Premier League - 2023/24

Well be staggered then because I do! They play wonderful football. A joy to watch. I’d prefer them to win it than that team with the dodgy money and the patronising manager.

 

Spuds doing a number on Citeh would be peak Spursy and I wouldn't rule it out for sure !

 

You want Citeh to win....yet again ?

 

Funny that - best striker in the world on a package that pretty much only Abu Dhabi could afford, turns out to be the most effective striker on the pitch...

 

It was an entertaining match no doubt and I was asking myself how on earth are Forest scrambling around the Boondocks with the detritus however watching their strikers scuff and miss kick decent chances. Well the clues are all there !!

 

Always worth listening to level-headed sage Roy Keane for some rational objective punditry !!

 

Well, there are plenty of those.

 

Yeah, right.

 

The real question has gone unanswered so far and that is " what football team does Chris Wood support ? Is he a Man City fan by any chance ?"

 

Interesting that Newcastle didn’t vote against it

 

Is the cap $10 gazillion a year ?

 

It excludes spending on any player with a vowel in their name.

 

Any breaches will result in "a strongly worded letter including threats of actually doing something about it featuring naming and shaming and several possible (aborted) legal actions"

 

Seems the powers that be agree with me… (almost)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/crgyd4e8xeeo

 

Who will buy and take on that debt ?
"Everton liquidated and Luton handed relegation reprieve" shocker.

 

Jeeez, mate, who'd've thought an airline with such a Bonza name could suffer problems?

 

If Everton went into administration in the summer. whats the minimum points deduction they would be liable to receive?

Rumours that Leicester will need to sell players in an attempt to avoid a financial fair play charge and points deduction.

How many other clubs in the Premier League are on the cusp of falling foul of the financial rules?

Makes you wonder how plucky Bournemouth with (probably) the smallest match day and trading income, have delivered on the pitch success, without coming under scrutiny.

 

9 point deduction is the PL penalty as per the Portsmouth precedent

Leicester have already got a PSR charge pending for the financial year ending 2023 while they were still in the PL - this will, we assume, be heard before the new season starts

The financial rules, while agreed on by everyone 15 years ago or whatever it was, have proven not to be designed to protect the financial health of a football club, but to maintain the status quo of the established clubs in the hierarchy. PSR simply limits the ability of anyone to invest in a football club to grow them. If the new spending cap rules are replacing PSR, it's a welcome change.

Having said that, Everton broke the rules because the owner is a nutter who thought that throwing money at it all and appointing big name people into jobs was all that was needed to break into the elite. That's compounded by the fact that we started to build a stadium without all of the funding in place to finish it. Yep. that Moshiri bloke again. Everton are now living hand-to-mouth, reliant on loans from prospective owners (who nobody wants) to get from one month to the next with the bills paid. The prospective new owners are a house of cards themselves which has already started coming down and when, seemingly inevitably, the deal to buy us falls through then the prospect of administration becomes a real one. It won't happen before the end of the season, but Everton are on the genuine cusp of it and what that means for the ownership of the new stadium etc is absolutely anyone's guess right now.

Everton are the gold standard in a lesson of how not to run a football club.

 

You say that, but I bet they don't overpay dodgy agents !

"PSR simply limits the ability of anyone to invest in a football club to grow them. If the new spending cap rules are replacing PSR, it's a welcome change.". Presume the idea is to stop wealthy owners bankrolling clubs and therefore gives smaller clubs a better chance (albeit not great) of getting into the prem and being able to stay there based on running a club well rather than simply being rich ?

 

It depends on your take here, but it's a fair challenge.

In essence, PSR in its current/previous format effectively freezes the status quo. If you're in that group of established clubs with big revenues, then you're all good but you've created a closed shop. People forget that before PSR, English football clubs were built on the basis of wealthy individuals who wanted to bankroll the clubs they (typically) supported. In todays world of mega wealth, it's understandable that you might want to curb that.

My argument (since before Everton ever attracted a lunatic billionaire) has been that if an individual or group can afford to bankroll a club in an effort to grow them, why shouldn't they be allowed to? You wouldn't want a situation where one club can blow everyone else out of the water and make it uncompetitive, but by putting a cap on what everyone can spend but making it the same for everyone (rather than different for everyone depending on what your historic revenues have been) you're creating the most level playing field you can and giving hope to everyone else outside the top 6 that if they found the right investor, they could genuinely invest and grow the club to one day be at the top table, whereas whether by accident or design (and I know which one I think), the current rules have anchored everyone into their existing pecking order, regardless of whether you have ambitions to grow or not.

Ironically these rule changes have come too late to benefit Everton. We took our shot and we missed, but I'm all for the spirit of the changes.

 

I understand the angle that it freezes the status quo, but the alternative POV is that teams like City and Chelsea were able to spend their way to silverware, and rules were introduced to stop this going forward.

Just because City have been able to buy success, does that mean we need to just let everyone else do it as well, or in fact, was it still better to draw a line somewhere?

Seems a slightly childish way of viewing it, ‘so and so’ did something naughty, so why can’t I?

It also makes little sense as an argument considering 14 teams have to vote these things through, so who are the status quo, the whole league?

 

"My argument (since before Everton ever attracted a lunatic billionaire) has been that if an individual or group can afford to bankroll a club in an effort to grow them, why shouldn't they be allowed to?"
Because we don't want a club's performance in the league to be 90% down to the wealth of their owner?
Owners should be allowed some leeway to invest over and above the returns that the football club business itself generates, but a very limited £ or % in my view.

 

It’s the same argument as saying why can’t athletes take whatever performance enhancing drugs they want?

 

Perfectly fair argument - my own view here is that footballing success is inextricably linked to how much money you spend. Yes, there are outliers now and again, but in the long run the money dictates the result.

So, you're left with a system that, to all intents and purposes, is set in stone in terms of the hierarchy of who can win anything, who the established Premier League clubs are etc etc. We effectively drew a line in the sand 15 years ago or whenever it was and said that we accept the Chelseas and the Man Citys have broken into the top, but that's it now. The drawbridge has been pulled up. Everyone has to survive on the revenue they generate. All well and good, but Chelsea and Man City are great examples of how a rich owner can invest into and grow a club to help them compete at the top. Why is it not allowed for anyone else? Surely the better solution would be to cap spending at a certain amount for EVERYONE and then it doesn't matter whether you're an already established big club or not, you can spend the same amount (if you can afford to). It doesn't stop the established bigger clubs from spending the sort of money they already do, but it does open the door for clubs whose owners have deep pockets and aspirations of success to be able to genuinely try and compete and I'm not sure why anyone would really have a problem with the prospect of the "big 6" becoming a "big 10" or whatever, that surely creates a better spectacle?

Also, if you're Watford, for example, you might look at it from this point of view - being just north of London, you're the biggest club once you're outside the city and heading north until you hit Birmingham. There is always the potential to grow the club. The current rules say that if a billionaire spotted this potential, realised the close proximity to London etc would attract top players to the area and wanted to invest in the club and build it, they couldn't. You're very much tied into the fact that you can't progress much above lower Premier League level based on the revenues of the club. Is that really fair? We wouldn't do that with other businesses.

Also, yes, the status quo really is the whole league (or at least most of it), because at the time of voting a lot of them don't have that billionaire investor to give them the chance to grow, so it suits the other clubs to entrench themselves in their position.

Again, I think the fairest approach is to apply a spending cap for everyone which should keep the established bigger clubs happy that they aren't going to be blown out of the water if Jeff Bezos ever bought Crystal Palace but also allows the little guys the chance to dream again.