Question regarding the Championship and rules

[MYU]

I'm sure there maybe others who also don't know, but what is the rules on spending?

Is there a budget on transfer spending, wages, how does it work?

If it's to do with with the club's income then we're doomed, we won't be able to compete offering a decent player wage even for the Championship.

[Shania]

Was thinking about the same.

Any lawyers dealing with football matters who can comment on this, please?

[dsqpr]

I'm sure there maybe others who also don't know, but what is the rules on spending?

Is there a budget on transfer spending, wages, how does it work?

If it's to do with with the club's income then we're doomed, we won't be able to compete offering a decent player wage even for the Championship.

I don't pretend to know the details but I'm pretty sure it is related to how much money you are allowed to lose, when everything is taken into consideration - which is clearly related to income. It might be averaged out over three years though, rather than on a season by season basis.

[klonk]

ok, as far as i understand it...

next season (2015-16): more or less the same rules as the ones that we're trying to convince the league that we didn't break last season, although based on the accounts for this season and with a maximum allowed loss of £6m (rather than £8m). if we fail, then we'll receive a 'transfer embargo' from the beginning of the january 2016 window. see below about the ransfer embargo, which is a bit odd and has lots of exception clauses.

season after (2016-17): a new system comes into play which looks at financial results over a 3-year period (the main reason seems to be so that the approach is more consistent with premier league and champions league rules which look at the financial results over a 3-year period). this system seems to be quite complicated and works as follows:

• an aggregate loss of £15m (or less) over the 3 years is allowed without any punishment/additional scrutiny
• an aggregate loss of £15-39m over the 3 years requires clubs to provide some additional assurances/documentation in relation to the funding of the club (the upper limit of £39m will be raised for clubs who have spent 1 or more of the 3-years in the premier league, each season in the premier league adds £22m on)
• an aggregate loss above the £39m-plus-any-premier-league-seasons limit will be subject to fines/embargoes etc (as far as i can see, it remains a fine if the team gets promoted and an embargo if not).

transfer embargo is a bit weird...

• all teams are allowed to have 24 senior players (a senior player is aged over 21 and has made at least 5 first team starts for the club). if a team doesn't have 24 seniors, they can sign players on free transfer whose total weekly employment cost (not just wages) are no higher than £11,500.
• other than that, the club can sign players on free transfer on a 'one-out/one-in', provided that the player coming in has total weekly employment costs that are the lower of £11,500 or ¾ of the weekly employment costs of the player that goes out
• all teams can still sign emergency goalkeepers when needed.

(hopefully that all makes sense)