Financial Fair Play v The Law

It as sort have been an open secret for sometime that the 'big' clubs in Europe don't believe FFP can be forced on to them - and that is why they have still been spending huge amount of money on players. The thinking being buy who they want now and let their very clever and expensive legal representatives take on UEFA in the courts.

Well tomorrow (Thursday) it starts in a Belgium court and by the very same lawyer(Jean-Louis Dupont) who won the Bosman case!

In very simple terms FFP is an extension of the licensing system that requires clubs to settle their bills in a timely fashion, be they to other clubs or tax authorities.

One very interesting and relevant point to Bolton (or any other club) is that the FFP would now PREVENT us from getting a rich owner in to replace Eddie Davies in that he would only be able to cover £37.8m of losses for the last two seasons, falling to £12.6m a season in 2014-15, and then £8.4m until 2017-18.

Basically a club can only spend what it earns BUT the effect of that in a very real sense is that the FFP 'freezes' clubs into the pecking order they are in now - the big clubs will remain the big clubs and the little clubs will always be little. No longer will a club get wealthy backers like say Chelsea and City have - or more pertinent to the likes of us - clubs like Forest buying players when we couldn't (or is that wouldn't?).

So, if FFP ultimately limits a club in what it can spend - this it is argued quite reasonably - is a restraint of trade - and this is against the law!

There's a long way to go on this but the match kicks off tomorrow!


http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/24333604

I won't apologise for the fact that I'd like to drop that bastard Platini.


The idea of FFP is a good one but it's never going to work properly.

Although it might make clubs (like Bolton) think about scouting the lower leagues and bringing on players, instead of throwing money about for players that are neither going to improve or have a sell on fee.

It's certainly not going to have an impact on the stranglehold that Chelsea, City, Arsenal and United have over the rest of us.

All financial fair play is going to do is make the gap between the elite and the rest even wider