Thursday 11 September 2014

Katrien: we want a share of QPR fine

If the new financial fair play regulations are enforced and not challenged in the courts, they should benefit clubs like Charlton who have managed their finances prudently.

Earlier this week Charlton chief executive Katrien Meire was on a panel on the business side of football in Manchester. She put the case for clubs like Charlton to receive a share of any fine imposed on QPR which could be as much as £2m for the Addicks: Fair Play. She estimated that Charlton had lost £12.8m in its effort to get back to the Premier League: quite a conservative figure in my view given the money that was wasted on players who didn't deliver.

At the moment the money is destined to go to charity, but perhaps it could be shared between charities and the clubs.

20 comments:

Blob said...

There isn't any money.There won't be any money got it?You slavering scavengers will have to wait until there are snowdrifts in Hell before so much as a Groat is shelled out.The QPR legal team - a humungously powerful outfit - will ensure that.

Al_QPR_81 said...

Or perhaps people should stop jumping on band wagons whenever the press prints some rubbish about fines - it's not been confirmed that there IS a fine yet, and as usual everyone and their dog is assuming we'll be faced with some gigantic penalty...wait til our accounts come out in December. You might all be a little disappointed.

Wyn Grant said...

Creative accounting is always possible. As I have argued elsewhere, I do think that the FFP regulations are based on dubious legal foundations and are open to challenge on the grounds that they are in breach of competition law.

Anonymous said...

Well considering how well have managed their finances lately....
should they now consider paying some of their creditors the money owed from going into administration 30 years ago
NO I DONT THINK SO ,,,
crawl off back under your rock you blood sucking leach

Kentish Man said...

Today's Indy suggests that FFP does not apply to Manchester City as they have challenged it legally. Be sure the rest will follow

Anonymous said...

The rules won't and can't work, nearly every team in the Premier League would fail if relegated,
This if forced by the FL will be the end, the Premier League will create a second league, and bye bye the football league as we know it

The money QPR spent was in trying to stay in the Premier League, when relagated they had a team on premier league wages, it takes more than one season to sort offload players, they did try with loaning out Remy, Selling Samba and a few others, but will still fall foul of the FL rule, that they did not vote for,
Also by insisting on this rule no promoted team can compete in the Premier league, so you may as well fogey promotion and relegation

Anonymous said...

Its all nonsense how can any more teams wish to be promoted with this utterly ridiculous rule hanging over their heads

Unknown said...

It be interesting to see if fifa fine the likes of real madrid and man utd who are spending way above the cap conditions of fifa-Real should have a transfer embargo set on them i know they are owned by the spanish royals but they have mind blowing debt oh we forgot fifa is run by one bent fxxk in sepp blatter i would love to do a citizen arrest on this bloke next time he steps foot on british soil he is as bent as they come...FIFA OUT

Ashdown_Ranger said...


Firstly, total guesswork at QPRs accounts due in December 2014 - so how do the red top rags arrived at figures variously quoted at £40m, £50m and £65m? By sensationalist headline-grabbing guesswork.

As others have posted, as the rules stand, ANY relegated team from the Prem will fall into the FFP trap. PL clubs simply can't exist in that way, and a consequence would surely be to create a PL second division, and the Football League would suffer as a consequence - possibly terminally.

While a contract/agreement between QPR and the Football League must exist, any contract must fair and reasonable, otherwise it simply won't stand up in law. QPR will have had to have signed the contract in order to operate within the Football League, or go out of business. I'm guessing that amounts to signing under duress.

The amount of money in football generally is obscene and poorly/unfairly distributed. Getting more money into the lower leagues - and non-league - football should be the aim of everyone in the game, but the current FFP rules are not the way to go about it.

sm said...

Sadly I fear Wyn may be right in that creative accounting (rather than the true and fair kind) may combine with competition law to perversely allow QPR and others to get away with unfair competition. I hope the accountants and humungously powerful lawyers are satisfied and proud of the work they are carrying out - I wonder if they are the same accountants and lawyers that contributed their little bit to the financial crisis and in helping the main culprits get off the hook.


Of course sporting QPR fans might just have a few moral qualms about the behaviour of their club in breaking the rules and buying their promotion to the Premier League. Lets hope the less moral ones will eventually get a little more karma to add to the last few minutes of their last game at the Valley

Call me old fashioned but I agree with the proceeds of any fines going to charity - it seems wrong to profit from the earning of the patently immoral.

Anonymous said...

The suggestion is that QPR could only attract players by not putting 'relegation clauses' in contracts that would lead to a significant pay reduction if the club went down. I thought that these had become the norm for all but the top-end of the Premiership. Clearly players might not want to stay, but at least as long as they are still there they are costing less. In crude terms a season in the premiership is now worth a minimum of £60m+ in terms of TV money _ a lot of this will go on transfer fees (nor forgetting the agents' cuts which appear higher tha average at QPR) and not wages. The parachute payments are now of a level to soften the blow somewhat. While recognising the difficulty in making the adjustments it does appear that QPR managed their finances very badly in both the year leading to promotion, the two years in the Premiership and the year back in the Championship. I support the idea of fines and think that it should go to grass roots football

Brian G said...

I feel somewhat conflicted over this. Whilst I am totally in favour of reducing the obscene amount of money sloshing around in football at the top level and of prudent housekeeping, I do not believe that the FFP rules can or even should work.Football is now allowed to operate in most areas as the most open and capitalist market that you could ever have and it suffers from the inherent imperfections of such a market, so I don't see how you can stop people throwing their own or borrowed money at it in search of success if they so wish. Would it not be better instead to require some independent (government?) approval of the distribution of the Sky bounty to ensure that it is distributed more fairly across all levels of English football? Wyn will know the detail on this but I would imagine that the top clubs could not spend the amounts that they do spend on transfers and wages if they had to depend on gate money alone without the ever-increasing Sky payments. Let's tackle the problem at its root cause, not by remedying one of its symptoms. However, if FFP is ever to be p, then I wouldn't want us to receive a single penny of it. It should go to charity but can we trust UEFA or FIFA to ensure that 100% of any fines end up in the right places?

Anonymous said...

This is just the kind of thing when we all say it's awful and shouldn't be allowed, until it happens at your club.
If the QPR situation had happened at ex West Ham, Palace or Brentford, there wouldn't be very many QPR fans who would be saying "it's the way of the world". They'd recognise it as abhorent and be moaning too.
When Watford became Udinese 'light' Charlton fans were angry and moaned.
Now Charlton are Standard Liege 'B' - or SL are Charlton B depending on your outlook, suddenly it's 'different' and all ok again.
Our football affiliations cloud our moral judgements.

Wyn Grant said...

In response to Brian G's point, commercial revenues (sponsorship deals) are now a bigger proportion of Manchester United's income than broadcasting revenue.

Dave said...

It would be great to see QPR penalised forleavingbeyond their means. However, it doesn't really matter whether FFPcatches them out or not. The fact is their current model is unsustainable and when the bubble bursts they are going to feel the pain. They will emulate Portsmouth....

Anonymous said...

Can't fernandes,or mittal (who is worth £11 billion) spend their money how they want? Or is there a law against that? Oh yeah, it's QPR we're talking about- not one of the so called 'big clubs'. Would you feel the same if they bought Charton? Doubt it!!! Stop scrounging 'n' whinging

Brian G said...

Thanks for that info, Wyn. However,I imagine that the large corporate sponsorships and Sky are generally interlinked in that, by sponsoring teams like Man Utd, the sponsors are usually guaranteed wide TV exposure across the world. In Man City's case, the shirt sponsorship is just the owners putting more money into the club in another way. FFP treats these sums as commercial income, I believe, thus helping avoid/reduce any fine. Not sure that there's a way round that but the Sky money goes initially to one source and is easier to influence.

Wyn Grant said...

You are quite right that these things are interlinked and that the Sky money is potentially more open to influence. My hunch is that QPR will eventually end up paying a much smaller fine than is being talked about now. The football authorities want to keep it out of court because they know they could lose. Roland and Katrien place quite a lot of faith in FFP, too much in my view, but I can't criticise her for advancing what she sees as the club's interests.

Unknown said...

Dont forget that fernendes before he brought qpr he was seriously having a look at charlton so think yourselves very lucky he didnt buy us when he was interested as we could have been in a simular position to what qpr find themselves in now.By the way charlton are keeping tabs on maidstone united defender Tom Mills

Anonymous said...

Jonathon rethink how u would love mr Fernandes to have purchased Charlton actually it was west ham he is a decent bloke who cares about the fans