One of the early cases of a club not paying its debts and gaining an advantage over others via administration had rather a lot to do with them buying a (shit) stadium. The argument that FFP shouldn’t prevent clubs from ‘investing’ in their facilities has merit.. but if the idea is to stop clubs running out of money then it’s good to remember that it doesn’t much matter what the money was spent on.
What exempting spending on facilities does do is advantage those with the deepest pockets and, thus, more likely to be able to dip into additional capital in order to bulk up the income-generating assets that subsequently should increase allowable FFP spend. Good for Man City, less so for us, useless for Luton.
It was, of course, always incredibly stupid that clubs could ignore the costs of buying a stadium whilst including the income from pretending to sell one. But at least that eventually got dealt with.
I hope Everton weren’t disadvantaged by genuine stadium expenditure, because the rules say you shouldn’t be. But the whole thing could be abused somewhat. And probably is abused. Let’s say a club is spending £50m on a new stand and £50m on players. They borrow £50m from Wonga at 30% APR, and get a £50m capital injection (or interest free loan) from the owner. They’re going to say that the Wonga loan, and thus the interest, is all stadium debt.. but that’s just presentation and that massive interest bill is still an expense of the club even if the actual capital spend on the stand is excluded. By the sounds of it (per Shady) maybe Everton tried to do this but it didn’t add up so they got dinged. If so, that’s fair enough.
