Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Supporting the Lord Wenger in all he does » Trying to decipher the code: what are the EPL going to do next?
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Making the Arsenal: historical fiction on acid
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There is a story doing the rounds that says that the EPL is about to propose that transfer fees must be paid within a year of a player signing. At the moment the fee is paid over a period up to five years, which is why Portsmouth owe a penny or three. (Actually £14m on transfers).
This will come up at the AGM in early June, and the motion before the EPL is that 50% of the fee must be paid on the player signing with the remainder due within 12 months.
This will make no odds to Arsenal, Chelsea and Man C but will be a blow for Liverpool and Man U who are trying to pay off debts, and the multitude of clubs who lose money every year and have nothing in reserve. If Birmingham can’t pay their banker £2m they owed, how do they cope with this? Same situation for clubs from Everton to West Ham. There is not a penny cash in the drawer.
The EPL think that this move will make Uefa see that they are addressing the financial doping issue, and will then back off from other changes it wants to impose in a year’s time.
This is part of the little Englander concept of “they won’t do that to us” or “they wouldn’t dare do that to us” which football lives in, in my view.
Portsmouth are appealing against the disqualification from the Europa league next year -which is a telling case. West Ham and Portsmouth were the only clubs refused aEuro licence last year because of their finances, so the chances of success seem slim – but if they did get their way, that would mean that Uefa is in retreat.
Manchester City are paddling a similar canoe. The EPL has said they can’t take their keeper back from a loan deal, now they are down to one. Clearly when they did the deal they expected to be able to stroll around breaking any rules, simply because they have money. It is an interesting development – although it is possible that Chelsea (who are clearly able to ensure that the EPL never takes action when their mob surround a ref) is having a growing influence on how the EPL acts and thinks.
Birmingham have been charged with failure to ensure their players conduct themselves in an orderly fashion after the referee Martin Atkinson was surrounded in the game against Villa. Roger Johnson, meanwhile, has been asked to explain the comments he made to the media after the Villa game when he branded Atkinson a “disgrace”. As the complaints come in, and Chelsea escape, (and as Man U are never done for Sir Alex F Word’s comments) it does get a lot clearer how things are arranged.
But to finish off where we started with money (actually this has all been about money) former Man IOU chairman Sir Roy Gardner has announced that the Man IOU situation is not “a sustainable model”.
I’m glad that’s clear.
In total, interest and fees amounting to £460m have become payable by Man IOU to service the borrowings, including two refinancings. So to be clear, that is not the money borrowed by Glazers, that is the money taken by the bank to arrange the debt, and interest on that.
My overall point though is away from Man IOU. They, like Liverpool, are basket cases and cannot be retrieved apart from through a Man C style buyout. But the issue remains: what is Uefa going to do about financial doping of this type, and what is the EPL going to do in response?
If the Chelsea-EPL axis believes it can change Uefa’s mind through persuasion and/or bribes (I make no allegation, I am exploring a set of philosophical positions) then the changes we are seeing (the 25 rule next season, the proposed payment up front deal etc) might be part of the bargaining process. Neither will hurt Chelsea at all.
But the Uefa plan to licence clubs on the basis of their profitability and to include benefactor payments when doing the calculations, would rule Chelsea and Man C both out.
I suspect the dealing has only just started.
Having misunderstood the 25 rule totally myself at the start, I am the last one to pass judgement on it now, but that’s never stopped me before, so for what it is worth I think we are utterly fine ourselves, and Chelsea have clearly been trying to get themselves sorted, but I am not sure if Man City are that well prepared. Nor come to that are the Tiny Totts. But I do need some help on this. It will be fun to see the declared squads when they are announced, presumably in August.
And finally on money, my season tickets renewal came through today, all nice and efficient. Let’s hope that they have got their ticketing sorted out after last year’s fiasco. (See I can complain about Arsenal!)
Tony Attwood