In the event of promotion - how do the Club envisage the FFP regulations impacting...

[Nodge70]

Needs a great deal of thought otherwise we'll be shafted before we've even begun...

[silvercue]

FFP regs will ultimately do the opposite of one of their objectives and that is it will make the big clubs like Manure, Madrid, Bayern, Barca even more powerful and rich and create a bigger gap than ever.

We have a small ground, small fanbase and limited global exposure and following, we are less appealing to big sponsors - we are going to have less revenue than most.....

In fact with our potential welath, in terms of owners, this could not have come at a worse time for us.

Having said that is is only for UEFA competitions....I don't think the Prem is covered, so in theory we could have clubs winning the league by ignoring these rules and just not playing in Europe???

[Rsonist]

As Silvercue says, short-term we won't be shafted before anything since the regulations apply to European participation. And the first step towards earning more than we spend is establishing ourselves in the Premiership first anyway.

After that we would need to look at a new stadium (this is priority #1 if the owners are serious) with soon-to-be obligatory naming rights deals.

The real worry for me is how in such a crowded catchment area (and starting from way behind the rest) we would ever hope to create a youth system that would eventually make us profit - this will be paramount post FFP.

There's a great irony in all this that, commercially speaking, Flavio might well have had the right idea all along, and would be (will be? is?) crucial in "building the brand" ie attracting attention, blue-chip investment, glamorous sponsorship and so on and so forth.

One (risky) possible advantage in thinking short-term for a while is being able to see how the regulations will actually play out - I wouldn't yet put it past UEFA to eventually cave or for clubs to find a financial loophole somewhere, unlikely though it currently seems.

[stainrodisalegend]

Surely it would have been more sensible to put a cap on transfers or limit playing budgets because otherwise it will cast in stone the wealth differences between the big and small clubs. It would prevent someone like Jack Walker coming in to his home town club and really investing in it which at the time was a good thing for Blackburn and a good thing for football.

[Nodge70]

The FFP will drip down to all UEFA leagues within 5 years. That's almost definite. It's what Platini wants. No doubt a loophole, as you say, will appear. Can imagine that Bruce Buck and Garry Cook are working on one right now!

In order to compete, we'll need to be very clever around commercial revenue streams.

[Rsonist]

By all accounts I've read so far the regulations are proving pretty watertight.

[silvercue]

The other reason this will back-fire is because clubs will put prices up again to increase revenue.

Platini thinks it will work like it does in Germany, but it won't.

The fans will suffer - and to be honest, owners putting their own money in is not a bad thing all the time (apart from when it helps Chelsea).... I agree that clubs should not be able to spend themselves to bankrupcy, but this will all end up in a number of SPLs all over Europe and then a European Super League.