Don't le arse have a billionaire lurking in the wings..
they have two. usmanov - who has been kicked off the arsenal board. and kroenke - who is the majority shareholder. after a quick google search, usmanov seems to worth about 15billion usd, kroenke 6b usd. in comparison abramovic is worth 9b usd. however, i dont think this will matter too much in the short to medium term. kronke (and the other minority share holders) seem to be big on sustainability and profitablility, so their entire management structure of the club has been built on the 'wenger-mould'. this isnt going to change anytime soon.
I don't understand how this FFP will stop Billionaire clubs from buying the best footballers
in the World.
you are right. ffp cannot stop billionaire clubs running up huge debts. however its important to note that officially, ffp was not really about stopping these billionaire owners. it was about stopping the 'smaller' clubs from overspending and going bankrupt. this was the basis on which ffp was created. probably because the aim of stopping billionaire owners would have been illegal under eu law. in reality, ffp was about both stopping bankruptcy of small clubs and stopping a new mansour or abramovic. thats was all the traditional powerhouses of european football signed up to it. they didnt want their gravy train to be challenged.
it seems that the eu has ruled unfavourably for ffp. and so ffp will become more a set of guidelines, rather than an actual set of rules stopping clubs from running up debts imo. this is just my opinion. at the moment, no-one knows what will happen to ffp and how much it will be relaxed. this will become clearer in the next few months imo. but the fact that uefa has acknowledged that ffp (as it is) is not viable before the eu has released any concrete ruling, shows that uefa probably understand that the fight for ffp is dead. also, from what managers have said (ie. wenger) it seems possible that some of the clubs that were in favour of ffp have now decided that they are against it, possibly due to the titanic new premier league tv deals. this change in stance would make sense for clubs from countries like italy imo.
And if thats the case Daniel Levy is wrong about a philanthropist not being able to help us.
Yeah this is just unfortunate/funny timing for levy. only a couple of days after he released his end of season letter, the change in ffp was announced. to be fair to levy, i dont think we should hold this statement against him. it was always just a pr statement. arsenal and liverpool have also been sprouting bs regarding how ffp is stopping them from spending big too. and all these three clubs have been big on the fact that ffp will enable them to catch the top teams long term via good management decisions (which was also bs). ffp was used as an excuse to protect themselves from angry fans who wanted the same thing as chelsea/Emirates Marketing Project. unfortunately for these guys, the ffp excuse and hope has gone now.
but i dont think we should hold any angst. levy/enic are quite obviously doing his best for us, but theres not much more he can do imo. thats the sad reality of it. if ffp was actually enforced, long term it couldve given us a chance (to win titles). and this was the dream that levy was selling to us (when he both blamed ffp for a lack of spending, but also highlighted good long term management decisions like the new stadium). if ffp was enforced properly, good management decisions could allow a club of our size to dream of reaching the very top. thats what levy, wenger, fsg were selling to their fans. in particular, you could see how dissapointed wenger was when the relaxing of ffp was announced.
so to sum up, levy is wrong about a philanthropist not being able to help us. but more importantly, a philanthropist is now quite obviously the only thing that can take us to the next level.
Maybe someone could explain how this FFP [I did not think it was operating now!] will
stop the Billionaire Clubs grabbing all the best players?
If they have more money they just simply get out the cheque book!
As ive already mentioned above, there will probably be nothing to stop a billionaire owner now.
the problem for uefa implementing ffp was always going to be a complex one. my thoughts on the issue are as follow. fwiw, i have only read a handful of articles.
the eu are generally big on having an open market policy which would mean that the would be against ffp. however, in some industries they understand that some levels of protectionism or barriers etc are needed. this is especially true, in the case of sports. and the eu are aware of this. thats why they have turned a blind eye to the football transfer system and transfer windows: both of which restrict freedom of movement for residents of the eu (the footballers). however the bosman ruling is evidence that the eu will not just allow sport to operate how they like. the eu will stop rules within sport that they feel is strongly infringing on their policies.
moving on to ffp specifically, its important to note that in most industries, the eu would rule unfavourably on ffp. it obviously infringes on a number of eu policies as ffp does not help to promote open markets. however, we are talking about a sport here. and thats why uefa were hopeful. unfortunately for uefa (and those clubs in favour of it), the eu probably realised that if all clubs operated within the limitations of their revenue, then the same clubs would win all the time. ie. in the pl, w/o abramovic or mansour, man utd would probably have won most of the pl titles, with arsenal and possibly liverpool winning some. the same would be the case in basically every other elite european football nation. and the same set of teams would probably win the champions league too.
so if the eu were to support ffp, they would be supporting the same hegemony of clubs. and basically kill off the dreams of every other club in the process. this is not something that the eu will support, and its probably on this basis, that ffp was succesfully challenged by the likes of psg and Emirates Marketing Project. ffp would only have been supported by the eu if the winners of elite football competitions was largely random (where different teams won each year). in this scenario, the eu may have allowed ffp because a billionaire would perhaps be able to stop the competition and monopolise winning. but as it is, and as how most people predicted, ffp had little chance of being succesful.
