FFP: "Regulating a little bit better"

The most basic analysis would be to say that Arsenal, the most profitable club in the premier league, would not be too largely affected by FFP.  The reality is quite different though. First of all, the source of Arsenal’s money is something that may change with FFP. As I am sure many of you know, Arsenal have been accused of being a selling club , while I don’t personally care about the opinion of an ex united keeper, but it is something that could has an effect on the club. A brilliant piece by swissramble  shows that one of the reason for Arsenal’s continued financial success is that we always have the option of selling our players if the right amount of money is offered; and continue to do so. If clubs are forced to live within their means, then surely Arsenal will no longer have the option of selling the Hlebs of the world for £15 million. We will no longer be able to generate such huge profits from the artificial money of others.

The quote in the title is from Gianni Infantino on UEFA's video on FFP. Clearly not the most ambitious words on the topic. One of the interesting things about the introduction of FFP is to see how easy it will be for the biggest clubs to avoid. The most obvious precedent Manchester City's dealings with Etihad, as I am sure most of you will know, City's owners have essentially bought the naming rights of the stadium for £400 million. This is a ridiculous amount of money, and is a mockery of the FFP's nature. It is not "breaking even" if your income is coming from your owners. While it has been looked into by football's governing officials, nothing has happened yet. Other examples include PSG doing an incredibly similar thing with Qatar National Bank and Real Madrid selling their training ground. It almost makes a mockery of the ideas of FFP and punishes the clubs that do try and break even by normal measures. It will be interesting to see if either UEFA or FIFA end up punishing actions that clearly undermine their own policies.

One of the primitive clauses of FFP that is currently existent ensures clubs deal with unpaid wages and transfer fees. This is where clubs either do a Portsmouth or something like this. Neither of these would really affect Arsenal, with the only on-going transfer fees coming from Barcelona’s purchases of Song and Fabregas over the last two years.  This is one aspect that is already regulated… badly.  UEFA withheld prize money for 23 clubs in 2012 due to “overdue payments”. Two months later and it was overturned for 16 of those clubs. This seems like completely irrational actions for UEFA, to punish teams financially for not having enough money to pay players. The biggest team to be punished due toshoddy finances is Malaga. Their ban was from dealings with other teams or their players, rather than for making losses, and failing to keep up with the “break even clause”. There is an argument that UEFA are too scared to anger any of the huge European teams.

Gael Kakuta: Most of you that have heard of him will have done so due to the trouble that Chelsea got into for signing him rather than his handful of premier league appearances. Only Chelsea didn’t get into trouble for signing him, yet again, a governing body backed down on its punishment (it was FIFA this time). I find it incredibly difficult to believe that the governing bodies would properly enforce any punishments that it did give to “big” clubs. They simply cannot afford to have a Champion’s League without the likes of Barcelona, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, AC Milan, etc. All of these clubs have massive losses, and no real way to change it. Another example of hypocrisy from Barca is their criticism of Madrid’s financial aspect of only buying superstars, while ignoring players like Fabregas, Villa and Ibrahimovic, each bought for over £30m. This is similar to United mocking City. All four clubs have phenomenal amounts of debt and make losses each year. If FFP were to be a realistic change then it would involve all of these clubs drastically changing over the next 4-5 years.

Man City’s pricing for Sunday’s game against us proves an interesting preview of the potential effect of FFP. Manchester City are charging £62 per ticket for our game against them on Sunday. This works out at roughly £180,000 for this game. A large number of their squad will be on more than this every week. As a result, a number of fans have decided not to go and they have had to return 900 of their 3000 allocation. If FFP is actually effective then huge ticket prices will become the norm for clubs wishing to spend huge amounts on transfers and wages. Clubs will see their ticket prices rocket if they are truly made to be sustainable. This has one of two effects, either making football less accessible to most people and forcing only the financial elite to attend, or simply to stop people turning up all together. Arsenal already have the highest ticket prices in the football league, so high that I think the club is on the verge of losing many loyal fans if it either continues to rise prices or fails to win trophies.Something’s gotta give...

As far as players go, I think Wenger hopes Arsenal will be in a position where long term we are sustainable, and have the players to achieve success with the club. I think the British core has not been created by mistake, with Walcott's contract to be announced any day soon. Having 6 young players committing themselves to the club in an effort to build a squad rather than buy one is hopefully a good sign. Also having Szczesny in the mix is a brilliant thing for the future, the young Pole is a self confessed "gooner" and has stated that he wishes to end his career at Arsenal. Chelsea clearly need to spend £20m+ to replace Cech, much as United did. There is no need for us to splash the cash in this particular region. Gibbs being from the academy, Wilshere's obvious love of the club, Jenkinson's childhood of supporting Arsenal and Chamberlain's dad being a gooner are things that probably mean nothing in reality, but are nice little nuggets for the fans to cling on to when it comes to players staying.

Thanks for reading, any feedback appreciated. Don't forget to follow @studentgooner