Salary cap

[Tom]

Darren or someone else who has a head for numbers: how does this affect us?
from the bbc:


Uefa discusses club spending cap
Uefa
Uefa and European sports ministers are considering limiting how much clubs can spend on players' wages and transfers.

The plan would not be a salary cap but rather tie a club's expenditure to their income.

Sports minister Richard Caborn attended a meeting in Brussels of ministers and EU officials.

He told the Evening Standard: "There is support for the idea of introducing a better relationship between income earned by clubs and the amounts spent."

The discussions are at their early stages but it would mean clubs would not be allowed to spend more than they earn on transfer fees and players' wages.

But they would be allowed to borrow for capital investments such as new stadia or training grounds.

If the new rules were introduced then Chelsea would be hard hit.

In the first two years of Roman Abramovich's ownership of the club they reported losses of £228m and spent £276m on transfers alone.

The meeting gave initial backing to some proposals which will now be formalised in the current review of European football being carried out by Jose Luis Arnaut, a former presidency minister in the Portuguese government.

[animal magic]

they might say you can only spend 40% of total income on players wages it would **** up chelsea

[kurtangle01]

Am I right in thinking tat it's basically trying to make it a level playing feld for everyone?

[animal magic]

its like nfl

[lfc4ever]

Dave Whelan of Wiggin, as the RL has salary caps, has been instrumental in this.

Before the chavs came along, I was against it, but something has to be done and it seems it is the best way, a % of income earned to be spent on wages always sounds good, but who & why sets the amount, why only 40% and not 60%?

[Rich]

Can't see how this salary cap will work to be honest.

I think we would be effected by this too. Basically Man U and Arsenal (at the moment) would have higher budgets for wages than us.

[Miracle@Istanbul]

It has to be good news for us and more generally the game itself.

I believe our club has always tried to match income with expenditure, long term every company has to do this, how many companies can actually sustain £100 million losses year after year.

Chelsea cover those losses by taking no interest loans off Abramovich, if he decided to sell his shares he would be looking for a provision of a repayment of the loan and even if he wrote the loans off Chelsea would not be able to operate on such a deficit unless the new owners were as equally cash rich.

The biggest downside might be the clubs breaking away from collective agreements for tv deals and setting up their own deals in order to get a bigger share of the tv pot so they can spend more.

[lfc4ever]

Can't see how this salary cap will work to be honest.

Works well in RL, just ask Wiggin, they were recently docked 2 points for exceeding salary cap.

But it will still be the same old clubs competing for the top honours, just means they will not be allowed to have all the big stars at one club earning massive wages without having to worry about the books balancing.

[Rich]

I know it works in Rugby League, but football is a much bigger sport, with much more money, and *allegedly* much more corruption.

Can a Salary Cap be effectively deployed?

[Ryan_Derrick]

Great. It would mean Chavski couldn't have squad players like SWP on £60k then not even making the bench.

The only way it will fall down is when trying to off load players. If you were near your salary cap teams would have to sell before they could buy. Also loan deals where the club that own them still paying half their wages wouldn't happen so often.

If it happens there will be alot of players released on frees which is not good for the game.

[kurtangle01]

I know it works in Rugby League, but football is a much bigger sport, with much more money, and *allegedly* much more corruption.

Can a Salary Cap be effectively deployed?

There'll always be some kind of loophole that clubs can exploit like buying the player a nice big house in a nice area etc..

[Rich]

If transfer fees received contribute to your income, and thus your salary cap, what is to stop Roman 'wasting' millions on low income players to boost their salary cap to allow them to sign the Ballacks and Coles of this world?

[lfc4ever]

And NFL is much a bigger sport again, and it works, allegedly!

Transparancy is the key, until we get that in transfers & balance sheets, then we'll never have workable solutions of anything.

WTF is an undisclosed fee aka West Ham deals recently?

Like everything at the FA, it's like trying to turn around a bleedin oil tanker, so slow to change and to even consider changing.

If you want something to work, you can make it work, but it all depends on the amount of resistance involved.

[Rich]

I might be wrong but American sport doesn't involve transfer fees.

There are trades for draft picks, players and trades for combinations of players and picks, then you have the free agent who can negotiate with anyone. It's a different system compared to football, I'm not sure we could get this to work - and to be honest, I don't think it's needed at the moment. Chelsea have proved that you can't win everything with money, and the backlash has started in terms of player power, with many players now unwilling to play for them - the example being of the plight of SWP.

From my Economics of Sport course (), I'd say the main reason for introducing Salary Caps is to make the game a level playing field - I'd argue that while Chelsea have moved the goal posts, it's still pretty 'fair'

[lfc4ever]

At the end of the day, it doesn't matter a jot what we think does it?

Ramblings on a forum somewhere in cyberspace are not likely to worry the suits in power.

Now, if anyone knows the hotline number?