A lack of ambition & using the FFP as an excuse.

byf1 said:

We watched the transfer window come and go with no real movement but thankfully of course we didn't lose anyone, we tightened the ship for a season of consolidation, but is that enough? Tony Bloom when asked during the fans forum was quoted as saying that top 6 is a realistic and achievable target, not if we don't back the manager in the window it isn't Tony.

We get 26k plus through the door, came so close last season and within 90 mins of Wembley and for me are just missing those special two players now, that attacking midfielder/winger who can unlock defences and also that elusive striker which we most desperately need due to CMS not being back to his best until new year & a decidedly average Ashley Barnes. It's gutted to see that Garcia feels the team is good enough in the striking department, one injury to the big man and we are literally screwed, that doesn't equal that were in a good enough position striking wise and also puts too much pressure on Ulloa.

Our promotion rivals are bringing in players, spending money and attempting to get out of this division, we're sitting still, bedding in and consolidating and after last season its disappointing to say the least. Yes we have a new manager, yes it's a tough league but at least go for it, at least show some form of intent to get out of this division.

Are we that poor we cant stretch the budget for 3 months in the loan window and therefore have to bring in a striker called Obika who has never scored a decent amount of goals? It's like employing someone at a company who you know isn't that good at the job he's supposed to do, you wouldn't do it!

This FFP is all well timed as well as for me they know that the sanctions for breaking the FFP rules are not going to be bad, which is why a lot of championship clubs are breaking them. A small fine is not going to scare teams, if they had threatened non-promotion then it would be taken seriously.

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It's called balancing the books. Let the other clubs spunk millions of pounds on players with money they don't really have. They might get the premier league before us, but they will never be able to stay there. The way we are being run is correct, because should we make the premier league one day we have everything in place with the idea of staying in it, not getting relegated after one season.

albion534 said:

That's about 2 mins I'll never get back

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Lol 2 mins. I got bored in 30 seconds. Still 30 seconds i'll never get back. I could have done so much more with the time as well.

I have a little sympathy with the OP - At Derby, Tom Glick the then CEO was led the argument for the implementation of FFP and as such had us adhering to it (or at least trying to) several years ago. So we had to endure 30,000 avg crowds and endless crap signings. So while it is obviously the right thing to do, it's mind numbingly dull - Big name name expensive signings are far more exciting! Heyho, welcome to our world.

To add, you have to consider the question, are all other teams going to adhere to FFP? If not, you may see what happened at Derby last few years, budget drops, we stay mid table, crowds drop therefore budget drops again and crowds drop again and so on......

How many more times does it need to be said. Our lack of signings was nothing to do with FFP.

The manager has said he wanted to properly assess the squad before adding new faces. A very sensible approach. Watch signings in January and next Sumner when he decides who he needs.

FFP has very little maybe nothing to do with it.

byf1 said:

We watched the transfer window come and go with no real movement but thankfully of course we didn't lose anyone, we tightened the ship for a season of consolidation, but is that enough? Tony Bloom when asked during the fans forum was quoted as saying that top 6 is a realistic and achievable target, not if we don't back the manager in the window it isn't Tony.

We get 26k plus through the door, came so close last season and within 90 mins of Wembley and for me are just missing those special two players now, that attacking midfielder/winger who can unlock defences and also that elusive striker which we most desperately need due to CMS not being back to his best until new year & a decidedly average Ashley Barnes. It's gutted to see that Garcia feels the team is good enough in the striking department, one injury to the big man and we are literally screwed, that doesn't equal that were in a good enough position striking wise and also puts too much pressure on Ulloa.

Our promotion rivals are bringing in players, spending money and attempting to get out of this division, we're sitting still, bedding in and consolidating and after last season its disappointing to say the least. Yes we have a new manager, yes it's a tough league but at least go for it, at least show some form of intent to get out of this division.

Are we that poor we cant stretch the budget for 3 months in the loan window and therefore have to bring in a striker called Obika who has never scored a decent amount of goals? It's like employing someone at a company who you know isn't that good at the job he's supposed to do, you wouldn't do it!

This FFP is all well timed as well as for me they know that the sanctions for breaking the FFP rules are not going to be bad, which is why a lot of championship clubs are breaking them. A small fine is not going to scare teams, if they had threatened non-promotion then it would be taken seriously.

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You don't (and never have) run a business have you? This is all very simple. Income must exceed expenditure or businesses will go bust. In fact FFP allows a moderate loss to be made, and that in itself is bad news. We should all be happy that BHA is run as a business, which it is!

mikeyjh said:

To add, you have to consider the question, are all other teams going to adhere to FFP? If not, you may see what happened at Derby last few years, budget drops, we stay mid table, crowds drop therefore budget drops again and crowds drop again and so on......

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This is a worry, can you trust the FA to collect the FFP Tax from clubs not complying- hopefully that will go some way to help enhace the budgets of those that do, but no doubt in reality the penalties put on those that dont will be lacklustre at best.

Addiseagull said:

You don't (and never have) run a business have you? This is all very simple. Income must exceed expenditure or businesses will go bust. In fact FFP allows a moderate loss to be made, and that in itself is bad news. We should all be happy that BHA is run as a business, which it is!

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Football is like no other business.
Very few, if any ,make a profit, it's all about keeping losses to a minimum.

deletebeepbeepbeep said:

This is a worry, can you trust the FA to collect the FFP Tax from clubs not complying- hopefully that will go some way to help enhace the budgets of those that do, but no doubt in reality the penalties put on those that dont will be lacklustre at best.

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there is not a cats chance in hell that the league will go after the many clubs who will flaunt this....if you take portsmouth as and example it would take court cases, legal arguments, challenges to the rules etc etc.

I am not saying that is an excuse to flaunt the rules, but imagine the binfest in the football world if some teams choose to igore it and wait to see what comes of it. Football is a huge business and the FL/FA rely on clubs for income...they are hardly going to bankrupt them over this

granny weatherwax said:

there is not a cats chance in hell that the league will go after the many clubs who will flaunt this....if you take portsmouth as and example it would take court cases, legal arguments, challenges to the rules etc etc.

I am not saying that is an excuse to flaunt the rules, but imagine the binfest in the football world if some teams choose to igore it and wait to see what comes of it. Football is a huge business and the FL/FA rely on clubs for income...they are hardly going to bankrupt them over this

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it should be a points deduction if there was any fairness......that will be a small fine then

I don't know why some people think that Bloom can afford to lose £8m - £20m a year like water off a ducks back.

FFP will protect Bloom from eventually having to sell the club to foriegn owners.

ozseagull said:

How many more times does it need to be said. Our lack of signings was nothing to do with FFP.

The manager has said he wanted to properly assess the squad before adding new faces. A very sensible approach. Watch signings in January and next Sumner when he decides who he needs.

FFP has very little maybe nothing to do with it.

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If that is true then why take so long to assess the squad? Oscar has been in place for since July and has had 5 league games and numerous friendlies to decide who is and isn't up to the job( apart from the injured players obviously.) Burke has been here even longer. I can see that he would want to take a look before acting, but surely leaving any potential signings until Jan would severely handicap any challenge that he/we might make this season?

Hope you are right, but I cannot see that being the case, he would've wanted to make a signing or two on the last day surely? He had more than enough time to have seen what hand he was playing with. The only thing that I can see that would've prevented that was budget or availability of the correct players.

Leaving it to January means he plays a minimum of half the season, 23 games to the end of Dec, with the current squad plus any 3 month loan signings. He brought in Andrews/Ward etc so he must have seen the need to do that? I can only see that it was a lack of budget that restricted us, and if so, so be it, but I think that it will be hard to mount a promotion campaign with what he has right now...

Seasidesage said:

If that is true then why take so long to assess the squad? Oscar has been in place for since July and has had 5 league games and numerous friendlies to decide who is and isn't up to the job( apart from the injured players obviously.) Burke has been here even longer. I can see that he would want to take a look before acting, but surely leaving any potential signings until Jan would severely handicap any challenge that he/we might make this season?

Hope you are right, but I cannot see that being the case, he would've wanted to make a signing or two on the last day surely? He had more than enough time to have seen what hand he was playing with. The only thing that I can see that would've prevented that was budget or availability of the correct players.

Leaving it to January means he plays a minimum of half the season, 23 games to the end of Dec, with the current squad plus any 3 month loan signings. He brought in Andrews/Ward etc so he must have seen the need to do that? I can only see that it was a lack of budget that restricted us, and if so, so be it, but I think that it will be hard to mount a promotion campaign with what he has right now...

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Maybe he has learnt that the current squad are up to the task and that we only needed a CF to come to us on loan and not spend £2m - £6m +.

Example: Torres £50m 84 apps 15 goals = £3.3m per goal and this does not take into account his wages at £7m a year. Bargain Don't get me wrong, I would take him on a free or a loan, but I would still only pay him £10k a week.

Whilst not agreeing entirely with the OP I do believe that last season was when we put everything into promotion and Gus blew it and as a result it will be a season of consolidation before we mount a challenge again in 2014/15 season

mikeyjh said:

To add, you have to consider the question, are all other teams going to adhere to FFP?

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That is the million dollar question. IF the FA carry out the sanctions and taxes that they have promised for offenders then clubs who bother to adhere to FFP will be sitting pretty. You've got to hope that the FA will show some balls.

Se20 said:

Football is like no other business.
Very few, if any ,make a profit, it's all about keeping losses to a minimum.

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Aye, There's the rub. This is unsustainable.

Here's an interesting piece from three years ago comparing the Premier League with the Bundesliga: http://afootballreport.com/post/537775193/failuresofthefreemarketinfootball

The author picks up on the untrammelled competition in the English game, but I would suggest that there is a further complication. English football does not follow the ideals of the free market as this would expect that competition is king and that those who failed would disappear from the market. The importance of clubs to the FA and FL, who are selling the product to TV, and the huge cultural significance to communities of supporters mean that there are options in place to ensure the continuance of those economically unviable businesses who are members. Loosely there seem to be four options in the case of a federation with economically failing clubs:

1) Administration: The FA and FL don't want to see any more of this. It's perceived immorality is bad publicity for football as a whole, but more pointedly, the Inland Revenue has had enough and won't stand for the continued disregard of non-football debt. They are challenging more often and, it would seem to me that, the natural direction of this conflict may be for the IR to challenge the rule of football debts being sacrosanct. A successful challenge would have wide ramifications for football as a whole. The model is unsustainable.

2) Fan/Benefactor ownership and fund raising: This is roughly what we went through. Those who put their money into the club after Archer went never expected to see it back again, but did so for reasons outside of economics. The number of people capable of and willing to do this in an unregulated market is not sustainable.

3) Allow Liquidation: Only the rampant ideologs of the free market right and a few thick ex pros would argue for this. The clubs are too important to people who don't think in terms of market viability. All clubs have a social value above that of an ordinary business. They were started as social clubs, not businesses and any value they have to communities would be lost with the business. Fans of a liquidated team are not likely to move their custom to the nearest FL competitor. Their custom is likely to be lost. There would be a tipping point where the federation itself would become unsustainable.

4) Financial Fair Play: Its the only sustainable option. Whether the previously toothless FA & FL will have the stomach to see it through is yet to be seen, but it seems clear that, if they don't, it is likely that English football itself will fail. The realist club owner and Chief Exec will understand that FFP is not necessary simply because of the FL/FA rules, but is the only way in which their business can guarantee a future.

Brighton has had a very hard object lesson in all this. The club's existence was threatened and we have spent more than a decade in the wilderness because of the unsustainability of the football business model. I am extremely pleased that we seem to have an owner, who refuses to risk going through this again. Brighton has never been in the Premier League and this has and will never stop me from supporting them. If the budget does not allow for the best players to be bought, I will happily go along and moan about the efforts of those who we could afford. I can deal with play off defeat, with mid table respectability and even with relegation battles. I would not want to deal with the club going out of existence. Irrespective of FFP, this is the risk that the likes of QPR and Forest are taking.

Many in football seem to be either wilfully blind to the economic facts, or are of the view that the business is too big to fail. This means that many are still arguing that running a business without having unsustainable debt shows a lack of ambition. Those taking this view are not stupid, but simply following the paradigm which English football has established since the Sky money arrived. However, English Football is in a bubble and like all previous bubbles, at some point, it will burst. Those clubs who take action now will be the ones who survive when it does.

symyjym said:

Maybe he has learnt that the current squad are up to the task and that we only needed a CF to come to us on loan and not spend £2m - £6m +.

Example: Torres £50m 84 apps 15 goals = £3.3m per goal and this does not take into account his wages at £7m a year. Bargain Don't get me wrong, I would take him on a free or a loan, but I would still only pay him £10k a week.

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Do you think the current squad is a promotion winning one? Or that Torres wouldn't make us a better side?

If Oscar does then fair play, and if he achieves it, then Johnny Crumplin has just lost his song...

Seasidesage said:

Do you think the current squad is a promotion winning one? Or that Torres wouldn't make us a better side?

If Oscar does then fair play, and if he achieves it, then Johnny Crumplin has just lost his song...

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I think it will take to up to Christmas before the squad fully understands Oscars way of playing, to the point it becomes natural and fluid.

Until then this is all a learning curve and the results shouldn't deter us from embracing what he is teaching. You don’t learn anything from playing safe and the players need to be taken out of their comfort zone, make mistakes and learn from them.

Mid table at Christmas with a strong finish, fighting for a top 6 place on the last day of the season.

BensGrandad said:

Whilst not agreeing entirely with the OP I do believe that last season was when we put everything into promotion and Gus blew it and as a result it will be a season of consolidation before we mount a challenge again in 2014/15 season

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Gibberish.

BensGrandad said:

Whilst not agreeing entirely with the OP I do believe that last season was when we put everything into promotion and Gus blew it and as a result it will be a season of consolidation before we mount a challenge again in 2014/15 season

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What a load of crap. Why can we not credibly mount another challenge given that we have virtually the same squad, with the added bonus of having our star striker available (hopefully) for 46 games instead of 20?