Premier League clubs threaten legal action over Financial Fair Play

Liverpool owner, John W Henry

Premier League clubs are ready to take legal action against big spending clubs, if they continue to evade UEFA’s Financial Fair Play (FFP) rule.

Top flight teams in the league have been mentioned again, in writing, for demanding UEFA’s FFP rule to be brought into the Premier League. It is clear that they will look to take legal actions to see that UEFA enforces it. Only on seeing how the FFP rules operate will the teams, who are in favour, know if it is required.

John W Henry, the principal owner of Liverpool, says that part of the reason he bought the club in 2010 was with the knowledge that the FFP rule would be enforced a few years later. He was deliberating on whether to buy the club or not, when he was sent an email saying that the club’s appeal to enforce the FFP rule would reduce the risk of a financial crisis. Henry said, when he bought the club, that it did not matter the word “Sheikh” not being in front of his name as the FFP rule would bring a level playing field.

When it was put across to him that teams like Manchester City, Real Madrid, or any other club, could find a way around, or even bend, the rules, he simply said “You’re cynical. If the FFP rules were ridiculous or not that strong, why was the transfer window down 25 per cent last year? The clubs have to comply.”

Manchester City have not explained what their £13m, for an intellectual property sale, covers and nor does Chelsea, on their £18m profit mentioned in their accounts. These details were released last week and highlighted by leading FFP analyst and author of the financialfairplay.co.uk website, Ed Thompson. At Liverpool, Henry is very disappointed with the transparency in Manchester City’s £400m sponsorship deal with the Abu Dhabi airline, Etihad.

Nasser Al-Khelaifi, President of the Qatar owned Paris Saint Germain, has tried to justify his new commercial partnership with the Qatar Tourism Authority (QTA). The deal is worth, nearly, twice the club’s revenues in the 2010-11 season, and looks like an under-the-counter way of funding the club.

Such odd figures and elusive deals illustrate the very difficult task ahead, for the UEFA officials. But if the officials, for example, cannot prove the PSG deal to be a “related party transaction”, they cannot challenge the deal.

Ian Ayre, MD at Anfield, said last year “the rules are rules and should be hard and fast. What will kill the initiative, or certainly stifle it, is people easing themselves into it rather than the rules applying and everyone operating within them.”

Source- The Independent