QPR (Merged)

[Olé]

[Port Said Red]

2 minutes ago, Olé said:

The court have ordered them to pay it back at a rate of £100 pw.

[Mr Popodopolous]

Over 10 years.

Along the lines of something someone on here predicted a while back. Shame it's so low though! Transfer embargo though is at least a bit more fitting.

This COULD set a precedent- but then again it was attempting to enforce under the old rules, so it's possibly not the case.

[Red Army 87]

Relegation candidates for me 

[Mr Popodopolous]

In some ways it's not such a tiny punishment.

It means for the next decade provided they stay at this level, they need to make provisions for 9 or 10% of their annual income (dependent on changes in TV deals)- because without parachute payments their annual income is maybe £17, £18m.

Transfer embargo in Jan- who knows how long that will last. Definitely should struggle this year.

[Bristol Rob]

What happens to the money? Is it held by the FA or does it get distributed amongst the clubs who were at a disadvantage because they didn't chest their way to promotion...

I fear I know the answer.

[Mr Popodopolous]

Neither- fairly sure it goes to charity.

[Bristol Rob]

Looks like the fine is only 17mil.

 

[Mr Popodopolous]

8 minutes ago, Bristol Rob said:

Looks like the fine is only 17mil.

 

Plus £3m in costs.

For a club with a turnover of £17-18m- that annual payment could leave them pretty hamstrung for a while.

Makes me happier that we're run correctly and in no danger of such breaches etc.

[Bristol Rob]

1 minute ago, Mr Popodopolous said:

Plus £3m in costs.

For a club with a turnover of £17-18m- that could leave them pretty hamstrung for a while. 

Reports saying it is to be paid over 10 years - they can probably live with that.

[PHILINFRANCE]

According to more local news (West London Sport), the fine is considerably less.

QPR’s long-running Financial Fair Play dispute with the English Football League has finally been resolved.

The club will pay a fine of £17m and will be under a transfer embargo during the January window.  The fine is to be paid over a 10-year period.

That agreement will also involve the capitalisation of almost £22m of directors’ loans, which involves the club’s owners converting debt owed to them into increased equity in QPR’s holding company, QPR Holdings.

[Mr Popodopolous]

10 minutes ago, Bristol Rob said:

Reports saying it is to be paid over 10 years - they can probably live with that.

10% of income though- it will leave them hamstrung of that I'm fairly sure.

Essentially they should be lower half, maybe relegation candidates for some time to come. It's too low though, the fine.

@PHILINFRANCE

Still comes to (roughly) £41 million when factoring in the capitalisation of loans, plus legal costs and fine. Just that the club won't pay for the capitalisation of loans portion of it.

[Esmond Million's Bung]

http://www.skysports.com/football/news/11711/11451025/qpr-accept-january-transfer-ban-after-reaching-efl-ffp-settlement

[...]

1 minute ago, Esmond Million's Bung said:

http://www.skysports.com/football/news/11711/11451025/qpr-accept-january-transfer-ban-after-reaching-efl-ffp-settlement

............ AND nearly everyone in West London voted remain.

****ers.

[downendcity]

From the BBC web site:

QPR have agreed a settlement of almost £42m with the English Football League after an arbitration panel dismissed the Championship club's claims that Financial Fair Play rules are unlawful.

The settlement includes a £17m fine, paying £3m of the EFL's legal costs and the agreement from club shareholders to write off £22m of outstanding loans.

QPR will also be under a transfer embargo for the January 2019 window.

It is believed the EFL have agreed to a payment schedule over 10 years.

The London club's case relates to breaking spending limits on their way to winning promotion to the Premier League in 2014, with QPR's wages of more than £75m making up 195% of their turnover of £38.6m.

The settlement was reached before QPR's appeal, which was heard on 2 July, against the panel of arbitration's ruling that FFP rules were both lawful and a fine of £41.965m was not disproportionate.

QPR chief executive Lee Hoos said that while they felt they had a "strong case for appeal", the settlement "is in the best interest of football as a whole".

"QPR felt it was best to put this matter behind them to enable all parties to have certainty and allow us to continue focusing on running the Club in a sustainable manner, going forward," Hoos added in a joint statement with the English Football League.

The settlement over historical FFP spending is the second to be reached this month by the EFL, with Bournemouth paying just £4.75m - having originally been expected to pay a fine of £7.5m - for breaking rules when they won promotion in 2014-15. 

'EFL conscious of financial burden on QPR'

While the overall fine element, upheld by October's arbitral hearing, was vastly reduced, having QPR's owners agree to effectively write off £22m worth of outstanding debts by converting that amount into share capital will help strengthen the club's balance sheet.

The club's owners will not be able to redeem the £22m of share capital.

EFL chief executive Shaun Harvey said: "In agreeing to the settlement above, the board was conscious that the financial burden placed on the club had to be manageable, so as not to put its future in doubt when considering that after this season the club will no longer benefit from the promotion that was the catalyst for the dispute in the first place.

"The outcome vindicates the approach of the EFL board in defending the challenge to our rules."

Since relegation back to the Championship after just one season in the Premier League, QPR have reduced wage spending year on year, with the latest accounts from 2017 showing that 64% of their turnover was spent on wages.

However, they have made pre-tax losses totalling more than £17.4m in their first two seasons back in the second tier.

No part of QPR's settlement with the EFL will be taken into account in future calculations relating to profitability and sustainability rules

 

 

[GrahamC]

Bournemouth were treated ridiculously leniently by comparison..

[UREDS_91]

Go and get freeman back........

[JoeAman08]

Good start that. Need to be heavy handed towards anyone destroying FFP like they did. Keep the penalties high and hopefully we will see a more competitive league. I know it is competitive but rare a lower spender sneaks into the top 6 and even rarer they go up. 

[Monkeh]

I'll put them down as being relegated this season then, as there isn't much quality in that squad

[southvillekiddy]

Couldn't happen to a nicer set of fans

[downendcity]

3 minutes ago, JoeAman08 said:

Good start that. Need to be heavy handed towards anyone destroying FFP like they did. Keep the penalties high and hopefully we will see a more competitive league. I know it is competitive but rare a lower spender sneaks into the top 6 and even rarer they go up. 

Under the new rules, and with clubs now producing projected accounts, if a club has breached/is going to breach in the third year then the EFL can apply an immediate penalty and thereby deprive them of promotion with  points deduction.

This is the ultimate sanction and deterrent , if the EFL is prepared to apply it when appropriate, as the only reason clubs have been prepared to push beyond the financial parameters is because of the massive financial bonus promotion to the prem gives them. Take that away, and they risk ruin - as Villa has recently experienced - because thy take on massive debt but will not have the income to service it, or the wages of expensive players signed up for the promotion push.

The only issue will be at what level a points deduction, and potentially depriving a club of promotion, will be applied. The QPR case would be an obvious contender , had it been happening under the new rules, as they drove a coach and horses through the financial limits. However, what if a club was sitting in the automatic places but was going to breach the limits by ,say, £1/2m - would that justify the EFL deduction points to take them out of the promotion places or would a fine suffice? 

I cannot see a zero tolerance approach, otherwise why have a range of penalties - fines, transfer embargo and points deduction - which implies that different penalties will be applied depending on the severity of the breach. In which case it could be a bone of contention with an affected club. A club being promoted , but hit with a £10m fine is probably not going complain. However, how would we feel if we are sitting atop the table, 10 points clear of 3rd ( humour me here!  ) and the EFL apply a points deduction dropping us to 6th in the table because our projected accounts put us £1m over the limit for the 3 year cycle - especially seeing the "penalty" handed down to Bournemouth?
 

[JoeAman08]

23 minutes ago, downendcity said:

Under the new rules, and with clubs now producing projected accounts, if a club has breached/is going to breach in the third year then the EFL can apply an immediate penalty and thereby deprive them of promotion with  points deduction.

This is the ultimate sanction and deterrent , if the EFL is prepared to apply it when appropriate, as the only reason clubs have been prepared to push beyond the financial parameters is because of the massive financial bonus promotion to the prem gives them. Take that away, and they risk ruin - as Villa has recently experienced - because thy take on massive debt but will not have the income to service it, or the wages of expensive players signed up for the promotion push.

The only issue will be at what level a points deduction, and potentially depriving a club of promotion, will be applied. The QPR case would be an obvious contender , had it been happening under the new rules, as they drove a coach and horses through the financial limits. However, what if a club was sitting in the automatic places but was going to breach the limits by ,say, £1/2m - would that justify the EFL deduction points to take them out of the promotion places or would a fine suffice? 

I cannot see a zero tolerance approach, otherwise why have a range of penalties - fines, transfer embargo and points deduction - which implies that different penalties will be applied depending on the severity of the breach. In which case it could be a bone of contention with an affected club. A club being promoted , but hit with a £10m fine is probably not going complain. However, how would we feel if we are sitting atop the table, 10 points clear of 3rd ( humour me here!  ) and the EFL apply a points deduction dropping us to 6th in the table because our projected accounts put us £1m over the limit for the 3 year cycle - especially seeing the "penalty" handed down to Bournemouth?
 

I am happy with fines and embargoes to be honest. Point deductions should be reserved for special cases. Villa an example of that a bit but doubt they massively overspent because of PP. Though they are facing the reality of a time without PP. How do you judge a side that had a massive income like that? Tough one so there should be some kind of guideline. Break it by up to 2m you are fined 5x the amount you are over. Over 2m under 5m fine and embargo. Over 5m a 5 point deduction and another point for each mil over 5m. Something like that would be nice. A tangible guideline to the penalties for breaking the rules

[downendcity]

22 minutes ago, JoeAman08 said:

I am happy with fines and embargoes to be honest. Point deductions should be reserved for special cases. Villa an example of that a bit but doubt they massively overspent because of PP. Though they are facing the reality of a time without PP. How do you judge a side that had a massive income like that? Tough one so there should be some kind of guideline. Break it by up to 2m you are fined 5x the amount you are over. Over 2m under 5m fine and embargo. Over 5m a 5 point deduction and another point for each mil over 5m. Something like that would be nice. A tangible guideline to the penalties for breaking the rules

How many clubs breaching the financial rules are owned by foreign owners coming into English football with little or no understanding of the financial rules  - the case of QPR, Bournemouth and Villa that would be all of them. In their business lives I suspect many of these owners ( and not just foreign ones either) have been used to "bending/breaking " rules to their advantage, and as log as the rewards for so doing are worth it, are prepared to take that risk. Having achieved their personal wealth they hope and expect to be able to adopt a similar approach when they take on an English club. 

Villa is, in  away, the most important because their predicament this summer was not just about breaching financial rules,it was about them potentially being forced out of business because they could not meet their commitments. This is the primary reason why the financial rules were introduced in the first place. My interpretation is that, in simple terms, it was to prevent clubs spending and borrowing beyond their means to achieve /retain premier league football, and then being unable to sustain themselves when premier league income was no longer available, or the team failed to gain promotion.

There is a secondary aspect to  the financial rules, in that why should one team be able to achieve promotion by flagrantly breaching the pre-agreed financial limits, when the remainder of the division does not. That is plain and simple cheating - breaking the rules to gain an advantage.

This is the problem -what constitutes a special case? I can see merit in your suggestion for tiered penalties, dependant on the level of spend above the limits. However, If Sl is making sure our planning ensures we stay within the financial limits, and this restricts our ability to be as competitive as we would like as far as a promotion push is concerned ( Sl has massive personal spending power in that respect) how do we then feel if a sugar daddy owner comes in at a club like Reading, bank rolls them to buy the best players in the championship, overspend beyond the financial limits, but they walk the league?

Does it matter whether the overspend is £1m/£10m/£30m, as, had we overspent by the same amount then we might have been able to afford the extra player ( let's say a keeper! ) that would have made the difference between 7th place and 2nd? Reading are laughing all the way to the bank of they have a £30m fine, although a transfer embargo would hurt , but the rest of the championship clubs would surely be more than aggrieved that a club has "got away" with it, and as a result then decide to ignore the financial rules as if it's OK for one club to do it, then so will we.

The only way the EFL can ensure the financial rules have real teeth is to force them daily but hard.

Just wait for us to be the first club to fall foul of this!!

 

 

 

 

[Bar BS3]

I’m not sure what to make of this really. 

Deliberately flouting fair play rules should be more harshly punished in my opinion. 

A relatively small fine (compared to what the cheating generated for them) and allowed 10 years to pay it off. 

I think the only real deterrent for others would be demotion, ala Swindon. When it blatant & deliberate, a financial penalty just seems a bit meh! 

[Lorenzos Only Goal]

5 hours ago, Port Said Red said:

The court have ordered them to pay it back at a rate of £100 pw.

It works out at close to 8K per week, the price of an average footballer, so not sure its that much of a punishment.

[Lorenzos Only Goal]

25 minutes ago, Bar BS3 said:

I’m not sure what to make of this really. 

Deliberately flouting fair play rules should be more harshly punished in my opinion. 

A relatively small fine (compared to what the cheating generated for them) and allowed 10 years to pay it off. 

I think the only real deterrent for others would be demotion, ala Swindon. When it blatant & deliberate, a financial penalty just seems a bit meh! 

I think for them its peanuts the way its structured, A shorter period to pay it would have been a bit fairer on the disadvantaged clubs.

[JamesBCFC]

Embargo is only January 2019.

 

This is more than a slap on the wrist, but not by much.

[Mr Popodopolous]

18 minutes ago, JamesBCFC said:

Embargo is only January 2019.

 

This is more than a slap on the wrist, but not by much.

That's when it begins...

How long it lasts for? Anyone's guess.

@Bar BS3

Demotion would be a fine deterrent.

However any business with 10% lopped off its income per year- and a transfer embargo- they maybe heading to League One sooner than we think

I also called the 10 year thing, albeit I thought the financial penalty would be about £40m over 10 years.

@downendcity

Don't disagree with a lot of that. Foreign owners and lack of understanding of rules or a bit of scratch back, scratch yours to move forward etc- excellent point IMO. Bending the rules to advantage.

Your Reading example is interesting- having dome some (admittedly amateur) financial forecasts for 17/18 plus the results they had from the 2 before, I actually think they are over the £39m limit. Yet they are still buying players?? Admittedly it's a small breach and it's only Meyler, O'Shea and Yiadom on a free and McNulty from Coventry but they are surely over the limit a bit for the prior 3 seasons, given their spending last year without parachute payments.

[JoeAman08]

54 minutes ago, downendcity said:

How many clubs breaching the financial rules are owned by foreign owners coming into English football with little or no understanding of the financial rules  - the case of QPR, Bournemouth and Villa that would be all of them. In their business lives I suspect many of these owners ( and not just foreign ones either) have been used to "bending/breaking " rules to their advantage, and as log as the rewards for so doing are worth it, are prepared to take that risk. Having achieved their personal wealth they hope and expect to be able to adopt a similar approach when they take on an English club. 

Villa is, in  away, the most important because their predicament this summer was not just about breaching financial rules,it was about them potentially being forced out of business because they could not meet their commitments. This is the primary reason why the financial rules were introduced in the first place. My interpretation is that, in simple terms, it was to prevent clubs spending and borrowing beyond their means to achieve /retain premier league football, and then being unable to sustain themselves when premier league income was no longer available, or the team failed to gain promotion.

There is a secondary aspect to  the financial rules, in that why should one team be able to achieve promotion by flagrantly breaching the pre-agreed financial limits, when the remainder of the division does not. That is plain and simple cheating - breaking the rules to gain an advantage.

This is the problem -what constitutes a special case? I can see merit in your suggestion for tiered penalties, dependant on the level of spend above the limits. However, If Sl is making sure our planning ensures we stay within the financial limits, and this restricts our ability to be as competitive as we would like as far as a promotion push is concerned ( Sl has massive personal spending power in that respect) how do we then feel if a sugar daddy owner comes in at a club like Reading, bank rolls them to buy the best players in the championship, overspend beyond the financial limits, but they walk the league?

Does it matter whether the overspend is £1m/£10m/£30m, as, had we overspent by the same amount then we might have been able to afford the extra player ( let's say a keeper! ) that would have made the difference between 7th place and 2nd? Reading are laughing all the way to the bank of they have a £30m fine, although a transfer embargo would hurt , but the rest of the championship clubs would surely be more than aggrieved that a club has "got away" with it, and as a result then decide to ignore the financial rules as if it's OK for one club to do it, then so will we.

The only way the EFL can ensure the financial rules have real teeth is to force them daily but hard.

Just wait for us to be the first club to fall foul of this!!

 

 

 

 

Possibly work with premier league clubs on it? Probably not a perfect way to deal with it but in your Reading scenario if they worked together and EPL enforced the embargo going into the premier league season maybe that would sway clubs? Imagine being promoted but not being allowed to add to your championship squad. Still what if they stay up? Still worth it but possibly if they breach the rules they foreit their PP? Problem with that is if they can’t pay their employess after overspending so back at square one. 

Basically got no clue how to right it but still think more can be done

[JamesBCFC]

5 minutes ago, Mr Popodopolous said:

That's when it begins...

How long it lasts for? Anyone's guess.

@Bar BS3

Demotion would be a fine deterrent.

However any business with 10% lopped off its income per year- and a transfer embargo- they maybe heading to League One sooner than we think

I also called the 10 year thing, albeit I thought the financial penalty would be about £40m over 10 years.

I've not seen anywhere that suggests it lasts past January.

Everywhere I've seen says "they will have a transfer embargo for January 2019" "for the January 2019 window " "in January 2019" but nothing to say it will carry on in the summer.