Leicester 'could face points deduction next season'

[Mr Popodopolous]

3 hours ago, Lesta Legend said:

Tanner confirms that EFL and Premier League pushing for points deduction this season. But we would have to agree to a fast track process, which seems a nonsense. 

It's genuinely hard to say isn't it because the Fast Track process actually looks built in to the CFRU to CFRP Referral Process.

 

CFRP are the External Body who are appointed to deal with P&S Breaches in the EFL.

 

I'm not saying I'm definitely correct but it seems like uncharted territory to say the least.

 

EFL Regs do state that FFP/P&S are a Reserved matter for the CFRP and that they can also decide matters as to their own jurisdiction...so anyone's guess in a sense?

 

Possible but remote that they can also adjudicate on more than one matter at once..ie could they adjudicate on both their jurisdiction and the P&S alleged breach.

[Mr Popodopolous]

4 hours ago, Terraloon said:

An absolute quality piece of work well done and thanks.

 

No matter what happens re timings , jurisdiction and impending proceedings the only conclusion I can come to is that in all this LCFc are dammed if they get promoted and dammed if they don’t.

 

I wish I could read it in another watch but the delays that have been argued and of course re the business plan in particular have done is kick the can down the road and at some point everything will catch up that is of course unless somehow an argument is won that no one had jurisdiction 

Thank you. I agree it will if there have been breaches proven catch up eventually, I don't see how a club if proven wriggle out in the long run if PSR breached.

[Mr Popodopolous]

One bit that confuses me slightly is the Maddison sale.

 

30th June I was convinced and I guess everyone else has been too. If post 30th June maybe it saves Leicester to this year but would absolutely seal a major breach to last. Income minimum was down £25-30m based in 8th to 18th and no European Revenue.

 

May have been significantly higher as Leicester didn't appear in Deloitte Money League Top 30 for 2023. Could be due to a lack of data but fairly accurate to date. Everton on £170m came in 30th so by process of elimination Leicester may come in below that. All will be revealed soon I suppose.

 

My own gut feeling was Leicester with Maddison sale in 2022-23 numbers pass to last season but crunch to this.

 

There was a 13th month to be included last year as Leicester moved to end of June, that added costs net of income probably.

 

Maybe there was some Impairment which again counts vs FFP but can ease it a bit moving forward and make offload of players easier.

 

I did ballpark estimate of Leicester total club (ie Football, non Football plus NI and Tax on PAYE) as being £90m or so this season. Income probably around down £100m from 2021-22 to now, maybe more.

[Mr Popodopolous]

1 hour ago, urban.spaceman said:

Except the EFL issued a joint statement with the club saying: 

 

“In reaching the settlement, the EFL acknowledges that the club did not make any deliberate attempt to infringe the rules or to deceive and that the dispute arose out of genuine differences of interpretation of the rules between the parties.”

 

Yet another example of the EFL conceding that they have incoherent rules and failed to implement them properly.

The EFL IMO overreached unless it was a clever ploy by them (unlikely) on their attempts to impose a Business Plan and the different interpretations of 'T'.

 

The commercial sceptic in me says about Settlements with Leicester and Bournemouth under the old Regulations, that given they were out of reach and the PL were less than helpful in enforcement that there was a mutually acceptable wording and fine to draw a line given it dragged for so long.

 

However, the Sanctions were very limited then too. Had Leicester not gone up the worst they would have got was an Embargo in January 2015. It was a Strict Liability Offence or something like.

 

Fine on a sliding scale Promoted (which the PL didn't really help to collect as they thought the Regulations were flawed and diverged from their own) and Embargo if not.

Edited 25 March by Mr Popodopolous

[st albans fox]

10 minutes ago, Mr Popodopolous said:

One bit that confuses me slightly is the Maddison sale.

 

30th June I was convinced and I guess everyone else has been too. If post 30th June maybe it saves Leicester to this year but would absolutely seal a major breach to last. Income minimum was down £25-30m based in 8th to 18th and no European Revenue.

 

May have been significantly higher as Leicester didn't appear in Deloitte Money League Top 30 for 2023. Could be due to a lack of data but fairly accurate to date. Everton on £170m came in 30th so by process of elimination Leicester may come in below that. All will be revealed soon I suppose.

 

My own gut feeling was Leicester with Maddison sale in 2022-23 numbers pass to last season but crunch to this.

 

There was a 13th month to be included last year as Leicester moved to end of June, that added costs net of income probably.

 

Maybe there was some Impairment which again counts vs FFP but can ease it a bit moving forward and make offload of players easier.

 

I did ballpark estimate of Leicester total club (ie Football, non Football plus NI and Tax on PAYE) as being £90m or so this season. Income probably around down £100m from 2021-22 to now, maybe more.

The transfer embargo says we are on course to lose too much to end June 24 because it must be based on expectations from our management accounts and budgets going forward. As you said earlier it cannot include possible income in the future. 
 

Is this based on the rolling three year 35+35+13 in which case where Maddison money appears is irrelevant and we still need to sell in June. 

[john ridley]

Does the Harvey  Barnes and Castagne money count for this year ?

Edited 25 March by john ridley

[st albans fox]

2 minutes ago, john ridley said:

Does the Harvey  Barnes and Castagne money count for this year ?

Yes 

but if it’s a rolling three year period it’s moot if it matters 

 

having money pre June 30 2023 does matter for the rolling period ending June 30 2023 

[Ashley]

4 minutes ago, john ridley said:

Does the Harvey  Barnes and Castagne money count for this year ?

Yes.

[when_you're_smiling]

2 hours ago, davieG said:

https://uk.sports.yahoo.com/news/contradiction-heart-leicester-case-premier-093143498.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9jLm5ld3Nub3cuY28udWsv&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAHXSsls-xO-4OKZrOK5lwGh9JGE-UT07P0p2wQOI8rJBuZWDaws60PQ2bMhRIN-3QfHD-xs5VvPTjQRtsAraL01iacxO42_FFqvJSHoIcyNRjt5-62vR4S5cK-HMsFNqR6RJ8v-kgv_mnSvQr0j50xU5Q-LhoWGXgAYrlw2yHglr

 

The contradiction at the heart of Leicester’s case with the Premier League
Richard Jolly
Mon, 25 March 2024 at 9:31 am GMT·5-min read

The contradiction at the heart of Leicester’s case with the Premier League

Leicester City already held a unique status with both the Premier League and the EFL. Now they may have another. The only club to win each of English football’s top three divisions in the 21st century – champions of League One; Manchester United, Liverpool and Arsenal may never sing that – then announced plans to take legal action against both the Premier League and the EFL.

The feelgood success story has become an emblematic failure in an age of suddenly greater regulation and a dramatic recourse to the lawyers. Attention has shifted from Jamie Vardy’s predilection for vodka and Red Bulls to Nick De Marco KC’s capacity to win court cases. Leicester were the 5000-1 shots who won the title. They presumably think the odds are slightly better when they take on the governing bodies.

There may be a contradiction in their case. Trying to argue they are not subject to the Premier League’s jurisdiction presumably brings them into the EFL’s remit. One way or another, the accusation is that Leicester have failed Financial Fair Play; in one division or another, this season or next, it should bring a points deduction. Which, in turn, either further imperils their chances of promotion or gives them an added obstacle to stay up next season.

But it is also revealing in various other respects. When Everton were the trailblazers in being charged for their breach of Profitability and Sustainability Rules (PSR), there was talk of other clubs suing them; if the accusation was that Everton cheated to get an advantage, that looks ridiculous when they finished 17th last season and the clubs in 16th (Nottingham Forest) and 18th (Leicester) have their own breaches.

 

Another is that all three suffered on the balance sheet for their underachievement. Budgeting to finish far higher in the Premier League than they did – somehow Everton factored in a sixth-place finish in 2021-22 and trailed in 16th – brings far less prize money and a hole in the accounts ledger. Leicester had more reasons to imagine themselves in the upper echelons of the table but went from five consecutive top-half finishes, two of them in fifth, to 18th in 2022-23.

It is notable, too, that Covid upended the footballing economy. Clubs were permitted to write off Covid losses in their accounts – and Everton’s felt suspiciously large – without them counting towards FFP calculations. But the collapse of transfer fees, especially in other leagues, reduced the market to sell players; it also led to a knock-on effect by restricting the spending power of Premier League rivals who might have otherwise sold well to Europe to finance their own buying.

Leicester had a reputation as fine traders, but they posted a record £92.5m loss for 2021-22, a rare year without a significant sale. In previous summers, players such as Ben Chilwell, Harry Maguire and Riyad Mahrez had brought in windfalls. That had come to feel part of the business plan, yet it can illustrate the precarious position clubs find themselves in: even the well-run are only a few poor decisions away from being plunged into trouble and Leicester made more than a few. Nevertheless, they did well to get £70m from Chelsea for the ever-injured Wesley Fofana in 2022; they then sold James Maddison, Harvey Barnes and Timothy Castagne the following year, after relegation, even though too many of the others who left did so on free transfers.

But a relatively sure touch in the transfer market started to desert them. There were other signings they could not sell for a profit – Danny Ward, Ayoze Perez and Rachid Ghezzal in 2018, Dennis Praet in 2019 – but two windows of recruitment came at a particular cost. The 2021 outlay on Patson Daka, Boubakary Soumare and Jannik Vestergaard, none either a footballing or financial success, was compounded by the January 2023 outlay on Harry Souttar and Victor Kristiansen.

In the process, Leicester contrived to get the worst of both worlds: spending some £30m to compound their FFP issues and yet still getting relegated. It also illustrates that they should have done more to try and cash in on Youri Tielemans, Caglar Soyuncu and Perez while they still could and, while the scale of Leicester’s breach is not yet known, the recurring theme between them, Everton and Forest is that much of it was avoidable: without accumulating so many players, with fewer bad signings, with more sales, the figures may be more presentable.

But it is also a hugely damning indictment of Brendan Rodgers, even if the cost of sacking him may be a further factor in taking Leicester over the FFP limit. Leicester’s former manager had a tendency to voice his complaints about the board’s reluctance to spend in the summer of 2022; now it is apparent that was based on sounder financial logic than his own.

Rodgers had excelled before. Last season, he underachieved with what has proved an unaffordable squad; it would be instructive to know if Leicester’s wage bill was higher than Newcastle’s, as they finished fourth; certainly before bonuses were triggered on Tyneside anyway.

The counter-argument is that Leicester suffered for their success. They were a club without big-six commercial or matchday income but, as they finished fifth twice and won the FA Cup, they had players who deserved to be paid accordingly. They were damned if they did, damned if they didn’t.

Viewed that way, Leicester were punished for their ambition. Certainly it put them in a position where they had less margin for error. But err Leicester did, both in plummeting into the Championship and with transfer-market missteps. Now they find themselves under a transfer embargo, facing a loss of points, their future threatened.

Saying they wanted charges “proportionately determined” risked accusations of hypocrisy, given that threats to take legal action against the Premier League and the Football League strike some as disproportionate. But what can be said is that the landscape has been transformed since Leicester won the Championship in 2014 – while breaching Financial Fair Play.

Reading this which sums up a lot of my conflicting feelings, it’s still ridiculous that basically we get punished by footballing authorities for spending too much because we spent £30m without selling a major player one summer.

 

Also a good reminder that Rodgers had no clue, nor seemingly really wanted to know, what FFP involved. 

[kenny]

4 minutes ago, when_you're_smiling said:

Reading this which sums up a lot of my conflicting feelings, it’s still ridiculous that basically we get punished by footballing authorities for spending too much because we spent £30m without selling a major player one summer.

 

Also a good reminder that Rodgers had no clue, nor seemingly really wanted to know, what FFP involved. 

You are correct.

 

Its our wage bill not our net spend on transfers that has hamstrung us.

[ClaphamFox]

On 24/03/2024 at 09:12, Ric Flair said:

I'd like our club to lay claims of where they've challenged the fairness of PSR previously, because if they haven't then it weakens this stance to nothing but a wet fart.

 

The club were very resound in explaining to our fans the thought process behind trading a high value asset every season in order to progress and comply and at no point did they use that opportunity to question the financial limitations. 

 

We had an opportunity to be the shining light in succeeding and striving to comply whilst exposing the difficulty in making significant inroads in to the gap between the commercial revenue of the elite and the single outlier in PL history over several years but we didn't (publicly anyway). This is where the club has done themselves no favours with the fanbase, too closed off, too private. They could have mobilised something for others to get behind, especially at the time when the greedy 6 were trying to launch a break away.

 

It's hubris, we've lost the plot and now crying wolf.

It seems we did object when the EFL's FFP rules were introduced in 2014. So whatever other accusations can be levelled at us, I don't think hypocrisy is one of them...

 

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/feb/26/financial-fair-play-clubs-threat-football-league

[Sly]

4 minutes ago, when_you're_smiling said:

Reading this which sums up a lot of my conflicting feelings, it’s still ridiculous that basically we get punished by footballing authorities for spending too much because we spent £30m without selling a major player one summer.

 

Also a good reminder that Rodgers had no clue, nor seemingly really wanted to know, what FFP involved. 

Playing devils advocate on this one though.

 

He was the Manager of the first team, was it his job to know? 
 

He wasn’t paying Soumare £100k per week.

[Sly]

1 minute ago, kenny said:

You are correct.

 

It’s our wage bill not our net spend on transfers that has hamstrung us.

We all knew that it would cripple us at some point, so many of us have been saying it was unsustainable for years. 
 

We rolled the dice and even with European money, it would have still been tight.

 

More clubs are going to fall on this sword and it’ll create a massive divide between the top six and everyone else if they don’t re-evaluate the rules. 

[Mr Popodopolous]

35 minutes ago, st albans fox said:

The transfer embargo says we are on course to lose too much to end June 24 because it must be based on expectations from our management accounts and budgets going forward. As you said earlier it cannot include possible income in the future. 
 

Is this based on the rolling three year 35+35+13 in which case where Maddison money appears is irrelevant and we still need to sell in June. 

Yeah, it confuses me slightly, we can extrapolate when the numbers are out..clearly if Maddison in 2023-24 then there is a major breach to last year.

 

For simplicity purposes let's assume Maddison in 2022-23 as originally assumed. I reckon Leicester Profit on Disposal this year including Loan Fees but excluding Maddison is probably £45-50m.

 

Projected Accounts would include that and on the basis of future Receipts might either include a Promise to sell £x by end of June or actually forecasting their Accounts to include it. Say the Forecast 3 Year Breach is I dunno £20m..adding another £20m to Forecast Trsnrer Profit or simply adding it to the likely £45-50m would fix the Projection but still leave an Embargo in play pending completion.

 

No club has yet to my knowledge put in a straight up overspend in that manner to the EFL in March so there are a lot of unknowns. Who knows perhaps Leicester have pledged to the EFL that they will sell whatever it takes by end of June..Embargo in March can hold a club to that.

[ClaphamFox]

32 minutes ago, st albans fox said:

Yes 

but if it’s a rolling three year period it’s moot if it matters 

 

having money pre June 30 2023 does matter for the rolling period ending June 30 2023 

Do we know if the Maddison money would enable us to avoid a breach in either the 2020-23 period or the 2021-24 period? Or failing that, would it reduce one of those breaches to a minor one? In other words, is there any way for us to either make one of the breaches go away or reduce it to a level that should not result in a harsh punishment?

Edited 25 March by ClaphamFox

[st albans fox]

Just listened to Maguire’s podcast and he has us completely the wrong way around 

 

ffp - we didn’t vote for it (he agrees that we did)

international re distribution of monies to rich six - we did vote for it  (he states this is what’s changed since ffp was voted for)

Edited 25 March by st albans fox

[st albans fox]

7 minutes ago, ClaphamFox said:

Do we know if the Maddison money would enable us to avoid a breach in either the 2020-23 period or the 2021-24 period? Or failing that, would it reduce one of those breaches to a minor one? 

I’m guessing that with Maddison in 22/23 we have a minor breach 

I’m also guessing that this also means with a big sale in June 24 we again have a minor breach 
 

these on rolling three year numbers 

Edited 25 March by st albans fox

[when_you're_smiling]

26 minutes ago, Sly said:

Playing devils advocate on this one though.

 

He was the Manager of the first team, was it his job to know? 
 

He wasn’t paying Soumare £100k per week.

Yeah, that’s fair. But also his job to raise morale, which I’m not sure moaning about lack of money/players was ever going to do.

[kenny]

11 minutes ago, Mr Popodopolous said:

Yeah, it confuses me slightly, we can extrapolate when the numbers are out..clearly if Maddison in 2023-24 then there is a major breach to last year.

 

For simplicity purposes let's assume Maddison in 2022-23 as originally assumed. I reckon Leicester Profit on Disposal this year including Loan Fees but excluding Maddison is probably £45-50m.

 

Projected Accounts would include that and on the basis of future Receipts might either include a Promise to sell £x by end of June or actually forecasting their Accounts to include it. Say the Forecast 3 Year Breach is I dunno £20m..adding another £20m to Forecast Trsnrer Profit or simply adding it to the likely £45-50m would fix the Projection but still leave an Embargo in play pending completion.

 

No club has yet to my knowledge put in a straight up overspend in that manner to the EFL in March so there are a lot of unknowns. Who knows perhaps Leicester have pledged to the EFL that they will sell whatever it takes by end of June..Embargo in March can hold a club to that.

I am convinced that we know that we are selling KDH before the June deadline to comply with PSR. We are also waiting on a tribunal for Nyoni which could be in the  order of £7-10m including add-ons.

 

I think we didn't want to submit a business plan as the club don't want the fans to know and are concerned that it will devalue KDH as we are low-balled.

 

Its an odd rule that you are sanctioned before the offence has been committed but I suppose it stops clubs continuing to spend if they are already looking suspect.

 

 

[when_you're_smiling]

29 minutes ago, kenny said:

You are correct.

 

Its our wage bill not our net spend on transfers that has hamstrung us.

Long term, yeah, but as the article points out, the feeling was a top five side in European competitions had the number of bodies and wages it needed to be such a side. ‘Damned if you do, damned if you don’t’.

[ClaphamFox]

10 minutes ago, st albans fox said:

Just listened to Maguire’s podcast and he has us completely the wrong way around 

 

ffp - we didn’t vote for it (he agrees that we did)

international re distribution of monies to rich six - we did vote for it  (he states this is what’s changed since ffp was voted for)

When does he say that? (I'm about to listen to it...)

[st albans fox]

1 minute ago, kenny said:

I am convinced that we know that we are selling KDH before the June deadline to comply with PSR. We are also waiting on a tribunal for Nyoni which could be in the  order of £7-10m including add-ons.

 

I think we didn't want to submit a business plan as the club don't want the fans to know and are concerned that it will devalue KDH as we are low-balled.

 

Its an odd rule that you are sanctioned before the offence has been committed but I suppose it stops clubs continuing to spend if they are already looking suspect.

 

 

We wouldn’t be able to include any add ons for nyoni in accounts 

I doubt we’ll get much more than £2m as an initial fee 

 

the football world knows about our predicament (just as is the case with Chelsea and others). Hence Brighton’s low ball jan offer for kdh 

 

we didn’t want to submit our accounts to efl pre march 1st cos we didn’t want proceedings started early enough to be concluded this season with appeals etc which would risk our promotion with a PL penalty applied in the efl (which is feasible) 

[st albans fox]

2 minutes ago, ClaphamFox said:

When does he say that? (I'm about to listen to it...)

Kevin day asks if we would have voted for ffp when it was brought in and he says yes we would have 

[Ric Flair]

3 hours ago, davieG said:

https://uk.sports.yahoo.com/news/contradiction-heart-leicester-case-premier-093143498.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9jLm5ld3Nub3cuY28udWsv&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAHXSsls-xO-4OKZrOK5lwGh9JGE-UT07P0p2wQOI8rJBuZWDaws60PQ2bMhRIN-3QfHD-xs5VvPTjQRtsAraL01iacxO42_FFqvJSHoIcyNRjt5-62vR4S5cK-HMsFNqR6RJ8v-kgv_mnSvQr0j50xU5Q-LhoWGXgAYrlw2yHglr

 

The contradiction at the heart of Leicester’s case with the Premier League
Richard Jolly
Mon, 25 March 2024 at 9:31 am GMT·5-min read

The contradiction at the heart of Leicester’s case with the Premier League

Leicester City already held a unique status with both the Premier League and the EFL. Now they may have another. The only club to win each of English football’s top three divisions in the 21st century – champions of League One; Manchester United, Liverpool and Arsenal may never sing that – then announced plans to take legal action against both the Premier League and the EFL.

The feelgood success story has become an emblematic failure in an age of suddenly greater regulation and a dramatic recourse to the lawyers. Attention has shifted from Jamie Vardy’s predilection for vodka and Red Bulls to Nick De Marco KC’s capacity to win court cases. Leicester were the 5000-1 shots who won the title. They presumably think the odds are slightly better when they take on the governing bodies.

There may be a contradiction in their case. Trying to argue they are not subject to the Premier League’s jurisdiction presumably brings them into the EFL’s remit. One way or another, the accusation is that Leicester have failed Financial Fair Play; in one division or another, this season or next, it should bring a points deduction. Which, in turn, either further imperils their chances of promotion or gives them an added obstacle to stay up next season.

But it is also revealing in various other respects. When Everton were the trailblazers in being charged for their breach of Profitability and Sustainability Rules (PSR), there was talk of other clubs suing them; if the accusation was that Everton cheated to get an advantage, that looks ridiculous when they finished 17th last season and the clubs in 16th (Nottingham Forest) and 18th (Leicester) have their own breaches.

 

Another is that all three suffered on the balance sheet for their underachievement. Budgeting to finish far higher in the Premier League than they did – somehow Everton factored in a sixth-place finish in 2021-22 and trailed in 16th – brings far less prize money and a hole in the accounts ledger. Leicester had more reasons to imagine themselves in the upper echelons of the table but went from five consecutive top-half finishes, two of them in fifth, to 18th in 2022-23.

It is notable, too, that Covid upended the footballing economy. Clubs were permitted to write off Covid losses in their accounts – and Everton’s felt suspiciously large – without them counting towards FFP calculations. But the collapse of transfer fees, especially in other leagues, reduced the market to sell players; it also led to a knock-on effect by restricting the spending power of Premier League rivals who might have otherwise sold well to Europe to finance their own buying.

Leicester had a reputation as fine traders, but they posted a record £92.5m loss for 2021-22, a rare year without a significant sale. In previous summers, players such as Ben Chilwell, Harry Maguire and Riyad Mahrez had brought in windfalls. That had come to feel part of the business plan, yet it can illustrate the precarious position clubs find themselves in: even the well-run are only a few poor decisions away from being plunged into trouble and Leicester made more than a few. Nevertheless, they did well to get £70m from Chelsea for the ever-injured Wesley Fofana in 2022; they then sold James Maddison, Harvey Barnes and Timothy Castagne the following year, after relegation, even though too many of the others who left did so on free transfers.

But a relatively sure touch in the transfer market started to desert them. There were other signings they could not sell for a profit – Danny Ward, Ayoze Perez and Rachid Ghezzal in 2018, Dennis Praet in 2019 – but two windows of recruitment came at a particular cost. The 2021 outlay on Patson Daka, Boubakary Soumare and Jannik Vestergaard, none either a footballing or financial success, was compounded by the January 2023 outlay on Harry Souttar and Victor Kristiansen.

In the process, Leicester contrived to get the worst of both worlds: spending some £30m to compound their FFP issues and yet still getting relegated. It also illustrates that they should have done more to try and cash in on Youri Tielemans, Caglar Soyuncu and Perez while they still could and, while the scale of Leicester’s breach is not yet known, the recurring theme between them, Everton and Forest is that much of it was avoidable: without accumulating so many players, with fewer bad signings, with more sales, the figures may be more presentable.

But it is also a hugely damning indictment of Brendan Rodgers, even if the cost of sacking him may be a further factor in taking Leicester over the FFP limit. Leicester’s former manager had a tendency to voice his complaints about the board’s reluctance to spend in the summer of 2022; now it is apparent that was based on sounder financial logic than his own.

Rodgers had excelled before. Last season, he underachieved with what has proved an unaffordable squad; it would be instructive to know if Leicester’s wage bill was higher than Newcastle’s, as they finished fourth; certainly before bonuses were triggered on Tyneside anyway.

The counter-argument is that Leicester suffered for their success. They were a club without big-six commercial or matchday income but, as they finished fifth twice and won the FA Cup, they had players who deserved to be paid accordingly. They were damned if they did, damned if they didn’t.

Viewed that way, Leicester were punished for their ambition. Certainly it put them in a position where they had less margin for error. But err Leicester did, both in plummeting into the Championship and with transfer-market missteps. Now they find themselves under a transfer embargo, facing a loss of points, their future threatened.

Saying they wanted charges “proportionately determined” risked accusations of hypocrisy, given that threats to take legal action against the Premier League and the Football League strike some as disproportionate. But what can be said is that the landscape has been transformed since Leicester won the Championship in 2014 – while breaching Financial Fair Play.

This is a very well written article that even I font read and want to headbutt pool balls at the thought of how we've been ran. It does flag the issues we faced that whilst mistakes have been made in their bucketfuls we could still have ended up finding it hard to comply regardless of how badly we were doing on the field.

[Ric Flair]

3 hours ago, st albans fox said:

I mooted this months ago 

 

Say I’m daka’s agent 

were negotiating a deal because he’s decided to join us ahead of other options. We’re going to pay him more than them - we are in the Europa league. We just finished fifth and won the cup.  All other signings have been made with the club showing ambition and selling themselves as a top PL club pushing for trophies and Europe. 
 

the club say that there has to be a wage relegation clause. My reply to that would be that my client requires a release clause on relegation of the amortised value remaining on his purchase fee or £8m (whichever is the higher).   The club would refuse that because they don’t do release clauses (dogma but I expect it was vichai’s policy post kante and no one can change that) 

 

so my only other option is to say that the relegation clause is only acceptable if it’s repaid as a bonus on immediate return to the PL.  I’m still not happy with that because it exposes my client to a second or third season if not promoted.  The flip side of that is the very decent salary that he will be earning in the PL. so I accept that the bounce back bonus in year 1 is the best I’ll get - maybe a 50% bonus in year 2 if I can get that though 
I really don’t think it’s insane ric 

I think many here wondered how we would have got relegation wage reduction clauses included in the first place. You’d surely have to agree something like this to get them in ?  

You may well be right given our standing in the game at the time a lot of these contracts were signed but if it were the case then surely we'd have pushed harder to get more players out the door last summer.

 

The part that doesn't surprise me is us not planning on selling Fofana (which if we didn't would have led to a monumental PSR breach) and offering Jack Harrison £100k a week and Leeds £20m for him despite all the known issues that were to come.

 

 

1 hour ago, kenny said:

But the accounts relate to actual cash in the bank. If this arrives on the 1st July then it would go in the next set of accounts.

 

How odd that a club in the Big 6 would pay a day or so late being well aware of why we were accepting a lower fee to assist with PSR rules.

Are you sure it's cash in the bank because that wouldn't be paid up front anyway. Most accounts aren't done on a cash basis but transactional unless a very small company.