craigLCF

Given the dramatic events of the last few days I started to wonder how exactly the new uefa financial fair play rules will work as Chelsea have obviously just spent a mad amount of money and I was curious as to how this could possibly fit into the structure of the new rules. I was aware that transfer fees don't count but even discounting that; their wage bill must be crazy. I found this article and unfortunately, probably as most of us suspected, there is a loophole which will ease the pressure in the 2013/2014 and 2014/2015 seasons when the rules are first implemented so they won't be too inconvienced to begin with. However, beyond that season chelsea and city will surely have massive problems as the loophole expires and they will genuinely have to reign things in. Here's the article incase anyone else wants to read it... REVEALED: Why Chelsea don’t fear Uefa FFP (wages don’t count for first two years)By Nick Harris 1 February 2011 Chelsea’s bullishness that they won’t immediately fall foul of Uefa’s imminent Financial Fair Play (FFP) rules is because they will be able to ‘write off’ a huge chunk of their wage bill in the scheme’s early years, sportingintelligence can reveal. This has been confirmed this afternoon to sportingintelligence directly by Andrea Traverso, the Head of Club Licensing and Financial Fair Play at Uefa, and as such the man in charge of implementing FFP. The same ‘write off’ technique will be allowed to all clubs under certain conditions, for the first two monitoring periods of FFP, effectively meaning that most clubs won’t actually need to start any real degree of belt-tightening before the 2012-13 season. The FFP rules and terms have been widely misunderstood which is not surprising because they are immensely complex. But to try to summarise how they will work: •From next season, 2011-12, clubs must not spend more money than they earn. To be crassly simplistic, they mustn’t spend more on wages and other expenses than they earn in ticket, media and commercial income in any one ‘monitoring period’ (MP). The first MP will last two years, the second will last three years, and so will MPs thereafter. •Uefa will monitor spending, and for the first few years, will allow certain losses as long as they’re met unconditionally by benefactor funding. •The first MP is 2013-14, for seasons 2011-12 and 2012-13 combined, and the losses allowed will be €45m over that whole period, or roughly £39m, or £19.6m per year. •The second MP is 2014-15, for seasons, 2011-12, 2012-13 and 2013-14, and the losses allowed will be €45m over that whole period, or €45 a year, or £13m a year. And so on, like this: . At first glance, on current trends, the losses at Chelsea (£70.9m in one year to June 2010) and some other clubs, notably Manchester City (£121m loss in one year to summer 2010) make it seem extremely unlikely that they will get anywhere close to meeting the FFP requirements. And if a club fails to meet the FFP limits, then punishments including bans from European competition, including the Champions League, will be applied. So why do Chelsea, despite the losses posted yesterday, seem so upbeat that they can spend £70m-plus in the transfer window and release a statement they’re on course for FFP? The statement said: ‘The club is in a strong position to meet the challenges of UEFA ‘financial fair play’ initiatives which will be relevant to the financial statements to be released in early 2013.’ The reason is because they know that for the first and second MPs, namely the two-year period before 2013-14 and the three-year period before 2014-15, they will be able to deduct from any losses the amount of any players’ wages agreed in deals signed before 1 June 2010. In other words, if Chelsea’s wage bill is currently in the vicinity of £160m per year (give or take £10m-ish), the majority of that is going to players who signed their most recent deals before 1 June 2010. Let’s assume, for the purposes of this example, only half that sum, £80m, is on wages agreed before last summer. Again, to be crassly simplistic, in the financial year just reported, Chelsea lost £70.9m but could actually write off the wages (£80m in our example) agreed before 1 June 2010. In other words, they didn’t lose £70.9m for FFP purposes, they actually made money! Contrary to some reports, no club can write off any transfer fees agreed before 1 June 2010. ‘All clubs must amortise all transfer fees, even those spent before June 2010,’ Traverso tells sportingintelligence. He adds: ‘However, should a club be in breach [of the FFP break-even requirements] and they are able to prove that the breach is exclusively due to salaries for players under contract before 1 June 2010, and they can also show an improvement trend in their accounts, they will not be sanctioned.’ In other words, and to be simplistic (because there is a lot of small print), for the first two MPs of the FFP, a lot of wages can be written off, if a club can argue they’re heading in the right direction, which will be a semantic but surmountable tussle for anyone. Example here. The full FFP rules document can be downloaded here. On the very last page, you’ll see the words that allow the wages write-off. . After the first two monitoring periods, all bets are off, and all wages will be counted. So for example, for monitoring period 2015-16, which includes seasons 2012-13, 2013-14 and 2014-15, all wages will count and clubs who have continued to spend more than they earn will be in big trouble. But it’s a long way off, or seems it to the clubs still spending. That may explain why Chelsea were happy to splash the cash yesterday on Torres and Luiz. Actually getting serious about cutting your losses is a headache for a slightly more distant time.

Making a banner tomorrow. KENNY IS BOSS Can't wait for it. Totally buzzing.

Just heard an after match interview on bbc website. Interviewer: "no-ones got a magic wand but you have to somehow rebuild torres confidence don't you?" King: "Fernando has a magic wand. We'll be gettin him playin sooner rather than later. He wants to do it." *boner*

Bruce Springsteen-The Promise

The away stand at Dens is named after Bob Shankly. My old man supports Dundee (as well as the reds). They were a big force under Shankly from what I can gather. I remember tales of epic wins over Cologne and Sporting as well as playing AC Milan in european cup semi-final and Leeds in Uefa cup semi-final (what was then called the fairs cup i think). Apparently one year Liverpool were having a bad season and at roughly the midway point they came up and played Dundee in a friendly absolutely tonking them and then went on a blistering run in the league ending in us winning it. Not sure what season this was. It's all very sad and I feel gutted for their fans. They were told the first time they went into admin that this would never happen again. A fans group expressed concerns about their current chairman operating as a sugar daddy some time ago but nothing happened, he's now fucked off and the fans are left to pick up the pieces again. Similarly to ourselves they've had some utter tits involved with their club. They had a director called Giovanni Di Stefano who seems to constantly imagine money which doesn't exist. He's a lawyer and said he'd defend Hitler successfully in court given the chance. He actually has represented Saddam Hussein and chemical Ali. All in all it's fairly mad what's gone on there.

Welcome back Fabio "Big Boi" Aurelio. Hopefully see more glorious moments like this from Sir Luscious Left Foot next season. [YOUTUBE]XvjuGze80WI[/YOUTUBE]

Is it just me or is the furore over this not all a bit silly? It seems like a bit of a stick people are using to beat him with in the press. He's obviously not picking players based on it as he's just said he hasn't even seen the rankings. You do wonder if the FA are behind his demand for this to be taken off the internet which would be utterly lame as they'd be pandering to the press but I suppose it wouldn't be that surprising.

Don't worry mate. You wouldn't be winning that either. The best players and the most resources and he has turned it into a race. A race which did not occur under Mancini as purplenose says. Imagine if he had the 3rd/4th/5th or whatever resources in the league with us?! The reality is we would be in much the same situation we are in now if he was in charge. Consistent top 4 with the odd 5th and the odd title challenge. He is also a total fucking embarassment. He has picked pointless fights with Lippi, Mazzari and Ranieri who have all performed excellently this season. Now he is crying and complaining because the press dislike him. Funny that after you slagged off completely unprovoked the manager who won Italy the world cup. Utter utter bellend. Oh, I forgot there is also a refereeing conspiracy against him. That explains it, of course.

Ahhh hilarious Jose. Hope you qualify tomorrow night son cus your jobs on a fucking tightrope. He was brought in to do better in europe and retain scudetto. He has currently done fuck all in europe and managed to turn a one horse race into a competitive title chase. What a genius. The man is a myth. I laugh at how English journos say "Jose is irritated by Italy." When it's more a case of Italy being irritated by Jose. He's all mouth and they've got his number. He'll probably be off to real madrid at the end of the year.

I'm surprised he was able to motivate himself to write an article.

Did i hear a commentator say that young is out of our game after being booked today or did i mishear? It was an annoyingly shit stream.

Like an earlier poster said. Low was the brains behind Germanys successful World Cup campaign. We would actually be a lot better off going after him rather than Klinsmann. Klinsmann is useless. How can you fail so miserably in a league like bundesliga with Ribery, Klose, Van Bommel, Lahm, etc? Didn't they only get champs league because they sacked klinsmann with a few games left and van gaal coming in and winning them? Nah, no deal for klinsmann as far as i'm concerned. We really would be heading for 'meltdown' if that shit happened.

Surely it did work for Ramos and Ranieri though if you look at their performances on a long enough timeline. I can't see how anyone could criticise the job Ramos did at Madrid. He completely turned them around and pushed a Barcelona team all the way to the end which eventually ended up with the most points in La Liga history. He did this from a poor starting point as well as they were quite far behind already before he arrived I think. Also, whilst I agree Ranieri had a total mare in that Monaco semi-final. I think he was progressing well. He reached CL semis and was runner up in the league. He had added Robben and Cech to his squad for the next season and he presumably would have strengthened further in the Summer as well if he'd stayed. He may well have won either the European Cup or the title the next season. Do you not think the fundamental problem at these clubs is their hiring and firing policies? Thing is they have the resources to consistently attract big name managers. We don't have a pot to piss in. Who'd want to be our manager with high expectations and no money to spend?

I don't believe we are too loyal. I think Evans was given too much time. He was a really good guy who everyone desperately wanted to succeed and in retrospect we kind of shot ourselves in the foot by keeping with him for so long and then with the folly of the joint managers. It was time wasted. However, this is the exception to the rule. I think Houllier was given the correct amount of time. We steadily improved to the point of being runners up in 2002. Then went backwards the following year. This was said to be a blip so he got another year. At the end of this year when we didn't progress any further or challenge we changed to Rafa. This seems like a sensible, rational approach to me. I don't think sacking Rafa is the way forward either. Who's better than Rafa? Arguably Hiddink, Capello, Ferguson. We can't get any of them so it's basically gonna be a pretty wild gamble as to whether a new manager would improve us or not. Our "loyalty" is one of the reasons I love the club as it's a major part of what was "The Liverpool Way." At least before the two clowns took charge anyway. In fact the thought of those twats sacking Rafa and making another appointment is one that would terrify me. The only reason I'm not worried is that it's unlikely they'd want to pay off the rest of his contract.

Oh shit! I just sicked up a little in my mouth! I don't think our squad is that weak. The only position we are really vulnerable in is striker. It'll all be decided by the slightest of things.

[YOUTUBE]FpAI-RRg0N4&feature=PlayList&p=46D247B2A06B1425&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=48[/YOUTUBE] The closest you'll get to being there if you weren't.

It actually just sneaks in the official top 3 worst reasons to attack a dj. 1.) He has big, cool earphones which you wish were yours. 2.) You have mistaken him for Terry Christian. 3.) He refuses to play phil collins.

[YOUTUBE]pZW7CSqsdzE[/YOUTUBE]

Add tortilla wraps and... Turkey and avocado wraps.

Apparently cambiasso is in the last year of his contract which probably means one of two things. We can get him cheaply which is prompting us to have a look or the whole story is a fabrication to bump up what inter are offering. Hopefully it's the former. Also on that site was a story about us tracking D'agostino a left midfielder forward type at udinese. I remember him being touted as a wonderkid years and years ago but i thought he had dissapeared into obscurity. Not quite apparently and given his position there might be some truth in it. Anyone seen much of him?

Taken from channel 4 serie A page so probably from some Italian paper.

Exactly mate. Owen is utterly charmless. I can't imagine ever doing what he has done and that stretches way beyond the liverpool united rivalry. For instance say you signed for Real Betis and became a top player. You wouldn't fuck off to Real for half your transfer value and end up at Sevilla after things not working out. This is not "one of those things." It's one of a series of incidents which only a cunt would instigate.

I remember at my high school the PE department had this bag of old shirts and shorts. If you forgot your kit they'd give you something out the bag. One of the shirts was an 80s United kit. One day i forgot my kit. All morning I dreaded the united kit being pulled out. I couldn't have worn it no way I'd have accepted lines or whatever instead. Thing is im an OOT so noone round my way would've cared or commented but for my own mental well-being or sense of self-respect or whatever i could never put it on. Now how the fuck can he not only do that but be prepared to run out infront of their fans, celebrate in front of K stand. He doesn't even look remotely torn about it. He is a fucking snake.

Under the circumstances I think Heinze would be decent business. I know he's made a few errors over the last couple of years but I sense that wouldn't happen with us. Madrid are a bit of a circus after all. I remember Walter Samuel going there and turning to dogshit virtually overnight and he was awesome. Similar to what's happened with Collocini at Newcastle. I think heinze would win people over eventually as well. He's got that whole Argentinian aggression thing going on. I think he was mancs fans player of the year one season as well was he not?

Nah not for me. Though I loved momo I never thought he was truly the same after that awful eye injury in Benfica. With the exception of the odd performance. If the worst comes to the worst with mascherano we'd probably be better off signing one of the players he'd be replacing ie mahmadou diarra at real or toure at barca. Then use the additional money to strengthen the squad elsewhere.