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Financial fair play hits smaller clubs

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Submitted by WG on Fri, 10/08/2012 - 09:54

Like many well-devised schemes Uefa's Financial Fair Play has perverse and unintended consequences, particularly as it is rolled out a lower level.  The new Salary Cost Management Protocol rules that come into effect this summer in Leagues 1 and 2 may appear to be a sensible attempt to curb unsustainable spending, but in fact they could hit smaller clubs.


League 2 clubs cannot spend more than their 55 per cent of their annual turnover on wages.  As a consequence, Dagenham & Redbridge have had to offload their more experienced players and rely on youngsters.


Daggers have always relied on developing younger players and selling them on at a profit.  As boss John Still commented, 'That's how we pay for the Traditional Builders Stand, how get the car park done, it's how we get the floodlights.'  But he thinks that the gap with bigger clubs is getting wider and the new regulations don't help.

The root cause is the distribution of income

Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 10/08/2012 - 11:01.

The only way to make up the increasing inequality is to subsidise club revenues by individuals of high net worth, and as the income inequality increases, the sums required have increased; that has in turn led to a decrease in the standard of scruinty to which potential subsidy providers have attracted. Why pry too much and scare off someone when the most germane thing is that they promise to splash the cash?

The root cause is the distribution of income, and whilst FFP will potentially exacerbate this, without FFP, the solution to the problem will continue to be more of the same, which is simply untenable. Maybe the clubs will address distibution more actively, shorn of their get out clause of finding a rich bloke. Maybe they won't, as they've shown themselves to be singularly unwilling to mess with anything which smacks of social democracy. Either way, the fact that FFP will cause the first orrder problem to be revealed is no reason to not do it, and the argument that it will cause problems is the same as the one which says taking an addict off heroin will cause withdrawl symptoms which could be avoided if we just let the addict carry on.