Chelsea are no trouble whatsoever with regards to FFP and Luiz was allegedly wanted by both Barca and Bayern as well.

2 months later
marv3llous wrote:

Sky Sports News ‏@SkySportsNews 2m
Sky Sources: Edinson Cavani asks agent to investigate potential move to Premier League. #SSN

The madness begins!!!

Ok, I'll bite. I think FFP is turning this into one of the most interesting transfer windows I can remember.

I agree. The fact that top clubs need to sell top players to be able to tweak their squads in order to comply with FFP is a new phenomenon.
UEFA should put a limit to how many players a club can have on loan as well! What Chelsea is doing in their stockpiling of promising youngsters only looking to sell them at a profit is pretty disgusting. If they at least had them at their own academy looking to develop them I would be fine with it, but just buying them with no intention of ever playing them themselves is pretty bad.

5 days later

Clubs shouldn't be allowed to loan out players under 23 at all in my opinion.

Don't really see a problem with it personally.

What Arsenal is doing is not really a problem IMO. We buy promising youngsters, develop them, and use loans to further their education. We only really just loan out players without the education bit who can't get a work permit in England. Anyway, there is always a view that they should play for us if they make the grade.

Chelsea on the other hand, like Juventus, stockpile young kids and loan them out with the only purpose being to later sell them at a profit. That is the part I am not ok with.

What Peps is saying makes a lot of sense too; by the time a player is 23 it is not unreasonable that clubs should be able to make a final decision on a player.

shouldnt there just be a cap on team rosters that includes players on loan? and the cap should be the same for all teams in UEFA. same for the rule against third party ownership of player rights.

seems obvious that it's bad for the game to allow rich clubs to stockpile players for speculation purposes.

There's a lot about Chelsea I don't like, but their system I believe has still created a more capable youth team than ours. The fact that we are overhauling ours at the moment is testament to the fact that it has not been good enough. Chelsea may not be giving their youngsters opportunities, but the players coming out of their academy (whether home-grown or originally) bought are highly sought after in the PL and lower divisions. I believe the quality of their coaching is at youth level is top notch, but the downside is that I hate that they can stockpile so much talent as well. I have read that there are people in the league who want to reform the loan system including Scudamore, but they are currently being outvoted by PL club representatives in their pursuit of reform. It seems to me that club managers such as Martinez etc are just as guilty in allowing the system to continue as they see the loan system as a means to get players which they think they can't afford rather than see it as prime reason why they can't afford these players in the first place.

I think PL clubs should be banned from loaning players out to anyone in the same division and that loans out should be restricted to 5 per season. For anyone beyond those 5 who are at the stage of looking for first team minutes, they should be sold. If we think those players have potential but are not yet ready for our first team squad, they should perhaps be sold cheaply but with the buy back option. That way the buying team has a vested interest in the long-term development of the player so are more likely to play them like Carlos Vela.

What for me is a tragedy is that FFP is doing nothing for clubs like Southampton who, on the back of largely home-grown players and a few smart foreign signings, are now seeing their team being decimated rather than seeing it as the launching pad to challenge the elite.

Rex wrote:

What Arsenal is doing is not really a problem IMO. We buy promising youngsters, develop them, and use loans to further their education. We only really just loan out players without the education bit who can't get a work permit in England. Anyway, there is always a view that they should play for us if they make the grade.

Chelsea on the other hand, like Juventus, stockpile young kids and loan them out with the only purpose being to later sell them at a profit. That is the part I am not ok with.

Not really Rex; thankfully we have moved out of that phase where young players were given so much time in the first team.
We are just the same as any other top club we've got the coaching set up and the training facilities but few if any will ever make it here, we're a footballer factory too,

Maybe you should try reading what I actually wrote?

Southampton are decimating their first team because the new owner has absolutely no interest in football.

Rex wrote:

Maybe you should try reading what I actually wrote?

I did and I agree with you that it's not really a problem as all clubs do it that's just the way it is.
I however disagree with you when you say that we have any intention of playing these young players, the time when young players inexplicably got a lot minutes in our 1st team seems thankfully to have passed, err Sanogo excepted.

I was very clear when I said those 'who make the grade'. The difference between what we are doing and what Chelsea are doing is that we take ALL the players we can into our academy and educate them. To me, that is 'with the view to play them if they make the grade'. Chelsea on the other hand have their own academy where they do what we do, which is the way it should be, but then ALSO buy a lot of 18-21 year olds where the plan is to just loan them out and later sell them at a profit. It is that practise which I object to.

which is why all players on loan should count towards the 25 player squad limit. this is a simple problem with a very simple solution.

Rex wrote:

ALSO buy a lot of 18-21 year olds where the plan is to just loan them out and later sell them at a profit. It is that practise which I object to.

Don't see how you could possibly know that they have no intention to use them. Most of the players they've bought were top talents who just couldn't get in the team ahead of the likes of Cech (though that may change this season), Hazard, Mata etc.

But regardless. I don't see anything immoral about it. It's a pretty smart way to either make a bit of money or secure a future star as they've done with that Atletico keeper. At the ages of 18-21 they need game time too, nothing to gain from playing in the reserves.

otfgoon wrote:
Rex wrote:

ALSO buy a lot of 18-21 year olds where the plan is to just loan them out and later sell them at a profit. It is that practise which I object to.

Don't see how you could possibly know that they have no intention to use them. Most of the players they've bought were top talents who just couldn't get in the team ahead of the likes of Cech (though that may change this season), Hazard, Mata etc.

But regardless. I don't see anything immoral about it. It's a pretty smart way to either make a bit of money or secure a future star as they've done with that Atletico keeper. At the ages of 18-21 they need game time too, nothing to gain from playing in the reserves.

I agree. I hate Chelsea as much as the next guy but this seems like a non-issue. Chelsea only profit (whether in a football or monetary sense) if a player develops properly. They're just ahead of the curve in terms of identifying young talent right now.

But it's stockpiling of talent at top clubs - a huge problem in the game at the moment. It's the reason why we've gone from a whole range of clubs and leagues who could challenge for the Champions League to just seven or eight in four countries who can win it today.

That's my view as well.

10 months later
2 months later

[size=x-small][font=arial, sans-serif]Under FFP, clubs cannot spend more than their revenue but one of the new rules allow for clubs who want to invest but fear they could breach the break-even rule to approach Uefa and gain approval for their plan in what is known as a "voluntary settlement".[/font][/size]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/33381403

That's a pretty good compromise in my opinion, should appease those who claim FFP stops competition.