Well it depends on what falls under spending. Is it expenditure fall stop? Is it wages alone, does amortisation come into it? Agents fees.... If wages are included in that along with agent fees and amoritsation, the limit I'm expecting will be gobbled up quite quickly. Using Bournemouth as an example (sorry guys, I feel like you'd be the lowest), in 22/23 their broadcasting and commerical revenue was £135m. If we go by the x4.5 limit, you get £607.5m According to Swiss Ramble, in 2022/2023 Manchester United's wage bill alone was £331m. Their amortisation cost was £170m. If you want to go by full expenditure, it's £670m which breaches the limit in this example. I feel like as always the devil will be in the detail. But look at the two of the clubs that voted against.....both of their overall expenditures exceed £600m, in City's case it's close to £630m. So maybe it's a very simple black and white case of expenditure that constitutes spending. Ultimately, if it's presented as I've shown I think this is better, albeit only marginally, than what we have for competition. I thought it was replacing what we have with regards to PSR/FFP/whatever the **** we have. Having it alongside is better. Because no matter how much a gap increases in revenue between a Manchester United and Bournemouth, United will only ever be allowed to spend so much of it. In the case of sporting competition, it's better. Still not perfect but better. It's a bad thing because what happens with that leftover money? The owners can take it out of the club as they see fit. Which might be why Arsenal and Mr Kroenke voted yes. If we're left with some £100m-200m left over every summer, why wouldn't he take it out the club? So that's not great. Pressure to lower ticket prices should ramp the **** up because there would be absolutely no need to keep those prices so high if how much you can spend is limited. If you allow me to put my tin foil hat on now, this feels an awful lot like a massive middle finger to Manchester City by the rest of the league. Again, not proven but if there is a feeling that they are artifically inflating their revenue streams, this ruling damages the positive effect they get from that alleged practice. Doesn't stop it completely but Man City had a turnover of £720 million last season.....that's nearly £110m they won't be able to touch. Overall, we'll have to wait and see it in practice. If it is all expenditure, than not just City and United need to get their houses in order. Liverpool (£630m), Arsenal (£520m), Spurs (£614m), Chelsea (£730m) will all need to cut down on the caviar sandwiches. And that means lowering wage bills, lowering amortisation, controlling what they spend on agents and so on. Edit: Apologies, it hasn't been voted in yet. Only decided if they want to vote to then bring it in
The athletic article put on here last week said it would be wages+amortisation+agent fees (same as the uefa rules). I don't think that would change as they said the idea was to append the cap to the new squad cost rules, so the part likely up for debate is just the multiplier The same article said that only Chelsea would have breached it last season. Man city were slightly below it, and if I remember correctly man u had something like £60m of room for a 5x multiple. A 4.5x multiple would also only really have impacted those three
This is why it can't happen. The present numbers of foreign owners would be dwarfed if clubs were generating £200 million of 'spare' cash every year, there'd be a stampede of greedy billionaires looking to invest £3 billion on clubs that were guaranteeing an 8% return every year.
Doesn't that make it more likely that it will happen? After all the club owners control the votes, and I can't see many of them turning down what is essentially free money
Perhaps this would come in alongside a renewed agreement with the EFL to distribute some of any 'spare' money down the pyramid and on into grassroots?
Ah ok well, not that great then. But it does slow down the increasing gap between the top and the rest. I'm aware that the bigger club have access to opportunities to make more money but ultimately, they'll only be able to spend an allowed amount of it because the likes of Bournemouth, Luton, Burnley can only make and grow so much. I think taking money out of a club and stopping them being the best version of themselves is wrong. Taking money out that you are not allowed to spend is different imo and 'feels' like an easier pill to swallow. Although I think we'd all rather they utilised it to dampen the hit in fans wallets.
Guess it is understandable that teams might be worried they cannot compete with the best across Europe from their own point of view but they'll probably find a way around it!
Went back to find the table from the article I was talking about That's based on a 5x multiple, as the cap would apparently be based on the lowest league (i.e. TV and merit) payment rather than lowest revenue in total. It would have some impact on the title race by restricting man city (especially at the 4.5x limit), but Liverpool would still have ~£50m of room at 4.5x and you guys wouldn't even care. You'd really have to go down to about 3x or less to get the sort of competition a lot of people seem to be hoping for Theoretically it would stop things getting less competitive than they are now, but the main benefit I can see is stopping the top sides from pushing for a Spanish style TV money distribution instead of the relatively equal system we currently have
Perhaps, but then I can't see them turning down an offer of £3 billion cash now, rather than be in it for the long haul. I don't really support the idea that money passsed down to the EFL is suddenly superbly well spent, the more they get the more they too will waste and the more it will fuel player and players wage inflation.
The only way that limit increases is via a better broadcasting deal. The only way the broadcasting deal gets better is with a more overall competitive league. I still think making it all expenditure should be the way forward.
I think it’s very unlikely they’ll be able to get clubs to agree to a more stringent cap. Makes sense that there is an attempt to draw the line where we stand now - in terms of a rule actually getting passed. At the end of the day, the broadcast deals are going up slower than the commercial revenue of the top teams - and broadcast deals (at least domestically) have only been going up by selling more games - the cost per game has been going down - there’s only so many more games they can sell. While these rules might not bite now, they should do, at least something, to stop the situation getting even worse. I think it’s likely asking too much to ask for rules that reduce the gap that currently exists - would be so difficult getting 14 votes for that.
City (hawk spit) and United i understand. Their business model is centered on spending shit loads. United because they have shit loads coming in and therefore can spend that whilst still walking the line between income and expenditure. And City because....well we know why with that lot. But Villa I don't understand. I'm also surprised about some of the clubs that voted for it. Including ourselves.
I think the current proposals are as they are just because they are tagging it on to the new rules. Makes things simpler if there's only one expenditure amount they have to care about each season
What happens if, for example, some random small club has a bit of a golden era, and quickly gets promoted fron League 1 to the PL in back to back seasons, and their revenue is massively below the average revenue of the 'poorest' club? Do teams suddenly have to cut their budgets by £100m because the promoted club have revenues of about 20m less?
Isn’t it TV revenue? So will stay stable between deals anyway. Although I think they’re talking about some add-ons as well.
I don’t think the PFA will like any spending cap on player wages, but having big relegation clauses in player contracts as standard might work, it might also allow for the removal of the parachute payments that the EFL want to get rid of.
As @Thijssen said, the current proposal is to base the cap on the lowest earners from the league's centralised TV and commercial deals. The club specific revenues (e.g. sponsors, gate receipts, ect.) won't matter, so there wouldn't be any issues with a very small team getting promoted one year Seeing as those kinds of deals are always multi year things, clubs will know what the minimum cap will be for each season. The only way they might be surprised is if the bottom earning clubs get extra TV games and earn more than the minimum, so that the cap is higher than expected
