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The "Break even rule"

Discussion in 'Sports Talk' started by ONEDUNME, Nov 15, 2012.

  1. ONEDUNME

    ONEDUNME Administrator

    Messages:
    12,540
    Anyone heard of it before?

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/20319573

    Wigan owner Dave Whelan believes Premier League clubs will vote for a new break-even rule on Thursday.
    Under plans which could be introduced next season, clubs would not be allowed to spend more cash than they generate.
    Whelan told BBC Sport: "I think the clubs will say break-even is something they want. We could definitely see it."
    The rule would mark a major change for the league, with champions Manchester City, for example, having made a £197m loss in their latest set of results.
    Premier League clubs made cumulative losses of £361m in 2010-11, the most recent season for which there are complete financial results.
    Premier League clubs' latest financial results

    • Man City: £197m LOSS (2010-11)
    • Man Utd: £23.3m PROFIT (2011-12)
    • Chelsea: £1.4m PROFIT (2011-12)
    • Arsenal: £36.6m PROFIT (2011-12)
    • Tottenham: £32.3m PROFIT (2010-11)
    • Liverpool: £49.4m LOSS (2010-11)
    • Newcastle: £3.9m LOSS (2010-11)
    • Wigan: £7.2m LOSS (2010-11)Representatives of the 20 top-flight teams will discuss the issue of financial regulation at one of their regular "shareholder meetings" in London on Thursday.

    With 14 clubs needed to vote in favour of the proposals for them to pass, Whelan says Fulham are the only club opposed to any kind of new rules being brought in.
    "This break-even rule will stop clubs getting into the red," he said. "There's nothing worse than seeing a club like Portsmouth getting into financial trouble - or Rangers, who are such a big and powerful club.
    "I don't think Fulham want anything at all to do with it but generally it is accepted it's a very good rule. If it's passed on Thursday I think it's going to be a very good thing for football."
    There could still be some flexibility permitted under any potential change, with wealthy owners allowed to put additional money in.
    Uefa will introduce its own financial fair play rules next season, permitting clubs to make only set losses in the first three seasons. Failure to comply would result in exclusion from either the Champions League or Europa League.

    I must admit I haven't looked too deeply into UEFA's fair play rule but if the paragraph above applies and the only sactions are going to be exclusion from the Champion's League or Europa cup then that's not going to stop desperate chairmen from trying to avoid relegation by swamping their clubs in debts that they may never recover from. Not that I think for one minute that UEFA give a fuck about anyone but UEFA - just saying.

    So, hypothetical example, what's to stop Liverpool from spending the next three seasons spending millions and millions of pounds to get themselves out of the bottom half of the table and into the top 8 again AND THEN, when they have a squad choc-full with world class players, they fall into line and play the fair play game, having been able to make improvements spending money that the top teams haven't been able to spend due to the fair play restrictions and them wanting to compete in Europe?
    I'm not saying the current system is good - I just don't understand how this fair-play bollocks works. I hear some dodgy dealing has been done with the naming rights to Man City's stadium and that that money (even though it comes indirectly from the owners) will be able to be classed as income for purposes of the "fair play" rules.
    All this in a season that Chelsea make their first profit for years.
  2. winrew

    winrew GILF

    Messages:
    2,440
    Brian Marwood ( Man City ) is on record as saying they would hire dozens of lawyers to fight against fair play rules !!
    As for Chelsea making a profit , that's debatable .
    The Russian converted 166 million of loans into equity , its all just a fiddle , he also wrote off 710 million in loans in 2009..
  3. slick

    slick Administrator

    Messages:
    15,579
    I've never heard Marwood say that Win's and I'm on the City website most days, if he did i bet it's and old quote.

    Break even just like the fair play rule is just an excuse to stop anybody else breaking the 'Big boy's' monopoly knowing the likes of Wigan will go along with it as they don't like paying large wages to anybody brought on by the so called likes of City paying astronomical ones.

    What the silly cnut doesn't realise is that once the top players stop coming into the Prem and TV pays even less is that the likes of Wigan who only get a handful of fans per game will soon find their level in the lower leagues.

    With that in mind I can see how it would benefit a lot of teams including City if it depends on paying fans but it would soon take us back to the old days when there was going to be only one winner
  4. ONEDUNME

    ONEDUNME Administrator

    Messages:
    12,540
    You've come to the right conclusion Slick but you've got the wrong route to get there in my opinion. You're right about the big boys not wanting these things to happen (for the hypothetical Liverpool example I gave above) but there's no way the Sky money would drop if the top, top players didn't come here. The likes of Messi, Ronaldinho and Rondaldo before him were the best players of their times and there absence made no difference. Does anyone really think that people would have stopped subscribing to Sky Sports (which, after all, is the only thing that's going to make the TV revenue drop) if nobody had spent more money on buying players last summer than they made on selling them. No.

    Maybe a lot of people on sports/football/betting forums knew about Eden Hazzard and Oscar, but most people who subscribe to Sky Sports will never have heard of them. We take it for granted now that players like Aguero and Tevez have been stars in our game but 95% (probably more) of football watchers would never have even heard of Tevez when he came over and was a West Ham substitute with Mascherano (sp?). Aguero would have been more well known but nobody would have been on the phone to Sky to cancel had he decided not to come to the Premiership. Ronaldo and Torres were well known in Spain and Portugal but most people over here didn't know them from Adam when they turned up on these shores.
    The biggish English money signings of Jack Rodwell and the overated Joe Allen wouldn't have made any difference because they'd either have stayed in the Premiership or one or both would have had to make a big decision on whether to go abroad for the money. Would the loss of either of these players make the Prem one iota less exciting? That would be a resounding no.

    We also need to remember the big money signings that flopped too. Money wasted out of our game.

    Moving on to your conclusion, IF we got to a position where fair play/break even rules came in and it led to a situation where one team was winning the title almost every year then, yes, people would cancel their sky in droves and the money given to clubs would drop. Fuck me, if it came to the situation where that team was Man City, they'd have to set up extra staff on the Sky call centre for the number of armchair United fans ringing up to cancel.:lol

    We also need to remember the big money signings that flopped too. Money wasted out of our game. The fact that we need The very best players in the premiership is a fallacy. What we need is an exciting Premiership with close battles for the title, relegation and European places. If the first and last of those stop happening you can have the most gifted players in the world here and people will still cancel their Sky accounts. Look at the decline in interest when Formula1 became predictable and boring and look at its reinvention under the new rules.
  5. ONEDUNME

    ONEDUNME Administrator

    Messages:
    12,540
    Just to add - I know that someone is going to mention that there are other leagues on sky apart from the Premiership and it's not all about that. Yes that's true but I'd guess that most football fans who watch/support championship teams will also tune in to watch a lot of Premiership games which may not be true the other way around.

    The Premiership drives the money roundabout, which is what we're talking about here.

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