't understand how we did really, was it wages? Because I've never personally felt like our "cheating" got us a competitive advantage over other teams. It's not like we splashed the cash on a whole new team.
 
Kenwyne loan, plus spending on Atsu, King, and Mings happened before the clock ticked over to the following season
 
Well technically we deserved a fine, because we broke FFP. Still don't understand how we did really, was it wages? Because I've never personally felt like our "cheating" got us a competitive advantage over other teams. It's not like we splashed the cash on a whole new team.
We certainly broke the FFP, a number of reasons, wages being one of them. One of the others was transfer fees paid after we got promoted appearing in our accounts before our accounting deadline that promotion season rather than a month later (our accounting year has since been changed).
Another major contributor was the small size of our ground. If we had a stadium that held 20,000 and had filled it during the second half of that season our income would have been much greater and our ability to meet FFP much improved.
FFP has always been unfair to "smaller" clubs with small grounds. Call me a cynic if you will but it was designed to keep us little clubs in our place, well :finger:to that.

The Reading, Sheff Weds and Derby issues are moving FFP on to a new "cheat" level. Clubs with big grounds that the club owned being sold off to the clubs owners or subsidiary companies in order to put "income" on the books to offset wages and transfer fees. Of course they can only do it once, the asset has gone and thats it.
 
We certainly broke the FFP, a number of reasons, wages being one of them. One of the others was transfer fees paid after we got promoted appearing in our accounts before our accounting deadline that promotion season rather than a month later (our accounting year has since been changed).
Another major contributor was the small size of our ground. If we had a stadium that held 20,000 and had filled it during the second half of that season our income would have been much greater and our ability to meet FFP much improved.
FFP has always been unfair to "smaller" clubs with small grounds. Call me a cynic if you will but it was designed to keep us little clubs in our place, well :finger:to that.

The Reading, Sheff Weds and Derby issues are moving FFP on to a new "cheat" level. Clubs with big grounds that the club owned being sold off to the clubs owners or subsidiary companies in order to put "income" on the books to offset wages and transfer fees. Of course they can only do it once, the asset has gone and thats it.

Yeah I don't know much about Reading or Wednesday but Derby have spent a shitload of money on transfers in the last couple of years. Must sting for them seeing us leapfrog them in under 2 years, after what feels like an eternity of 7th place finishes, play-off failures and Keogh tears :grinning:.

FFP is nonsense anyway, doesn't really do its job does it? Wolves for example didn't "break FFP", but they did bring in about 4 Champions League quality players through their super agent at cut price loan deals, even though no other club of the same stature with similar resources would have been able to do this.

How is that fair when they had a club like Burton in the league at that time? And yet us signing a bunch of freebies and breaking even on Wilson makes us cheaters?? Anyone could have signed Wilson, Gosling, Surman, Stanislas etc. that season- could anyone have signed Neves for £16 million?? A player who was touted as a £40 million Liverpool player the previous year? Nope.
 
Don't tell bog_standard but this illustrates our new ground problem.

The key to this investigation will be - What is the value of a football ground? Like any commercial property it's likely to be capitalised rental value - i.e. work out what rent you can get per year then multiply it by an appropriate multiplier to reflect the risk. To work out the rent of a property like this you'd have to look at the money that the asset can generate.

The valuation of Derby's ground is apparently £41m. Would a new AFCB ground be worth as much as that based on the potential income it could generate? Doubtful in my view, it wouldn't be as big and the crowds would be smaller if the club got relegated. (Remember that premier league income isn't dependant on getting a new ground - we've proven that ourselves)

Compare with how much it would cost to build - remember to add the extra costs of buying land, paying the existing lease off, relocating the athletics club, etc. etc. and you're never getting it done for less than the ground is worth once completed. 99% of developments are worth more than the build costs once complete (tbf I don't know the actual figure but it's definitely the vast majority) otherwise they don't get off the ground.

Developments that aren't worth more than they cost need someone to pay the difference, whether that be a public body or benevolent owner, such as Tony Bloom.

Simple as that really.
 
FFP has always been unfair to "smaller" clubs with small grounds. Call me a cynic if you will but it was designed to keep us little clubs in our place, well :finger:to that.

Reading the FFP stuff makes this obvious from thousands of miles away. They want to keep another Man City from happening imo. A billionaire coming in and just building a stadium and buying great players and instantly a club is raised to the highest levels.
Because this would help everyone but the existing top clubs and heaven help us if everyone is helped.
 
Reading the FFP stuff makes this obvious from thousands of miles away. They want to keep another Man City from happening imo. A billionaire coming in and just building a stadium and buying great players and instantly a club is raised to the highest levels.
Because this would help everyone but the existing top clubs and heaven help us if everyone is helped.
And I apologize if I am ranting on something that is just "common knowledge" among English fans. FFP is fairly new to me.
 
The ironic thing is the structure of the English football pyramid and the uneven income distribution actively encourages clubs to breach FFP.

The EFL know the current model is not sustainable so they know clubs need a “white knight” to keep them going - as long as that white knight doesn’t spend too much.

I’d actually go one stage further and suggest FFP puts off genuine investors who could save clubs like Bury. Instead you get owners like Steve Dale, who can hide behind FFP and acquire clubs for peanuts, with absolutely no intention of investing.
 
I’d actually go one stage further and suggest FFP puts off genuine investors who could save clubs like Bury. Instead you get owners like Steve Dale, who can hide behind FFP and acquire clubs for peanuts, with absolutely no intention of investing.
Don't FFP restrictions apply only to player costs?
If I were a benevolent billionaire I could buy a small tinpot club, build them massive new infrastructure, spend tons of money on promoting them nationally and internationally, and probably increase (a certain amount at least) the club's revenues. FFP wouldn't stop me from doing this, would it?
 
Don't FFP restrictions apply only to player costs?
If I were a benevolent billionaire I could buy a small tinpot club, build them massive new infrastructure, spend tons of money on promoting them nationally and internationally, and probably increase (a certain amount at least) the club's revenues. FFP wouldn't stop me from doing this, would it?
Well infrastructure spending isn’t counted in FFP so in theory yes. But using Bury as an example, you could build them a state of the art 40k stadium, but unless people actually turned up to watch them, the revenue increase would be negligible.

Brighton could just about get away with it as they have a large catchment area and a relatively large fan base. We *might* have been able to do a Brighton because we have a similar catchment area. Unfortunately, we were never in a financial position (thinking back 7 years or so) for a significant infrastructure investment and an unhelpful local council.

Bury is within 60km of more than a dozen PL or EFL sides. Some are the biggest clubs in the country. You could spend £70m on infrastructure but at best get crowds of maybe 7k or 8k. It’d be very difficult for them to go up the leagues without “cheating” FFP.
 
Don't FFP restrictions apply only to player costs?
If I were a benevolent billionaire I could buy a small tinpot club, build them massive new infrastructure, spend tons of money on promoting them nationally and internationally, and probably increase (a certain amount at least) the club's revenues. FFP wouldn't stop me from doing this, would it?

Darlington built a massive stadium way beyond what they needed about 15 years ago. Never came close to filling it and ended up moving out again not long after. Without significant investment in the team, infrastructure doesn't do a lot on it own to transform a club. That includes bringing in the fans to fill that new infrastructure.

FFP should be renamed HRP - Hegemony Protection Rules as that's why they exist. There is something to be said for controlling costs in football and lots of way it could be done effectively whilst allowing clubs to invest if they want to without risk of going bust. However, there's too much vested interest from clubs that are slightly bigger than the clubs around them at every level to allow anything like that to go through.

I thought it was interesting on the radio the other day after the Bury decision when a politician, I forget who, was talking about maybe it was time that legislation was created specifically to help govern football. He said every time they've offered it to those in charge they are ignored, mainly because it would mean handing power from the FL, where decisions are made by the clubs, to the FA, who may make decisions the clubs don't like.
 
What if Jeff Bezos bought a club personally? He could build the infrastructure and then have all of his businesses (e.g. Whole Foods) sponsor the team for whatever amounts they chose.
Would that work? I mean, just in case I win the Powerball twelve times.
 

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