(16-01-2024, 10:21 AM)stefanduma Wrote: I'm chilled about the whole situation in that I do not believe we will have a points deduction, maybe a slapped wrist, suspended fine or a jolly good telling off. I think this whole situation is the Premier League trying to prove to the government that they do not need an independent legislative body to oversee them and that they can rule themselves.

Lots of papers comment on how unfair the situation is in light of Man City's charges that keep being kicked into the long grass. If anyone deserves punishment, it's them. They have won 12 trophies during the time that they allegedly broke the rules.

(16-01-2024, 10:08 AM)DR Forest Wrote: In reply to BomberBowyer’s question on page 69 about how we ‘cheated’, Nobody outside NG2 ‘knows’ the details yet but from the various soundbites, they seem to indicate that the whole, or at least majority, of the cause of the breach was the delay in selling Brennan by two months to get an extra £18m…. 100% of which is immediately available for FFP accounting.

Two months.
During which time we were in constant communication with the PL and surely must have had some tacit agreement from them this was acceptable …. or at least an indication that whilst a charge had to be levied in the interests of ‘fairness’, any punishment would be minor.

In defence of the club don’t forget how valuable that extra £18m is. In the current accounting period, it basically facilitates the purchase of 3 Sangare level players if they were all purchased for £30m each and amortised over 5 year contracts.

With extra FFP budget next year as the second championship season falls away from the rolling 3 year allowance, plus a host of expensive player contracts ending, it’s not difficult to see what the overall financial strategy was.

(16-01-2024, 10:40 AM)Paplane Wrote:

(16-01-2024, 10:08 AM)DR Forest Wrote: In reply to BomberBowyer’s question on page 69 about how we ‘cheated’, Nobody outside NG2 ‘knows’ the details yet but from the various soundbites, they seem to indicate that the whole, or at least majority, of the cause of the breach was the delay in selling Brennan by two months to get an extra £18m…. 100% of which is immediately available for FFP accounting.

Two months.
During which time we were in constant communication with the PL and surely must have had some tacit agreement from them this was acceptable …. or at least an indication that whilst a charge had to be levied in the interests of ‘fairness’, any punishment would be minor.

In defence of the club don’t forget how valuable that extra £18m is. In the current accounting period, it basically facilitates the purchase of 3 Sangare level players if they were all purchased for £30m each and amortised over 5 year contracts.

With extra FFP budget next year as the second championship season falls away from the rolling 3 year allowance, plus a host of expensive player contracts ending, it’s not difficult to see what the overall financial strategy was.

But the two months argument can be turned around. I can be suggested that we should have ensured we were within and not relying on rhe dale of a single player.

(16-01-2024, 11:09 AM)DR Forest Wrote:

(16-01-2024, 10:40 AM)Paplane Wrote:

(16-01-2024, 10:08 AM)DR Forest Wrote: In reply to BomberBowyer’s question on page 69 about how we ‘cheated’, Nobody outside NG2 ‘knows’ the details yet but from the various soundbites, they seem to indicate that the whole, or at least majority, of the cause of the breach was the delay in selling Brennan by two months to get an extra £18m…. 100% of which is immediately available for FFP accounting.

Two months.
During which time we were in constant communication with the PL and surely must have had some tacit agreement from them this was acceptable …. or at least an indication that whilst a charge had to be levied in the interests of ‘fairness’, any punishment would be minor.

In defence of the club don’t forget how valuable that extra £18m is. In the current accounting period, it basically facilitates the purchase of 3 Sangare level players if they were all purchased for £30m each and amortised over 5 year contracts.

With extra FFP budget next year as the second championship season falls away from the rolling 3 year allowance, plus a host of expensive player contracts ending, it’s not difficult to see what the overall financial strategy was.

But the two months argument can be turned around. I can be suggested that we should have ensured we were within and not relying on rhe dale of a single player.

There are always two perspectives.
What we don’t know yet is how much over the FFP threshold we were on 30/6 though.
Your flip side argument has more weight if we were £29m over and could have rectified it by taking the £30m. 
However, we might have only been slightly over and are now actually closer to the full £47m under the limit for this season- we just don’t know. 
But don’t forget, the FFP rules are there to ensure sustainability and protect the national game, not to seek to punish teams at every opportunity. This will all be discussed in mitigation by our lawyer of course.

(16-01-2024, 11:30 AM)Paplane Wrote:

(16-01-2024, 11:09 AM)DR Forest Wrote:

(16-01-2024, 10:40 AM)Paplane Wrote:

(16-01-2024, 10:08 AM)DR Forest Wrote: In reply to BomberBowyer’s question on page 69 about how we ‘cheated’, Nobody outside NG2 ‘knows’ the details yet but from the various soundbites, they seem to indicate that the whole, or at least majority, of the cause of the breach was the delay in selling Brennan by two months to get an extra £18m…. 100% of which is immediately available for FFP accounting.

Two months.
During which time we were in constant communication with the PL and surely must have had some tacit agreement from them this was acceptable …. or at least an indication that whilst a charge had to be levied in the interests of ‘fairness’, any punishment would be minor.

In defence of the club don’t forget how valuable that extra £18m is. In the current accounting period, it basically facilitates the purchase of 3 Sangare level players if they were all purchased for £30m each and amortised over 5 year contracts.

With extra FFP budget next year as the second championship season falls away from the rolling 3 year allowance, plus a host of expensive player contracts ending, it’s not difficult to see what the overall financial strategy was.

But the two months argument can be turned around. I can be suggested that we should have ensured we were within and not relying on rhe dale of a single player.

There are always two perspectives.
What we don’t know yet is how much over the FFP threshold we were on 30/6 though.
Your flip side argument has more weight if we were £29m over and could have rectified it by taking the £30m. 
However, we might have only been slightly over and are now actually closer to the full £47m under the limit for this season- we just don’t know. 
But don’t forget, the FFP rules are there to ensure sustainability and protect the national game, not to seek to punish teams at every opportunity. This will all be discussed in mitigation by our lawyer of course.

Yep, not enough info in the public realm for us to judge. But I cant get beyond thinking that rules are rules whether they're considered to be fair or not. 

From the limited info we've got, I reckon the best form of defence will be to take a conciliatory approach. Explain to the panel how open we've been to the process, how we take FFP very seriously and how committed we are to being good FFP people in the future. Contrast that to Everton who are fighting all the way.

IIRC the Sheep were negotiating a provisional punishment with the EFL before the hearing by the independent panel. Maybe we're doing the same with the EPL now, to get them to recommend a small punishment to the panel if we're found guilty. Wishful thinking perhaps. I'm just refusing to let this ruin my enjoyment of the football, which really looks like it's improving massively under Nuno.

(16-01-2024, 11:09 AM)DR Forest Wrote:

(16-01-2024, 10:40 AM)Paplane Wrote:

(16-01-2024, 10:08 AM)DR Forest Wrote: In reply to BomberBowyer’s question on page 69 about how we ‘cheated’, Nobody outside NG2 ‘knows’ the details yet but from the various soundbites, they seem to indicate that the whole, or at least majority, of the cause of the breach was the delay in selling Brennan by two months to get an extra £18m…. 100% of which is immediately available for FFP accounting.

Two months.
During which time we were in constant communication with the PL and surely must have had some tacit agreement from them this was acceptable …. or at least an indication that whilst a charge had to be levied in the interests of ‘fairness’, any punishment would be minor.

In defence of the club don’t forget how valuable that extra £18m is. In the current accounting period, it basically facilitates the purchase of 3 Sangare level players if they were all purchased for £30m each and amortised over 5 year contracts.

With extra FFP budget next year as the second championship season falls away from the rolling 3 year allowance, plus a host of expensive player contracts ending, it’s not difficult to see what the overall financial strategy was.

But the two months argument can be turned around. I can be suggested that we should have ensured we were within and not relying on rhe dale of a single player.

There are always two perspectives.
What we don’t know yet is how much over the FFP threshold we were on 30/6 though.
Your flip side argument has more weight if we were £29m over and could have rectified it by taking the £30m. 
However, we might have only been slightly over and are now actually closer to the full £47m under the limit for this season- we just don’t know. 
But don’t forget, the FFP rules are there to ensure sustainability and protect the national game, not to seek to punish teams at every opportunity. This will all be discussed in mitigation by our lawyer of course.

(16-01-2024, 09:00 AM)Sniffer Dog (Admin) Wrote:

(16-01-2024, 08:54 AM)Salvatore Matrecano Wrote:

(16-01-2024, 08:50 AM)Sniffer Dog (Admin) Wrote:

(15-01-2024, 08:20 PM)wassy04 Wrote: For me the biggest question is simply, why didn't we just take the money in June and avoid this charge?

Did we think we could beat the system with this mitigation plan? Did we not realise until too late? Did the PL decide after the Everton sage to be less lenient (would be my guess)

It seems pretty brazen to just take on the FFP rules and hope we can essentially get them changed after the fact.

Well there is the very important fact that Johnson did not want to go to Brentford for a start.

We couldn't force him to go there, you can't ruin careers like that.

You may be correct about Johnson. About ruining careers, sadly I don’t believe the Marinakis regime gives a monkeys about that considering some of the players at the two clubs that have been bought, swapped around, not played but moved on for a small profit or simply discarded.

Marinaki's never entered my thoughts.

Fact is that both BJ and DJ didn't want the move so obviously they thought it was not good for his career. In answer to Wassy's question we simply couldn't force the move if the player wasn't willing.

(16-01-2024, 02:27 PM)willdared Wrote: Just been looking at an Everton forum and the world is against them plus they all hate Richard masters.. what I can't get my head around is a lot of them genuinely think we'll get a harsher punishment than them.. can someone make this make sense to me.

As we have breached I'm not against a punishment as it is deserved however I truly believe "punishment that fits the crime". Our breach seems minor and was rectified almost immediately.

(16-01-2024, 02:04 PM)Fumanchew Wrote: This from Maguire is very telling compared to where we were come day 1 of last season. The wages also includes promotion bonuses. If anyone wants me to post the pics let me know.

(16-01-2024, 03:15 PM)Reds73 Wrote:

(16-01-2024, 02:04 PM)Fumanchew Wrote: This from Maguire is very telling compared to where we were come day 1 of last season. The wages also includes promotion bonuses. If anyone wants me to post the pics let me know.

The wage bill for last season was reportedly 71m.
It’s certainly not excessive in line with other similar sized clubs