lo36789 wrote: ↑Fri Aug 23, 2019 5:51 pm
Everything you mentioned is great - and the threat is you can’t compete in the competition unless these thing are as we say.
And then what if owners don’t and it is mid way through the season. What is the view of the masses if a team are expelled because they suddenly breach one of these regs (may be because their attendances are lower than expected so they are suddenly not in budget).
The FA do not control the leagues. The only FA Competitions are the FA Cup, Trophy and Vase. The EFL and PL are separate effectively profitable companies who administer their competition.
They pay an annual affiliation fee of to the FA every year to register their competition.
1. So clubs who are fan owned get money for what purpose? How does that prevent the current situation at Bury all the issues with clubs has been those with single owner models so this wouldn’t stop the issues which have happened.
2. What if clubs don’t own those assets now. A lot of clubs have council owned grounds or others arrangements due to the financing of their ground - how can you enforce that all clubs have a stadium. Look even Inter Milan and AC Milan share a ground so it’s even at the top top level clubs don’t necessary own their stadium.
3. Again rules around budgets could only be enforce through expulsion from competition. The only competitions that FA could remove you from are theirs - the EFL Control membership and participation in their competitions. How do you manage this though - Darlington has a budget for however many years and we still made a loss how do you actually say “you have brought less money in from ticket sales than you thought, as a result of that your committed expenditure on players is over what you can afford so now you can’t play your next home game”
Division 2 clubs receive a basic award plus a Premier League solidarity payment. I think the total of these two comes to somewhere between £900,000 & £1 million to each club each season. I am suggesting that some clubs i.e. those with an approved ownership structure should receive larger basic payments than those which do not conform to an approved ownership model. This will not prevent single owners of football clubs but the EFL/FA/Premier League could make this type of ownership model or this ownership structure without stringent financial safeguards, deeply unattractive by means of differential payments.
I did not mean to suggest that every club has to own its own ground. I am suggesting that there should be some protection from asset stripping for those clubs which do own their grounds. I suspect the only way this might be possible is if the ground is owned by some form of trust and this could be required for all such clubs if they want to operate within the EFL system. I accept your point that the FA does not directly control leagues but if the leagues have to be affiliated then it could be imposed by the FA as a prerequisite to affiliation or it could be imposed by the EFL.
I don’t think I mentioned automatic exclusion from the league part way through the season as a penalty but I accept it is a perfectly reasonable inference to take from my suggestion that clubs must operate within a specific financial model or within specific financial constraints. Clearly these constraints could allow modest losses because budgets are just predictions and will never be accurate with a high level of precision so some leeway on expected shortfalls could be allowed.
On the other hand budgets which bear no relationship to historic financial performance and have no other way off justifying or supporting projected income / expenditure other than by excessive* borrowing could result in expulsion before the season starts. During each season (after all clubs have had their initial budget approved/accepted by the league concerned) could be dealt with by points deductions. These could be applied on a sliding scale but one which makes this sort of funding very unattractive for the clubs.
I also accept that all of this needs a lot more detailed consideration than these initial thoughts. I do however find it pretty unacceptable that Bury can get themselves promoted whilst carrying debts of £14 million. (This is the figure which the owner was quoting as the debt within the club when he took it over. He has indicated that the great success he has achieved whilst at Bury is to reduce this debt to something like £3 million by way of a CVA. Heaven knows what damage that might have, or has, done to any local businesses which were / are creditors - or indeed any creditors come to that). Budgets will never be perfect but I think that the rules and restrictions are flawed if a club is allowed to play in Division 2 when it is carrying debts of £14 million
*I appreciate that some definition of "excessive" has to be arrived at but that should be possible by reference to a percentage of actual turnover.