With the new FFP rules, it means that a Middle East super rich state must be more prudent if they buy a relatively cheap
Club like Newcastle for £300m and increase it’s turnover like city did over a 15 year period to £600m, all be it by inflating sponsorship deals, this can’t be done any more because of the controls with FFP which will soon become only 70% of turnover with allowed in wages. Transfer and agent Fees by 2025/26.
Newcastle wage bill is already nearly 100% of its turnover. EG the club is working on increasing capacity to 56,000; they manage to get CL football this year and increase their sponsorship deal.
Turnover maxed out at £300m, they spend £170m on 4 players on 5 year contracts amortised at 37.5m and the wages go up from £171m to £235m plus they pay £15m in agents fees. Next year when the percentage is due to reduce to 80% they would have spent £287.5/300m or 96% so would be banned from Europe and face a huge fine. The following year it becomes 70% which makes it almost impossible to do what city did, so if your a Saudi state who wants results quickly and Qatar are looking at buying a group of football clubs like the city Group where Qatar would quite clearly be called the ‘United Group’ , your either looking to gatecrash the United party and pull the plug on Newcastle or your looking to buy a German club like Bayern or Dortmund, Italian club Luke AC Milan or a Spanish club Barcelona , the problem those clubs will never ever sell, maybe Milan but not the others.
This is what the Glaziers are really banking on, the easiest super club actually available for a state to truly flex their muscles and dominate football is only Manchester United, it’s why the Glaziers spent so much time in Qatar during the World Cup. Now if you are Sheikh Jassim and you have access to all that money and unlike PSG where they can’t spend Sweet FA because they are basically overtrading and breaking every FFP rule in the book what would you do? PSG have not won the CL even with there rich array of superstars, they simply pass the batten on and try again.
I keep saying this but no one really is looking at or understands these new rules , if United are bought by Qatar, there will be some transfers between the clubs that would not have happened had they not been owned by the same state. When Maguire goes to PSG for £40m, the inevitable outrage will start!
United Turnover is probably £560m this year and 90% of that will mean the club can spend £504m on wages, amortised transfer and upfront agent fees. The Transfers position can be increased by selling assets like Dean Henderson, Brandon Williams, Antony Elanga and Scott Mctominay because they have no transfer fee, We never paid anything for them if we sold them for a combined £60m on 4 year contracts then the club would have an additional £15m towards their amortised transfer budget.
Assuming wages are down from £385 to £335m (Europa League Clause)
Then £504-335m would means we have 169m for agent fees and amortised transfer fees over two windows, one in summer one on winter. Let’s assume we went after the following players this summer ;
D Raya -£25m (5 year contract)
V Osimhen £120m (5 year contract)
K M Jae - £50m (5 year contract)
A Rabiot - Free (5 year Contract)
M Kudas - 45m ( 5 year contract )
Sabitzer-20m (5 year contract )
Six players agents fees normally 5-10% maximum which is now in FIFA legislation so agents fees max would be £25m plus the total transfer amortised over 5 years which is £52m per year this is only summer
The club would have spent £77m of it £169m so could easily spend another £200-250m in the winter window.
Chelsea under Todd Boehly broke no FFP laws they just signed everybody on 7 year contracts which allowed them to spend nearly £600m over two windows.
My point is we could do all those transfers, send Maguire to PSG for £50m, Lindelof to Milan for £30m, buy J Timber and Dumfries for £70m and still buy Neymar or Mbappe for £100-200m, providing we have CL football for 2023/24 season as our Turnover could be £620-650m and Neymar or Mbappe would be paid in the same way they are now or the way City pay their superstars, half through the books in country of origin and the other half as a sporting ambassador of the state in that state.
Of course allowing either Neymar or Mbappe to leave Paris also conveniently solves their perilous position of being sanctioned by UEFA for not conforming to the 90% rule next season.
These lists are pointless until we see who actually owns Manchester United on the 1st June 2023.