Paul Barber on today's FFP vote

[Scoffers]

So what does this tell us? It tells us that so long as the parachute money keeps going up, then the amount clubs can be permitted to lose will go up otherwise it's deemed "unfair".

We are doomed I tell you, doomed

 

[Del Fenner]

Are you sure about any of that?

Jordon was owed £7.8 million but Lloyds bank were owed £10.8 million on the creditors list which I can give you the link for if you require.

Thank you for pointing this out. That is what Jordan was directly owed at the time, but he also had tens of millions that he had previously ploughed into the club that administration rendered him unable to recoup. I should have said that Jordan indirectly sustained the biggest losses of any creditor, in the region of £30 million I believe. So Tony would be well advised not to seek administration as he would almost certainly flush a large wodge of his hard earned down the toilet.

Can you give me any link to back up your claims that shows our creditors and how much was owed by the club to these people?

General reading of Brighton's historical finances on NSC have given me to understand that there is a general acceptance among Brighton fans that following the 1997 crisis some debts of the club were not fully paid. I regret that I have not kept any links as I did not think that anyone asserted otherwise.

 

[London Irish]

Why dont you support Man city if thats what you want? I must be one of the few who dont give a rats about attendances all that matters to me is that Im there to support my team win or lose.

Sure - as long as you realise that there isn't enough people like that to even half fill the Amex. The rest will only come if we fund a realistic campaign for promotion.

 

[Green Cross Code Man]

Thank you for pointing this out. That is what Jordan was directly owed at the time, but he also had tens of millions that he had previously ploughed into the club that administration rendered him unable to recoup. I should have said that Jordan indirectly sustained the biggest losses of any creditor, in the region of £30 million I believe. So Tony would be well advised not to seek administration as he would almost certainly flush a large wodge of his hard earned down the toilet.



General reading of Brighton's historical finances on NSC have given me to understand that there is a general acceptance among Brighton fans that following the 1997 crisis some debts of the club were not fully paid. I regret that I have not kept any links as I did not think that anyone asserted otherwise.

I think the question related to the scale of the debt unpaid. You compared the two clubs debt as like for like. Unfair if the scale is totally different.

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

I've just re-read the FL's website and FFP was brought in to engender "profitability and sustainability". I'm struggling to see how increasing the threshold 3 fold to 15m achieves this. If you're allowed to rack up debts of 15m a year you might as well dispense with FFP as far as I'm now concerned. It's total FFP lip-service both from the FL and Barber

 

[Brovion]

I don't think our opinions are a million miles apart.


The last comment was actually a reference to what I think Tony is doing (or at least holding as a plan B) rather than the crazy "spend, spend, spend" of QPR.

TB has pumped undeniably large quantities of cash in BHA, but the majority of what he's spent have tangible "bricks and mortar" value that will appreciate over time. I think that the sum of the parts of this club would be valued more favourably in comparison to, say, the current favourite whipping boy of this forum, B'mouth. The current resale value of their club is tied heavily to "goodwill" and other transient factors, whereas we have a more solid long term asset base.


I personally know two business men who have been involved in plans to buy football clubs. One looked at Brighton and one looked at B'mouth and both wanted to do what TB has done for the respective clubs but, although both are worth tens of millions, neither has deep enough pockets to play Tony's game properly and so openly admit that their ambitions were largely theoretical.

You've made some good points on this thread, and this last one is salient. Time was a local businessman who'd made a few bob on the back of some shady property deals and a couple of dodgy nightclubs could afford to, at least for a while, bankroll his local football league club. Then you needed to have several million pounds spare. Then tens of millions. Now you've got to be billionaire or a small country to run a football club. Where's it going to end? One would think that logically the bubble must burst at sometime, but it shows no signs of doing so. Indeed what happens currently is that when one club finds the financial pressure too much another one takes their place.

 

[AZ Gull]

I've just re-read the FL's website and FFP was brought in to engender "profitability and sustainability". I'm struggling to see how increasing the threshold 3 fold to 15m achieves this. If you're allowed to rack up debts of 15m a year you might as well dispense with FFP as far as I'm now concerned. It's total FFP lip-service both from the FL and Barber

The allowable loss (not debt) of £15million is over a three-year period, not per year. At that level, the clubs do not have to provide any evidence of how the loss will be funded.

If losses are greater than that over a three-year period, up to £39million, clubs will be subject to further regulation on how the losses are funded.

 

[Mackenzie]

You've made some good points on this thread, and this last one is salient. Time was a local businessman who'd made a few bob on the back of some shady property deals and a couple of dodgy nightclubs could afford to, at least for a while, bankroll his local football league club. Then you needed to have several million pounds spare. Then tens of millions. Now you've got to be billionaire or a small country to run a football club. Where's it going to end? One would think that logically the bubble must burst at sometime, but it shows no signs of doing so. Indeed what happens currently is that when one club finds the financial pressure too much another one takes their place.

Players and their agents have caused this mess.

Unfortunately it seems that FFP has done nothing to solve the underlying problem of wages being greater than clubs can afford without debt. The balance of power is so far towards the players now its become a joke. Cheers Bosman, I see it did you a lot of good!

 

[London Irish]

I've just re-read the FL's website and FFP was brought in to engender "profitability and sustainability". I'm struggling to see how increasing the threshold 3 fold to 15m achieves this. If you're allowed to rack up debts of 15m a year you might as well dispense with FFP as far as I'm now concerned. It's total FFP lip-service both from the FL and Barber

But it just reflects reality doesn't it? I'm pleased we are just not living in a fog of self-delusion any more.

The Championship is the feeder league to the Premier League, where wages are astronomical. It will defy all the laws of the market to somehow get wages down to such a level that would make Championship clubs self-sufficient. Championship FFP will never work in the idealist fashion that Bloom/Barber was hoping for while it has this massive economic madness right next to it.

Bloom had to vote for £15m because he knows he has no support among his fellow chairmen.

We know the stakes of the game we are in now, we either play it and spend some money on squad-building - or just get rid of all this guff about being "Premiership-ready" if we don't intend to. Over to you Brighton board.

 

[B.W.]

Sure - as long as you realise that there isn't enough people like that to even half fill the Amex. The rest will only come if we fund a realistic campaign for promotion.

Well said LI. I think NSC is skewed when it comes to this question. Many on here forgetting that they are NOT representative of the 'standard' Brighton fan. The latter have already started to, and will continue to, flutter away at the first sign of adverse results.

 

[B.W.]

I've just re-read the FL's website and FFP was brought in to engender "profitability and sustainability". I'm struggling to see how increasing the threshold 3 fold to 15m achieves this. If you're allowed to rack up debts of 15m a year you might as well dispense with FFP as far as I'm now concerned. It's total FFP lip-service both from the FL and Barber

Yes. A complete 360 degree turn by our beloved club's leadership, no matter how they dress it up for the dullard club ar$e lickers on here. What needed to change was the ridiculous parachute payment 'reward for failure' system. Instead we join the 'loosen the purse strings' / **** the consequences brigade.

 

[BensGrandad]

I may be reading this wrong or misinterpreting it but it seems that the original FFP was unrealistic and the clubs advocating complying with it are now trying to move the goal posts.

 

[B.W.]

I interpret it as a complete smack in the gob for any club thinking prudence would prevail over chasing the dream of the promised land. Clubs like Brighton have now said '**** it', we might as well join in with silly spending if we are going to have ANY chance of going up.

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

I interpret it as a complete smack in the gob for any club thinking prudence would prevail over chasing the dream of the promised land. Clubs like Brighton have now said '**** it', we might as well join in with silly spending if we are going to have ANY chance of going up.

This.

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

Yes. A complete 360 degree turn by our beloved club's leadership, no matter how they dress it up for the dullard club ar$e lickers on here. What needed to change was the ridiculous parachute payment 'reward for failure' system. Instead we join the 'loosen the purse strings' / **** the consequences brigade.

This. The Prem should stop the payments now.

 

[Gwylan]

The rest will only come if we fund a realistic campaign for promotion.

You being wildly optimistic about how much we fans will put into the club. If we take £15m a year as a figure to fund a promotion campaign and assuming a hardcore 15,000 fans,that means we all have to put an extra £1000 a season in - about £40 a game. If you think supporters are going to pay that, you're living in some sort of fantasy world

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

You being wildly optimistic about how much we fans will put into the club. If we take £15m a year as a figure to fund a promotion campaign and assuming a hardcore 15,000 fans,that means we all have to put an extra £1000 a season in - about £40 a game. If you think supporters are going to pay that, you're living in some sort of fantasy world

This is only a couple of season's worth of further price increases though.

 

[London Irish]

You being wildly optimistic about how much we fans will put into the club. If we take £15m a year as a figure to fund a promotion campaign and assuming a hardcore 15,000 fans,that means we all have to put an extra £1000 a season in - about £40 a game. If you think supporters are going to pay that, you're living in some sort of fantasy world

Think you've got the wrong end of the stick - it wasn't ordinary joes like you and me who put themselves forward to run the club, it was board members. Solving the problems of running the club is down to them. If they don't want to fund a realistic promotion campaign, we can't make them obviously but we can call for the rhetoric to accord with reality - and drop all this Premiership-ready guff for, perhaps, Midtable-Championship-Ready?

 

[portslade seagull]

Oh well he demise of FFP has started before it really even got started

 

[ewe2]

Just as Dick Knight needed help from Tony Bloom,it is my belief that Tony Bloom,will now need help from another,with this huge increase in allowable loses, to get into ,and keep us in the Premier League.