Brentford & FFP

[Wapping Blade]

I read in The Standard last night that Brentford's chairman is pitching in £xM per year to supplement their budget but there was no mention of FFP, which may explain how they have a good team.

http://www.standard.co.uk/sport/football/brentford-grateful-for-owners-15m-investment-8472303.html

 

[Trigger Blade]

I read in The Standard last night that Brentford's chairman is pitching in £xM per year to supplement their budget but there was no mention of FFP, which may explain how they have a good team.

http://www.standard.co.uk/sport/football/brentford-grateful-for-owners-15m-investment-8472303.html

Is there a creative way of defining turnover, in a similar way to what Man City does, by exaggerating the value of naming rights, thereby considerably increasing income?

FFP does seem to be mentioned more frequently around S2 than anywhere else....

 

[SwissBlade]

FFP does seem to be mentioned more frequently around S2 than anywhere else....

Perhaps for two reasons:
1) McCabe can use it to justify paying higher wages than other sides in the division
2) Given the West Ham situation I'm sure that many clubs (and ) would love us to fall foul of the rules.


On the subject of FFP, this doesn't seem to be an issue for Pompey. I presume they just don't care about the rules as they well get a points deduction when they come out of Admin anyway.

 

[Wapping Blade]

Is there a creative way of defining turnover, in a similar way to what Man City does, by exaggerating the value of naming rights, thereby considerably increasing income?

FFP does seem to be mentioned more frequently around S2 than anywhere else....

In this case it seems pretty blatant, hence my posting after seeing it last night.

I assume that they don't care/think it won't affect them and it's worth it to get out of L1.

 

[Sothall_Blade]

That report says that Brentford have a wage bill of over £5M. Their average attendance last season was 5,643.
Our average attendance last season was 18,702. So based purely on that our wage bill should be 3 times theirs at around £15M. Which we know it is not. It's nowhere near that and we apparently only just comply with the rules.

So what funding other than gate receipts counts towards turnover?
There will obviously be sales of shirts, pies, programmes etc but you'd expect them to be roughly in line with average attendances. TV income should be roughly the same.
Corporate boxes etc..? They may have an edge being a London club but we must have more boxes and better facilities.
So, the only other income I can think of is sponsorship or some sort of fiddle around naming rights as suggested.


Mr McCabe stated earlier in the season that teams can lose points due to FFP. That's blatantly not true. It's not in the rules.
He also said that we could be fined due to FFP. That will only become true if we get two successive promotions to The Premiership. If we do, so what? We'll be in The Premiership. Who cares? A small fine won't matter.
The only current punishment a club can incur through FFP rules is a transfer embargo.
Now we know that Swindon got around their transfer embargo simply by the owner providing extra funds rather than by players leaving and the wage bill being reduced.
The situation at Brentford underlines that that, or some clever accounting, is all that is required for the wage bill to be increased without any sanctions being taken.

So when Mr McCabe says his hands are tied due to FFP, he's really using it as a convenient excuse to reduce his level of involvement. Which to be fair, he's openly stated is what he wants to do.
Again with McCabe, it's not what he's doing that's necessarily the issue it's the way he's hiding behind false information to pretend he can't do any more, when he actually could if he really wanted to.

 

[Wapping Blade]

Or maybe he really does want to play by the rules, football has a horrible morality that if you can get away with it, it's OK.

 

[Sothall_Blade]

Here are the rules explained in more detail if anybody is interested:-

http://www.football-league.co.uk/page/FLExplainedDetail/0,,10794~2748246,00.html

As I understand it, it's not a case of a club breaks/falls foul of the rules and they get punished.
Sensibly, the League steps in before it gets to that stage and imposes a transfer embargo to prevent a club spending more than they can afford.

What is becoming increasingly apparent though, is that a club can pretty much decide what they can afford for themselves and set their own wages threshold. I.e. If McCabe wanted to fund a higher wage bill he could but he doesn't.

Fair enough but at least be honest about it and stop hiding behind the rules and non-existent punishments.

 

[cooperblade]

Bournemouth have, I believe, been allowed to make their huge purchases (staggering really that they've signed Ritchie) because their owner has sponsored the stadium. If the league aren't looking at the true commercial value of such deals then the salary cap is very easy to get round.

 

[bartman]

That report says that Brentford have a wage bill of over £5M. Their average attendance last season was 5,643.
Our average attendance last season was 18,702. So based purely on that our wage bill should be 3 times theirs at around £15M. Which we know it is not. It's nowhere near that and we apparently only just comply with the rules.

So what funding other than gate receipts counts towards turnover?
There will obviously be sales of shirts, pies, programmes etc but you'd expect them to be roughly in line with average attendances. TV income should be roughly the same.
Corporate boxes etc..? They may have an edge being a London club but we must have more boxes and better facilities.
So, the only other income I can think of is sponsorship or some sort of fiddle around naming rights as suggested.


Mr McCabe stated earlier in the season that teams can lose points due to FFP. That's blatantly not true. It's not in the rules.
He also said that we could be fined due to FFP. That will only become true if we get two successive promotions to The Premiership. If we do, so what? We'll be in The Premiership. Who cares? A small fine won't matter.
The only current punishment a club can incur through FFP rules is a transfer embargo.
Now we know that Swindon got around their transfer embargo simply by the owner providing extra funds rather than by players leaving and the wage bill being reduced.
The situation at Brentford underlines that that, or some clever accounting, is all that is required for the wage bill to be increased without any sanctions being taken.

So when Mr McCabe says his hands are tied due to FFP, he's really using it as a convenient excuse to reduce his level of involvement. Which to be fair, he's openly stated is what he wants to do.
Again with McCabe, it's not what he's doing that's necessarily the issue it's the way he's hiding behind false information to pretend he can't do any more, when he actually could if he really wanted to.

It is interesting to see that Ritchie(sp) has just left Swindon to go to promotion rivals Bournemouth and and it is being reported that someone is about to provide them with a cash injection to stop them going into administration.

So surely,these funds will be masked as a 'sponsorship' deal so it would be classed as turnover. Similarly,are Brentford doing the same via their chairman.

I assume McCabe could do the same but has chosen not to

 

[Grecian2000]

If the league aren't looking at the true commercial value of such deals then then salary cap is very easy to get round.

But if they don't make it easy to get round then it has no chance of being accepted further up the Leagues.

The problem with anything like this, is that there will be some people who try and stick within the rules and others that will flaunt them shamelessly. Will we end up as the only clean cyclist in the tour?

 

[alcoblade]

FFP isn't about preventing backers from backing a club. It's about backers pretending to back a club, as McCabe has done.

If you want to sponsor your team, stand, kit for £5M you can - you just can't run up huge loans for the club to pay back when you're long gone.

McCabe is full of shit. I don't blame him for not wanting to give away money. I do blame him for pretending otherwise.

UTB

 

[StarBlade]

Surely, we of all people can't complain about FFP and owners putting money in? No offence, but we as a club probably can't abide by the rules, no matter how well intentioned we are criticising of the game. We have required our owner pumping money into us by the way of inter-company loans, equity purchases and the like to come no-where close to breaking even.

God help us our finances were really looked into. Sure, we "owe debt to ourselves" so we're well run, but then, I guess lots of other well run clubs do too. It's still wrong. Bring on the day where a club must break even based on its match-day revenue. That'll be the day players won't be millionaires, where clubs won't go into Admin every couple of years and that'll be the days pigs fly.

 

[metalblade]

Not so many years ago on fans forums we would get pig fans saying how they wished they had McCabe as their owner, fookin hell I do too, Wendy are about the only thing I would wish him on. Not that he didn't start with the right intentions he did but when he made mistakes he tried to cover it up which led to more cover ups until more and more fans don't believe a word he says. If he told me it was raining I'd go outside to check.

 

[1889]

Well if all that I true, we have nothing to fear from the FFP rules, after all it appears we are already subject to a transfer embargo. Only difference being it would be imposed by the League rather than our Chairman?

 

[KenMcnaughtsNuts]

Mccabe in "he's full of feckin shit" shocker

well beam me up sooty