By Tony Attwood
First off, Aaron Ramsey. He was in Andorra doing an impersonation of Bale’s drag back and turn, with which the captain of Wales had wasted time in the first half, when he got kicked, slipped on the artificial turf and fell. He was replaced at once, and we now wait to see if he is going to be fit for the Man City game.
Quite why Aaron Ramsey wants to do dinkie stuff on an artificial pitch in the Pyrenees is beyond me. He knows what it is like to get a serious injury from a clogging maniac with no sense of the damage he can do, and he knows that more damage is done in international games (pro-rata) than league games, largely because of the tendency of international managers to play injured and half fit players.
I’m not suggesting any Andorran player went out to crock him, and I am sure they are all jolly nice chaps, but the fact is that when a semi-pro or amateur player is trying to get the ball off a highly skilled professional, accidents can happen.
Ramsey also knows what professional international players are like and why they are picked. The Shawcross manifestation was picked to play for England after he nearly ended Ramsey’s career.
But Ramsey chose to play in front of 3000 people at the Andorran national stadium, and now we don’t know if he can play in match on saturday against Man City.
The only bit of light relief to this is the news about Man City themselves. Man City was famously one of the clubs to be found guilty of breaking FFP rules in the first enquiry into finances, and the only club not to come to a very rapid agreement with Uefa over their mis-doings.
Now Uefa and the teams in its club competitions have been debating what to do with the fines collected from Man City and others. And Uefa has agreed with the wishes of the compliant clubs that the money should be split among the compliant clubs for the season in question. In the case of England that means Man C’s fine will go to Arsenal, Chelsea, Man U., Tottenham, Swansea and Wigan. They will each gain something around a quarter of a million pounds.
There is a Uefa meeting on October 13 at which Man City might try and appeal the decision, but the way the compliant clubs are feeling makes it unlikely that such an appeal will do anything other than annoy delegates.
Man City were joined by Paris St-Germain, Zenit St Petersburg, Rubin Kazan, Anzhi Makhachkala, Galatasaray, Trabzonspor, Bursaspor and Levski Sofia on the naughty boys step, and it is the combined fines from all these clubs that is being passed on.
But the forthcoming meeting is about far more than any attempt at appeal by any of the clubs that broke FFP rules. Michel Platini said yesterday that “The framework for Financial Fair Play must be dynamic, it must evolve constantly, which is why I have convened an important round table on the subject with [club] representatives at Uefa headquarters on Oct 13. We will see whether any imperfections can be ironed out and whether there is room to further improve the system.”
The biggest issue facing Uefa is the continued determination of a small number of clubs to find creative accounting ways around FFP, hence the addition of the regulation which outlaws the introduction of any accountancy or other procedure introduced largely to get around FFP.
However there is concern that Uefa can’t do anything about one route that is opening up as a way around FFP (other than use its new artificiality cluse): the manipulation of the loan market.
Last season the Mail published a list of loanees for certain clubs showing:
- Chelsea: 27 (20 aged 21 or below)
- Man United: 15 (12 aged 21 below)
- Liverpool: 14 (11 aged 21 or below)
- Arsenal: 14 (12 aged 21 or below)
Chelsea it seems have maintained that level of loans – it is currently said by the Telegraph to be 26.
There are no rules concerning international loans, but while they were originally considered as a way of helping young players get games, now we have players like Torres on a two year loan at Milan, arranged for a fee. What is interesting about Torres is that at the end of his loan, his Chelsea contract will expire. The loan reduces Chelsea’s wage bill, and helps Milan get around FFP by having the player without signing him. I can’t say there is a secondary clause therein, relating to any other matter of a transfer from Milan to Chelsea, but if I were doing the business and looking for ways around FFP, that’s what I would be exploring.
Loans also achieve something else that it does for young players. It can make them “home grown” and thus more valuable to Premier League clubs who need a number of such players. Even if a player leaves a Premier League club and is sold to another, the fact that he comes with a home grown tag enhances his value. And since it is Premier League clubs who have all the money, that is quite a valuable attribute.
However given that a player can spend most of his home grown years on loan out of the country, it makes “home grown” meaningless.
And of course where a player develops, the club can make a profit. Romelu Lukaku signed for Chelsea in 2011 for £13m (£19m with add-ons) was loaned to WBA and Everton and then sold for £28m.
The Premier League rules say that bring in four players a season on loan, with a maximum of two at a time, but there is no regulation of loans of players out, and the idea of allowing clubs to play their B teams in the Football League was an attempt to overcome this growing trade
The problem is it is Fifa not Uefa who control international loans, and the chances of them coming out with anything remotely helpful or even sane is about zero.
0 comments:
Post a Comment