They do work, the problem is they only apply to teams that work at a loss; ignoring debt altogether. The big new-money teams can work at a loss because of the wealth of their owners while the big establishment teams can take out massive loans against their blue chip status. FFP would be a lot harder to argue against if it tackled loss and debt. So in that sense I'm not entirely opposed to the idea of FFP, just the details of it.


It does, which is part of the problem. When the top-line was around 100m, players could roughly value themselves in relation to that, so it makes sense that say Lukaku is worth 70m, but to double that top line effectively means all players' values will be recalculated in accordance. Good news if you're a smaller club cashing in on an in demand youngster but that money will itself become worth a lot less when trying to replace them. (Although in fairness, that was the case when the top line was 100m.) In terms of buying talent, though, a team like West Ham might be in a position to really stretch itself for a player priced at around 40-50m, but if that same player suddenly gets re-valued at closer to 100m, he's no longer an option. Most clubs, even those in rich leagues like the Prem, just don't have that kind of money and struggle to compete in the transfer market as it is, this will only make it even more difficult.

aaaaaaaaah. ahhhhh. ah.... okay i understand now and i hope i will remember in the future

so it's not about balance sheet ratios but rather just against "new money injections." i can see how it discriminates then


but in that case then the team that bought a bunch of expensive players and can't sell them to west ham at a profit is stuck with a loss and/or debt no? so it would be a case of a bubble bursting. like people who bought a bunch of gold only to see the price drop.

so it doesn't matter which direction the market goes-- it's always game of musical chairs either way and someone is always left wanting

The bubble will burst when players not good enough to tempt the richest clubs are priced too highly for the clubs ranked just below them. Although I suppose that's where China comes in.

right, so it's an expanding market-- but it can only expand so far. the earth is round (well, a spheroid) after all.

so maybe the inflation has nothing to do with neymar but with china.

I certainly think it's a factor in some cases, but not this particular one. At least I've not heard anything to suggest it is.

well through a... chain of causality

meaning it doesn't necessarily have to be the top rising pulling but rather a groundswell lifting the tops

what's teh max that china is paying these days and for what quality players?

what do you have to pay a middling player to keep him from going to china?

gotta look at both sides

eta: https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/chin...wettbewerb/CSL

That link only shows transfer fees but a bigger part of it is the wages these Chinese clubs are offering. The club Tianjin Quanjian apparently offered Chelsea 75m for Diego Costa, which isn't that far off what I'd expect him to get in the regular market. The kicker was that they were also offering him a 600k a week salary, which is almost 4 times what he gets at Chelsea. and even more than Neymar's getting in this PSG deal. And nothing about it is illegal. These Chinese clubs are just emphasising wages over transfer fees, which is obviously great news for players but terrible news for the clubs they're with, who can't match those wages and If they set the buy-out clause too high then players (or more likely their agents) will simply accuse them of deliberately pricing them out of the market.

Before the PSG deal, the world's top 2 players in terms of weekly wage were both at Chinese clubs. Oscar on 440k pw, and Tevez on 600k pw. Ronaldo was in 3rd place. Real pay him 350k pw. Neymar's probably number 1 now but it still shows how much China is bucking the market.

right-- so yes, when you start looking at all the money spent on hulk or old tevez in china, then the neymar deal suddenly doesn't look so insane.

im not saying "this is it" btw, just pointing at the complexity of the global football market and all the variables to consider in the changes we're seeing.

i wish william gibson would write a novel about football haa haa

Ah football. Welcome back, you've been missed.

not quite yet for me-- bundesliga starts this coming friday-- but sooo loking foward to it

dembélé might be going to barcelona for a bunch of money... but i hope he doesn't! such a prodigy.

---

eta: dortmund rejected a 100 million euro offer for him, ha ha ha, they're holding out for 130-150 i read. the neymar effect! well barca got 200, so...

Yeah, supposedly Barca offered similar to Liverpool for Coutinho and they rejected it.

Chelsea 3-0 down to Burnley. This clearly means Chelsea will be relegated.

You can't base anything on one game but there does seem to be problems at Chelsea. Conte's made no secret that he isn't happy with the transfer dealings during the summer.

Also was cool seeing Rooney score your winner.

Aye, he managed to change things around last season, but it's gonna be interesting to see how he deals with this one.

Him and Benitez have been shafted over this window. You can say "Well Chelsea signed for 60 million" but that's missing the bigger picture of a team that's just won the league.

And yeah, I was glad too. Watching the game highlighted we need another striker. So many times Everton would go on the counter and barely anyone would be up there to help finish it off. Worst thing is I've not heard any decent rumours of strikers coming through.

There it is, Lukaku scoring against West Ham again (except for the one time I bet on him to score and he didn't). He really is gonna be a beast for Utd isn't he?

Yeah, Lukaku and West Ham. :(

Predict this is gonna be a big season for him. MU in general look good. Pogba had a great game ... and Matic! No wonder Conte's so pissed off about him being sold ... especially to a title rival.

Fortunately WH's season won't depend on results against teams like that but we have a decent run of fixtures from next week where we must pick up points.

Barca will be weak as fuck this season.

Oh, West Ham how we hardly knew ye...

Is the Bayern Munich train all set and ready to win the league...again?

i would think so, but here's the thing with me:

the fox service i subscribed to for the past few years has been "updated" and is now broken. i can't watch shit on it. does not work.

i have 7 days "free trial" to decide to keep it or dump it-- $140 for the year is not bad at all, but if it doesn't work then what's the point?

i might go on a fussball diet till the world cup, or something. kinda puzzled at the moment.

also lots going on so i could use the spare time from so many games to maybe do something with my life. ha! ha ha ha! sure....

but no, seriously, i might stay away for the year or till something else happens that changes things.

What's wrong with it? Surely you can find out why it''s not working?


Nope. I've read that three times and I'm still baffled by the "maybe do something with my life" line. You can't just UP AND LEAVE! Nor does it have to take over your life. I say join us in watching the Premier League ;) It's about as predictable as mosquito's flight path at the moment.

Or at the very least the Champions League.

well bundesliga is the same subscription i use for champions-- they call it fox soccer match pass now

problem is they've bloated the interface and their video streaming is just crap. stutters like mad, blurry as fuck, works worse than before. check out the reviews in the app store. i just cancelled my subscription, which is for a full year. i could always get it later, either month to month or some other format. but right now it's out of the question to pay for something that's broken.

as for doing something with my life-- i do have a lot of work right now, so if i could do some work saturday mornings instead of spending 3-4h glued to the tv i guess there could be some benefit in "productivity" or whatever ha ha ha. same thing with mid-day cl games during the workweek (makes for very long lunch breaks)

but yeah super disappointing.

there are possible fixes, but the issue in the background is that my living situation is a bit up in the air at the moment. i mean, we have this place in the boonies, which we own outright and has tricky internet, but we might move elsewhere, with better connection, im not sure, and not sure when precisely. it's not really a housing issue but a work thing we might need to follow, actually.

things might definitely change in 3-4 months time, so it's best for us to make no commitments right now-- that might include a contract to upgrade my internet, or a satellite tv installation, or who knows what. don't wanna start them till i know where we're going... so best to make a clean break with football instead of pining--until im sure i can watch again. never been a piner. not sure that's a word?

im crazy, am i not? haaa haaa haa. fml.