seagull wrote:

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Bob in Spain wrote:

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Saw the following post on Twitter. Although it is somewhat Leeds related, it is more a general condemnation of the consequences fo FFP/PSR. It was written on the news yesterday that Leeds have had to sell our up and coming starlet - Archie Gray - to Brentford for 40m by close of play today, to comply with FFP.

Interestingly the deal is currently OFF again this morning, but as one Leeds fan put it, 'it is only 9.00am' LOL

The text is as follows:

PSR, P&S, FFP is broken.

It was meant to level the playing field financially. But it keeps you in your place, and rewards clubs who break the rules. Some clubs bend over backwards to try & stay within the rules. LUFC selling Archie Gray, NUFC selling Elliot Anderson. Home grown talent sold to tick an accounting box. Young lads who love their home team auctioned off like cattle at a market. Both players have family members who played for their club, historical ties cut for a broken system.

And what happens to the teams that break the rules? Everton, Leicester, Nottingham Forest all broke the rules and got a tiny points deduction. Pittance compared to reward of staying in (or getting promoted back to) the Premier League. Man City broke the rules 115 times and have had zero consequences, except filling their trophy cabinet up and patting themselves on the back.

Football is crying out for independent regulation, because it cannot regulate itself. Leeds United are maybe the ultimate example of why some form of financial constraints and owner oversight is required. Peter Ridsdale's financial dream almost snuffed out one of the biggest clubs in England. Everton (and Forest and Leicester) out-spent Leeds and as a consequence stayed up (or got promoted) and Leeds got relegated and stayed down. Everton's punishment was a 10 point deduction. Fairly significant but not handed out in the relevant season, nor impactful on their top tier status.

And the punishment for breaking the rules has not rewarded Leeds for abiding by the rules. And every year Everton stay up at Leeds expense, is another £100 million of Premier League TV rights. Leeds should have just broken the rules and stayed up. They would be several 100 million pounds better off and still be in the Premier League.

When clubs benefit from breaking the rules - with little to no consequences - and the cost of compliance is to sell your best academy players. Then the system is utterly broken. Between FFP, VAR (toenails offside), rogue agents, sports washing, FIFA corruption, state owned clubs, etc etc football in 2024 is the wild west. And about as far away from the game we love as possible.

And it is in desperate need of regulation or revolution.

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 Leeds have obviously massively overspent to get to the situation where they need to sell a player for £40M to balance the books. Saying others overspent as well and didn't get punished enough is a bit childish.

Look at Brighton - It can be done the right way you know.

Anyway looks like Chelsea have found yet another loophole in the system (Yawn)

 

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Have to say that there has been a lot of chat on the Leeds fans twitter that we should just break the rules and take the points hit.  It would be worth it, they say.

Our biggest problem came down to mismanagement of contracts.  We had clauses in all our top players' contracts saying they could go out on loan if we were relegated. So we offloaded about 7 players last year without raising any income from sales - Harrison, Aaronson, Wober, Llorente, Koch, Kristenson, Rodrigo.  To suffer the loss in income from relegation without being able to counter balance that with sales was a disaster.

This is undoubtedly a failing of our management.