QPR could face fine of up to £47m if they get promoted (FFP)

[SussexHoop]

Financial fair play Let's see if the regulators have any teeth or not. Glad the Albion are trying to be self-sustaining (even if they are failing to do so) but £177m debt for a club like QPR - do me a favour. They should be wound up for trading while insolvent.

BHAFC is solvent then? No debts? How much do you owe Tony Bloom? Your debts are internal as are ours bar £15m.

I don't believe FFP will stand up in court ... restrictive practice, restraint of trade and all that.

I'm not 'Aryy's biggest fan but let's look at some facts ...

1) I think he's shipped out as many players as he's signed including loans
2) the biggest earners were not signed by 'Arry but by Warnock in the panic of the 1st transfer window in the PL (Barton - £80k a week) and Mark Hughes (Green & Cesar, reportedly a combined £130k a week, Zamora ( somewhere between £60k and £3m a week depending on what you read). No wonder Odemwingie drove himself down to Loftus Road.
3) a complete lack of governance. Fernandes & Philip Beard have to take the blame for that.

It never ceases to amaze me how successful businessmen lose control when they buy a football club. I am however convinced they (think they) have plans for a ground and surrounding area that will generate a pile of cash. If not why buy the club in the first place? The sooner they lay the first brick the better as far as I'm concerned.

There will be a clear out in the summer as so many will be out of contract and will not be kept. I think that's the time to get rid of 'Arry but if we go up, it will be a difficult thing to do.

Nowt I can do about it all but it's a concern.

 

[clapham_gull]

BHAFC is solvent then? No debts? How much do you owe Tony Bloom? Your debts are internal as are ours bar £15m.

I don't believe FFP will stand up in court ... restrictive practice, restraint of trade and all that.

I'm not 'Aryy's biggest fan but let's look at some facts ...

1) I think he's shipped out as many players as he's signed including loans
2) the biggest earners were not signed by 'Arry but by Warnock in the panic of the 1st transfer window in the PL (Barton - £80k a week) and Mark Hughes (Green & Cesar, reportedly a combined £130k a week, Zamora ( somewhere between £60k and £3m a week depending on what you read). No wonder Odemwingie drove himself down to Loftus Road.
3) a complete lack of governance. Fernandes & Philip Beard have to take the blame for that.

It never ceases to amaze me how successful businessmen lose control when they buy a football club. I am however convinced they (think they) have plans for a ground and surrounding area that will generate a pile of cash. If not why buy the club in the first place? The sooner they lay the first brick the better as far as I'm concerned.

There will be a clear out in the summer as so many will be out of contract and will not be kept. I think that's the time to get rid of 'Arry but if we go up, it will be a difficult thing to do.

Nowt I can do about it all but it's a concern.

A concern ? Both clubs have huge debt owed to the owners but I can see where ours has been spent. There doesn't seem to be much in QPR statement about the losses. How on earth did they manage that ?

I work within 5 mins of the QPR ground and know the area quite well. The new stadium is surely a few years away.

What happens between now and then ?

 

[SussexHoop]

A concern ? Both clubs have huge debt owed to the owners but I can see where ours has been spent. There doesn't seem to be much in QPR statement about the losses. How on earth did they manage that ?

I work within 5 mins of the QPR ground and know the area quite well. The new stadium is surely a few years away.

What happens between now and then ?

Now that depends. Hopefully someone will read them the riot act and insist they do their jobs properly and ensure governance or they continue to gamble on getting promoted. I would rather the former with a decent manager that can develop players, someone who has a plan B when plan A doesn't work. The majority of the losses were I believe accrued by having 2 different owners, 3 managers and 4 transfer windows in 2 seasons without someone who understands football in a senior role at the club. I think someone did the maths and worked out we were paying an average of £50k a week.

The problem is these rich folk have big egos and can't contemplate failure and that's when it gets out of hand cos 3 teams fail every season.

 

[clapham_gull]

Now that depends. Hopefully someone will read them the riot act and insist they do their jobs properly and ensure governance or they continue to gamble on getting promoted. I would rather the former with a decent manager that can develop players, someone who has a plan B when plan A doesn't work. The majority of the losses were I believe accrued by having 2 different owners, 3 managers and 4 transfer windows in 2 seasons without someone who understands football in a senior role at the club. I think someone did the maths and worked out we were paying an average of £50k a week.

The problem is these rich folk have big egos and can't contemplate failure and that's when it gets out of hand cos 3 teams fail every season.

Er yes but back to the losses. I work with a few QPR fans and they all seem in denial.

I have no idea whether you are a solicitor, but if you are not thinking the FFP won't stand up in court is clutching at straws in the extreme.

"Restraint of trade" - are you having a laugh ? There are a number of things that happen in football that if the courts thought were worth investigating they would. The collective TV rights deal for instance. They don't because within European law they respect (and have set a precedence) that at as a league they do often things collectively for the better of the league and all the clubs within it.

If QPR think differently that's fine. They are quite entitled to go off and set their own West London league up.

 

[Crispy Ambulance]

I'd be amazed if Littal isn't asking some awkward questions. You don't get to be as rich as he is without managing p&l more than effectively. Does TF answer to him?

 

[AZ Gull]

My reading of the FFP rules mentioned in this thread are that a club relegated from the Premier League are not subject to FFP in their first season in the Championship if they had met FFP requirements of the Premier League and that QPR failed to meet them when fighting relegation last season which is why FFP in their first season in the Championship applies

There were no FFP rules that applied to the Premier League last season. The rules that were ratified in April last year begin with this season (2013-14).

 

[Driver8]

BHAFC is solvent then? No debts? How much do you owe Tony Bloom? Your debts are internal as are ours bar £15m.

We have a £100m state of the art stadium and £30m training ground for our debt. QPR have a ramshackle stadium where you can't see the pitch from half the seats and Joey Barton. I know where I would rather be.

 

[Baldseagull]

FFP fines not going to the compliant clubs remaining in the Championship is probably a wise move. We all expect QPR to have a massive fine to pay if they go up, but other clubs not so much, there would therefore be a temptation to roll over on Tuesday night to aid QPR's promotion hopes and our chances of pocketing 2 or 3 million quid of their fine.
There should never be a potential financial benefit to a club for an opponent to beat you.

QPR are stuffed, and usually I would feel for the fans when a club is run into ruin, but I have not seen many QPR fans that disagree with the policy of spending massively to achieve, so feckem when it happens.

 

[Zen Frenzy]

What happens next has to be dependent on the powers in the League having the balls to stand by the policy they've implemented. As well as the usual suspects at QPR and Forest there are plenty of others on the brink. If enough teams flounce the rules then there's a real possibility that the League will simply cave in to requests for leniency or face the prospect of significant collateral damage to their own edifice. Think BHA and Barber have done the right thing so far but plenty of people will be rightly pissed off if we end up losing out and, in doing so, become victims of our own high standards and good intentions.

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

"Restraint of trade" - are you having a laugh ? There are a number of things that happen in football that if the courts thought were worth investigating they would. The collective TV rights deal for instance.

Agree with this. The FFP boils down to a group of business's voting to operate in a specific manner. It's a voluntary code-of-conduct/practice which happens in numerous fields and industries across the UK. Football is no different and any idea of a restraint of trade is fanciful in my opinion. You could maybe argue that clubs which don't like FFP have no alternative, unlike other companies in other industries, but this is not a concern of a court.

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

What happens next has to be dependent on the powers in the League having the balls to stand by the policy they've implemented. As well as the usual suspects at QPR and Forest there are plenty of others on the brink. If enough teams flounce the rules then there's a real possibility that the League will simply cave in to requests for leniency or face the prospect of significant collateral damage to their own edifice. Think BHA and Barber have done the right thing so far but plenty of people will be rightly pissed off if we end up losing out and, in doing so, become victims of our own high standards and good intentions.

Many more clubs voted for FFP than against. If the league caves in I think the victors will be the clubs who want to play by FFP. The likes of QPR could find themselves isolated.

 

[kevo]

Great article on QPR in The Times today, copied here for those who don't have access:

QPR’s underachievement is staggering

Oliver Kay

On the final morning of the 2011-12 Barclays Premier League season, Tony Fernandes could be found in the restaurant of a Manchester hotel. He was staring into the middle distance, barely touching his breakfast, wearing the dreaded look of a condemned man.

As it transpired, Fernandes ended up all smiles that day, albeit having been put through the emotional wringer. Queens Park Rangers avoided relegation by the skin of their teeth — despite the drama of that Sergio Agüero goal that won the Premier League title for Manchester City in stoppage time — but it is at times like that, seeing a club’s chairman looking sick to the stomach, that it is possible to find sympathy with at least some of the super-rich businessmen who have come to populate the boardrooms of English football clubs.

Sympathy for Fernandes and QPR, though, began to run out long before the club were relegated last May with, as their latest set of financial accounts unwittingly revealed this week, a higher wage bill than Borussia Dortmund. Hold that thought. Dortmund (average attendance 80,520) reached the Champions League final last season, playing brilliant football and thrashing Real Madrid en route, with a wage bill nearly 25 per cent lower than the £78 million that QPR (average attendance 17,779) lavished, under successive managers, on a squad full of has-beens, never-weres and never-will-bes who came bottom of the Premier League, winning just four out of 38 matches.

The scale of QPR’s underachievement, when performance is measured relative to expenditure, is truly staggering. There was a much-needed clearout after relegation, but Harry Redknapp, despite his laments about his team’s lack of firepower, must be aghast that QPR are in fourth place in the Sky Bet Championship when his squad contains Robert Green, Richard Dunne, Clint Hill, Benoît Assou-Ekotto, Aaron Hughes, Jermaine Jenas, Joey Barton , Karl Henry, Gary O’Neil, Yossi Benayoun, Niko Kranjcar, Junior Hoilett, Andy Johnson, Charlie Austin and Kevin Doyle — not to mention Ravel Morrison, Tom Carroll and Will Keane, the talented young loanees, and the lesser-spotted Shaun Wright-Phillips and Bobby Zamora. In the context of all this — two points from five matches, leaving them 17 points behind Leicester City and nine points behind Burnley, albeit having played one fewer game, and Thursday’s announcement of a £65.7 million loss for the 2012-13 financial year even when they were in the Premier League — Fernandes took to Twitter yesterday to say “QPR fans, sleep easy” and “Club is fine whether we in Premier or Championship.”

Sleep easy? One wonders if Fernandes is able to practise what he preaches. QPR’s accounts for the year ending May 31, 2013 show a worrying reliance on his and Amit Bhatia’s largesse even while in the Premier League, let alone this season, let alone if they end up in the Championship again next term. Even after offloading many of the bigger earners — and it reflects a weak negotiating position that so many exits were loans or free transfers — their losses this season will far exceed the £8 million permitted under the Football League’s Financial Fair Play (FFP) regulations.

QPR, along with Blackburn Rovers, are among the clubs considering a legal challenge to FFP, which dictates that
loss-making clubs could face multimillion-pound fines if promoted to the Premier League or a transfer embargo if they remain in the Football League. The formulae are complicated, but, hypothetically speaking, a £40 million loss this season would see QPR fined £28.7 million in the event of promotion, while a £50 million loss would bring a £38.7 million fine. As things stand, a transfer embargo in the Championship looks more likely.

One problem is the disconnect between the Premier League and the Football League; QPR, like Blackburn, were in the top flight when these regulations were voted for by 21 of 24 Championship clubs in April 2012. But whereas the Premier League campaign for financial regulation was driven primarily by a self-interested elite, the Football League’s rules are about saving clubs from the recklessness that has seen too much staked in pursuit of promotion. Quite apart from big losses last season at Blackburn, Leicester and Nottingham Forest, the most alarming case was Wolverhampton Wanderers, who lost £30.4 million and ended up in League One.

Fernandes continues to dream big at QPR; in December he revealed ambitious plans for a new 40,000-capacity stadium as part of a vast regeneration project at nearby Old Oak Common. His long-term commitment is reassuring, but it cannot suppress the concern that even an ever-expanding London might not have quite the enthusiasm for football to merit his apparent belief in the Field of Dreams notion of “if you build it, he will come”.

As Fernandes said in the latest accounts, “a critical driver of any club’s value is its presence in the Premier League”. In the case of QPR, who cannot count on a fanbase like those at Forest, Leeds United, Sheffield Wednesday or indeed Wolves, it is even more critical.

That just increases concern at the underachievement that has continued under Redknapp this season, reflecting the misguided recruitment that has taken place under successive managers and one well-meaning but overexcitable owner. A challenge to FFP would be fascinating, since it is precisely this desperate pursuit of “critical” Premier League football that the regulations are intended to combat. As it is, QPR fans, “Uncle Tony” asks you to sleep easy. To judge by his mood over breakfast nearly two years ago, it is doubtful that he or indeed an increasingly vulnerable Redknapp are doing likewise.